But our faith also calls us to make that future present wherever and whenever we can, and to notice how it’s already happening around us. Christian faith indeed affirms that great vision of a perfected humanity and a restored creation. So learn how to discern what lasts and what doesn’t, and how to remain faithful to the vision without getting discouraged by the obstacles and failures along the way.Ī common misconception about the apocalypse is that it only comes once, at the end of history, when the broken will be made whole, all discords harmonized, all divisions reconciled. Only God’s Kingdom-the world of God-is built to last. I think what he’s getting at here is that our idolatries, our invented securities, will come to nothing in the long run. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Put your faith in the things that endure, he says. But he does want us to be clear about where our treasure is, where our hope lies. Jesus doesn’t want to paralyze us with despair. How will the world end? Let me count the ways, says the apocalyptic Jesus. Life from death, and from our rendings, realms of wholeness generate? Then it wonders:Ĭan it be that from our endings, new beginnings you create? “Signs of ending all around us,” says one of our Advent hymns. And if all that isn’t enough, the climate apocalypse is well underway. Truth itself has become an endangered species. We’ve been shocked this year to discover how easily the stability of our democratic institutions can be assaulted and eroded, and we’ve been disheartened and unsettled by the fragility of our social bonds in the face of so much hatred, bigotry, demagoguery and violence. Millions have seen their jobs disappear, education is in crisis, social gatherings are nearly extinct, and so many ordinary things, from restaurants to haircuts, not to mention liturgical assemblies, have vanished from daily experience. COVID-19 has made us acutely conscious of our own impermanence, not only as individuals but as a species.

The ending of worlds is far too real this year. The apocalyptic images of destruction and chaos engage our fears while they’re up on the screen (or on the lips of the gospel reader), but when the lights come up and we head for the exit, we expect to find the same old safe and reliable world waiting for us outside the theater or the church. It’s the ultimate disaster movie, and we usually absorb it as such. The sun and moon will go dark, the stars will fall from the sky, reality itself will tremble and shake. It doesn’t begin with “Once upon a time …” No, it begins with “The End.” Whether the gospel for the First Sunday in Advent is from Matthew, Mark, or Luke, we always get the apocalyptic Jesus announcing the end of the world. The liturgical year is like a great story with many chapters, and every Advent we go back to the beginning and tell it all over again.

The prelude poem by william wordsworth