A Joyous Apocalypse: A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Easter

Acts 16:9-15
Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
John 5:1-9

St. Christopher's Episcopal Church
Kailua, HI

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

A few weeks ago, I participated in a symposium on apocalyptic literature in Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity. The first day of this symposium ended with a roundtable discussion over how we define apocalyptic as a genre, and what are some things that we should consider when comparing the apocalyptic literature between Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity. One scholar opened up the conversation by describing a painting of demons tormenting different individual people through various devices and tools of torture and punishment in the afterlife. He asked this painting was apocalyptic. Being the precocious and headstrong graduate student that I am, I decided to answer his question. I argued that the image was indeed apocalyptic because it reveals and describes in a fantastic and extraordinary way the final fate of humanity. After a brief discussion the scholar revealed that his question was a trap. The image he was describing could not be apocalyptic because it was actually a nineteenth-century Japanese painting by Kawanabe Kyōsai called the Torments of Hell. He argued that apocalypses were borne out of a particular historical and cultural framework in antiquity shared by Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians that precluded the possibility of an “apocalyptic” work being made outside of that. Therefore, this painting could not be apocalyptic because it came from nineteenth-century Japan and not the ancient Middle East. He further argued that apocalypses are about a communal destiny or the collective destiny of humanity, and not individual eschatology or fate, and again said this painting could not be apocalyptic as it focused on individual torments.

I am a stubborn PhD student, so I pushed back against this distinguished scholar. I argued that his conception of the apocalyptic was overly narrow and precluded the possibility of how the end of days can be presented and understood outside such a narrow cultural and historical scope. Additionally, apocalypses can be both communal and personal. Indeed, most of the apocalyptic accounts in the Bible, Zoroastrian scriptures, and beyond are often mediated, experienced, and recounted by individuals (either as a literary device or to connect the apocalypse to history in some way) such as Enoch, Daniel, or John of Patmos, the author of the Book of Revelation which we have been reading from these past few weeks . I also argued that there are many works that are apocalyptic in nature even though scholars do not treat them as such, including Dante’s Divine Comedy, or even Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower because these stories involve the divine interrupting the human life to reveal the final reality of individuals, communities, and creation itself. We went on like this for a bit before a scholar from Cologne interrupted and changed the subject, but I could tell that this scholar did not agree with me.

I am an apocalyptic kind of person. I read and study late-antique and early-medieval apocalypses. I am fascinated with media and popular culture that plays around with apocalyptic themes and ideas. One of my friends got irritated with me recently once when I tried to argue, somewhat jokingly, that everything is apocalyptic. I firmly believe what we say about the final fate of ourselves and this world says a lot about who we are and what we value in the here and now. Though there are many kinds of apocalypses throughout history and cultures. Christianity is indeed an apocalyptic religion because we believe in a God who exists above and beyond time and space who has crashed into time and space through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. He reveals himself to us now in the Gospels, through writing, art, hymnody, and in these accounts he relates to us what the destiny of creation, society, and ourselves were, are, and will be.

Our word apocalypse is derived from the Greek word ἀποκάλυψις, meaning revelation. This kind of revelation is not about answering a standard question. This word is about the revealing of something hidden or unknown being made known to us. We often associate it with the end of the world, because the Biblical book which we most associate with this idea, the Book of Revelation, discusses the destruction of this world, and the creation of a new Heaven and Earth where God will dwell among humanity in a new Jerusalem. Many texts considered apocalyptic that precede and follow Revelation carry similar themes of destruction and renewal either because Revelation is drawing from older ideas, or because newer texts are drawing from revelation. Of course, this idea of the end of the world is magnified in our culture, and we have a whole genre of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic media that is fixated on just the destruction of the world or destruction of civilization (often neglecting the aspects of renewal or recreation). I argue that this whole contemporary genre of apocalypses comes following the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Cold War. The first Godzilla film in 1954 is one of the first new apocalypses in our time.  These apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic themes are magnified in our time in the political climate and coming environmental catastrophes of climate change.

But what marks most of our modern apocalypses is not the hope that undergirds the Book of Revelation, like in today’s reading, but a nihilistic attitude that looks at an inevitable future with dread. We see the crises building on the horizon like an oncoming wave and we stand in fear of it crashing on-top of us. In our fear, we cannot conceive of diving through the wave to consider what lies on the other side. This is what media, scholars, preachers, and society get so desperately wrong with apocalypses—we focus and fixate on the destruction and devastation of apocalypse with a voyeuristic glee rather than considering the apocalypse, the revelation of the Divine crashing into Humanity, to transform not only the world around us, but our very lives. Indeed, apocalypses can occur on a very individual and personal level and can transform us personally just as it transforms the world.

That apocalyptic transformation is not about restoring things to what they once were, but into something new that simultaneously recognizes the past, but transforms that past into a fuller reality. The fruit and leaves of the Tree of Life heal the nations and people of the world, but those wounds borne by humanity are still carried into the new creation and are remembered. Indeed, the Crucified Christ, who is often associated with the Tree of Life, carries with him the wounds of his crucifixion, healed but still present, into his resurrection. And his resurrection is the same resurrection that we will have at the end of all things.

Time does not belong to us; time belongs to God. The end is not for our voyeuristic interests, but for God to manifest within time and space to share the good news to those the world has forgotten: the poor, the orphan, the widow, the homeless, the imprisoned, the refugee, and the oppressed. The great revelation of God comes to them because God entered into time as Jesus for their sake, and the Church bears witness to that revelation, to that apocalypse in sacrament and service to the world. Thus, God meets and interacts with creation through the revelation of his presence within creation, society, and the Church. Stories of God revealing himself to the prophets is apocalyptic, Jesus healing others is apocalyptic, the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is apocalyptic, Baptism is apocalyptic, the Eucharist is apocalyptic, prayer is apocalyptic, and ministry that makes God’s presence known in the world: ministry for the poor, the orphan, the widow, the homeless, the imprisoned, and the oppressed, is apocalyptic. The Church is the herald of the apocalypse, and where God’s ways should be known upon the Earth, and his saving health among all nations should be manifest.

Apocalypse tells us to live in hope, and not fear because though the world is constantly in motion and changing, God does not abandon the creation that he declared to be good at the beginning. The apocalypse gives us the freedom to imagine the world as it could and should be. The presence of God, the teachings of Jesus, and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit gives us the ability embrace that spark of creation to work with God in building that new creation with the knowledge that at the end, the Lord God will be our light, and will reign forever and ever. “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid,” trust in God, and walk with him as he walks among this world healing and caring for those whom we have forgotten but are closest to his heart. And in that way, God is revealed to the world.

Amen.