The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

 © 2024, Dr. Tamilio

A man is driving his car along a road.  He comes upon another man who is holding a sign that reads “The End Is Near!” The driver ignores him and thinks to himself, “Crazy, religious fanatic!”  He ignores the man and keeps driving…straight off a cliff whoever thought that a road sign could be a significant religious doctrine!

People who believe that the end is near actually embrace a significant religious doctrine known as eschatology.  This is a twenty-five-cent word that means the doctrine of the end times.  The last chapter of any Christian theology deals with this concept: the end times, the apocalypse, Armageddon.  Many believers claim that the Second Coming of Jesus will usher in the end of history.  There are lots of other ideas related to this that divide theologians.  Will there be a rapture?  Will there a thousand-year reign of Christ on earth?  Will the forces of good and evil have a final showdown after which Satan will be cast into the lake of fire, the righteous will be saved, and the damned condemned to an eternity in Hell?

Such a theology typically does not sit well with mainline Christians which is why it is so often avoided.  However, Christianity is not a buffet: you cannot pile your plate with the things you like and skip the rest.  Also, as far as the whole story goes, this is the final chapter.  Everything leads to this.  Can you imagine reading a great novel and skipping the final chapter, or watching a movie and leaving right before the climax?  We cheat ourselves out of the fullness of the Christian story when we ignore eschatology.

Furthermore, this is not about doom and gloom.  It is actually quite hopeful.  In fact, the final chapter in many books on Christian doctrine often has the word “hope” in the title.  Our hope is that Jesus will return at the end of time to make all things new, as he promised.  Our hope is that his return will bring a new heaven and a new earth where all that divided humanity will be vanquished.  There will be no more war, no more tears, and no more death.  Seeing the end times as some horrific vision or a sort of zombie apocalypse is not what eschatology is about.

The problem is that people often depict Christ’s return as if it was a horror story, something out of Steven King or Edgar Allen Poe.  Many depictions of it seem horrific.  And maybe some of it will be!  If it is a time of judgment, woe to those who defied God, who did not follow his Word.  Woe to the warmonger and the child molester.  Woe to those who exploited the poor and gorged themselves while the famished stood at their door.  As a former parishioner once said to me, “There better be justice in the next life, because there certainly is a shortage of it in this one.”

It is about justice.  It is about peace.  It is about us (all of us) finally getting it right because Jesus will be in our midst, again, to make all things new.

I think what turns people off about all this is not just the dire images we have of the end times: you know, Satan causing havoc on the earth before he, and his followers, are cast into the lake of fire.  It’s not just that.  I think it is the idea that if you do not accept Christ as your Savior, then this will be a time of horror for you.  That is the message that is preached (and dare I say over-preached) in fundamentalist churches across the world.  The message is about the fear of God rather than God’s love and justice finally prevailing.  It uses the end times as a sort of cudgel to scare people into being Christian.  Accept Jesus or else!

Certainly, such images are in the Bible, but there are others that depict that time as a time of peace and restoration.  This is when all humanity will finally sit together at the table of sister and brotherhood.  Haven’t we long hoped for God to “preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies”?  This is the shalom that Scripture envisions and invites us to see as well.  Remember, the Hebrew word shalom does not just mean peace (as in the absence of conflict or violence).  It means right living — us finally getting it right and coexisting peacefully with one another.

I love that part of the story because we haven’t gotten it right.  Far from it.  Jesus’ ultimate command for us is to love one another as he loved us (John 13).  But we haven’t.  We’ve hated and despised one another.  We’ve sought revenge.  We’ve spread rumors and we’ve pointed fingers.  We’ve tortured, waged war, and have denied some people their basic human — forget God-given — basic human rights.  Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Isn’t this what we pray each and every week?

Here’s the good part.  We have an opportunity (each one of us and all of us) we have an opportunity to live that life of shalom right now!  We do not have to wait till Jesus returns.  We can live now as if he has already come.

• We can love our enemies.
• We can pray for those who persecute us.
• We can feed the hungry.
• Clothe the naked.
• Visit the sick and imprisoned.
• Welcome the stranger in our midst.
• We can take a stand for justice.
• We can try to see the best in others.
• We can love instead of hate.
• We can reject any ideology that diminishes the worth of anyone.
• We can be more patient.
• We can seek to understand rather than reject what we hear.
• We can cease to spread rumors.
• We can try to see things from one another’s perspective.
• We can pray for resolutions and actually try to bring them to pass rather than criticize what we do not like.
• We can.
• We can.
• We can.

Let me conclude with this.  There are many a-competing ideologies out there.  There is no shortage of people who provide a different answer to human strife, to the conflicts that envelop us.  Jesus himself, in today’s Gospel lesson, warned us: “Beware that no one leads you astray.  Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray.”  There is no shortage of politicians, business moguls, media pundits, and even preachers who will say that they have the answer.  If their answer does not point to what this book [the Bible] reveals, then beware.  The message needs to be God-centered not human-oriented.  We have a vision.  It is a biblical vision.  It is Isaiah’s vision.

The wolf will live with the lamb,

the leopard will lie down with the goat,

the calf and the lion and the yearling together;

and a little child will lead them.

The cow will feed with the bear,

their young will lie down together,

and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

The infant will play near the cobra’s den,

and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.

They will neither harm nor destroy

on all my holy mountain,

for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea.

Indeed, we need to be filled with the knowledge of God.  We need to pray for God’s will to be done.  Look at the way we’ve handled things so far.  Wars and rumors of war.  Violence.  Hatred.  Greed.  Staunch partisanship.  Maybe the end being near — as long as it is God’s vision — is that bad after all.

Amen.