Around this time of the year we get lectionary readings about what theology calls eschatology, the apocalypse, the end of the world. But it’s not only the Bible… when the All Blacks lost to England in the Rugby World Cup semi-finals, the Herald on Sunday carried a front page totally black except for a tiny message in the middle that if you want any details you’ll find them in the sports section. Their on line edition had the headline, End of the World. Time, you might think, for grown-ups and grown-up faith. Christians have always been fascinated by the end of the world, and one instance is in Paul’s letters to the church at Thessalonica – the expectation that the end is near, the Lord will return, history will be wound up, the sheep will be separated from the goats, and the “saved” will enter eternal bliss. So it is that for centuries, repeatedly, weird predictions of the end of all things have emerged… and 20 centuries later we are still awaiting the last trumpet.
The end of the world may indeed be nigh, or may seem that way, brought about not by God’s cleaving the heavens, so much as the environment becoming uninhabitable by reason of climate changes, rising sea levels, uncontrollable disease and famine, increasing resort to violence and oppression… The apocalypse in other words is entirely believable but largely man-made. I read somewhere some American zealot informing us that God won’t let it happen. He had some special revelation to that effect. Wiser heads are disinclined to predict what God will or won’t do.
The Apostle Peter has some sensible advice towards the end of his First Letter: The end of all things is near; therefore be serious[1] and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers… maintain constant love for one another… be hospitable without complaining…[2] What could seem more prosaic. And yet there it is – if I knew that the end of the world were to happen tomorrow, what would I do? I think I would be still and silent, inwardly receptive and without fear, but loving and hospitable – and take my pills as usual. In another place Peter writes: Therefore beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace…[3] For many people these days, the end of the world has more immediacy. Ferocious bush fires in California and New South Wales, Queensland and elsewhere seem apocalyptic when you are being compulsorily evacuated and it is suddenly possible you will lose home and livelihood. Or when civil war sweeps over your homes and towns, or disease wraps up your life. So it is always the end of the world for someone, somewhere, somehow, sometime soon.
Faith says that with Jesus it cannot be the end. It may become the end of what needed to end. Life is not snuffed out. It is death that is defeated. God made life, and light. The life God made does not end pathetically with the world burned to a silent smoking cinder, moving on forlornly through space – faith sees all things being made new. Meanwhile we say our prayers and take our pills, and care for each other.
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