Beginning

Rehoboth MCC
November 27, 2022

But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Child, but only the Parent. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Human One. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Human One. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your God is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, they would have stayed awake and would not have let their house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Human One is coming at an unexpected hour.

There are a number of texts throughout the gospels, both the ones in our bible and outside of it, that have Jesus or sometimes John the Baptizer saying stuff about what’s going to happen at the end of the world. It usually sounds a little bit like the Left Behind stories, sometimes it sounds like Children of the Corn. Like today, Matthew talks about Noah and, frankly, I’ve never been so skeeved out by the Noah story; and it’s kind of a skeevy story to start with, if you know what I’m talking about. People are minding their own business doing harmless stuff together and suddenly one goes raptured. And some Psycho call’s coming from inside the house nightmare comes in the dark to steal your stuff and do God knows what else awful. This stuff always sounds scary. It never, ever sounds like good news.

It feels like a really wrong way to begin this season leading up to Christmas. Next week we’ll be talking about a lonely voice in the wilderness crying out for justice. The next week will be about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, freeing those in prison. And after that of course an angel will come to Joseph in a dream to encourage him to marry a pregnant child-woman instead of shaming her or stoning her. These passages coming up make tons of sense for what we believe Christmas to be and mean, maybe especially that one don’t throw rocks at the woman you love. They *feel Christmas-y, especially that take care of people’s needs one. But this thing today is definitely not like the others and seems absolutely out of place. I know a pastor who quit preaching the lectionary because he couldn’t deal with this apocalypse every year on the first Sunday of Advent. He didn’t think it sounded like good news. But he was Methodist, you know. (Teasing. Mostly. Some of my best friends are Methodist.)

The thing is, though, this is good news. I think it’s brilliant news. Apocalypse Advent is actually my favorite Sunday to preach all year, so thanks for having me. Also, blessings from the Council of Elders (I didn’t forget).

One thing about this, the end is not always the end. That is tricky to say, as a white, slim, able-bodied, Christian-adjacent person with a fair amount of privilege. I want to take care not to minimize the pain and loss that many folks feel at the end. Families that I encounter at the hospital emergency department, and the families of those five murdered in Colorado Springs and in the other six or more mass shootings last week. Tamir Rice’s family, who had to get through another anniversary of his murder this week. I don’t want to minimize what’s happening with the erosion of the Indian Child Welfare Act, or the 327 people named this year at the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

But I don’t want us to confuse violence and injustice or oppression with the end. Violence and injustice and oppression are bitter and broken, but they don’t have the last word. We learned that with the energy and organizing that came in the wake of the Boy Scouts versus James Dale decision and now with the Dobbs decision. The highest legal court in the land doesn’t get the final say. We learned it at Golgotha, too, which is a big deal to a lot of us. We have a bunch of different ways of thinking about what happened with the first disciples on that first Easter, but one way or another it’s arguably the whole point of our faith or faithfulness that *That end was not the end. I don’t want us to think of violence or death as the end. And I don’t want us to mistake the end and the beginning.

Where’s the beginning of a ring, for instance? Where’s the beginning of the day? Where’s the end of the earth’s seasons? The cold and dark dormancy of winter makes green spring buds possible, that leads to the summer’s flowers, that makes possible shedding curled up leaves and seeds, that leads to the dormant soil and germinating seed of winter… An old English folk song says, I gave my love a cherry that had no stone. I gave my love a chicken that had no bone. I gave my love a baby with no cryin. I told my love a story that had no dying. How can there be a cherry that has no stone? How can there be a chicken that has no bone? How can there be a baby with no cryin? How can there be a story that has no dying?

Does anyone know the answer to the riddle? A cherry when it’s blooming, it has no stone. A chicken when it’s pipping, it has no bone. A baby when it’s sleeping has no cryin. The story that I love you, it has no dying.

What “Jesus” is describing here (and let’s just note that I threw up some finger quotation marks around Jesus; we’ll come back to that in a minute), what “Jesus” is describing is not a catastrophic end but a beginning. Jesus is telling people, them, us, that something monumental is coming – the Human One, or the Son of Man, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ – choose your title. A new world order is on the horizon, and the end of this world is here. It’s not scary, no matter what we’ve been told the Book of Revelation means, or Daniel, or Mark 13. The end of this world is not scary but spectacular, and exhilarating.

The new world order is precisely all the stuff coming up in the lectionary the next few weeks, especially people getting fed and clothed and cared for and loved and brought in. Especially people not being shamed or hit with rocks to death. The new world order is built into the nativity parable, it’s low-life scuzzy shepherds becoming the central figures and first responders to love and justice. It’s is freaky foreign eunuchs becoming astrological co-conspirators and colluders in salvation. The new world order is an immigration and refugee policy that sounds more like Emma Lazarus, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” than like nativist xenophobia. It’s when the United States gives up its role as the world’s leading jailor. It’s when all people living with HIV and AIDS have access to life-saving medication and prophylactics, whether they live in sub-Saharan Africa or in SoHo. It’s when Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, and the places we don’t know about yet have actually clean water, and cities and towns stop doing as little as they can get away with for poor and working class city infrastructure, for Black and other neighborhoods of color. The coming of the new world order is the apocalyptic question: To whom does the sovereignty of the world belong? And that question is answered with the words: It belongs to good, to God. To love. To justice. To everyone having enough.

Today’s reading isn’t about the end. It isn’t scary. This is the beginning of the good news that *That world is coming, that new, good world where wealth and power is distributed evenly. Huzzah.

I’ve been putting Jesus in air quotes because Jesus probably didn’t say this stuff, at least not this way. It’s probably definitely the gospel writer folks saying that mean-God punished Noah’s generation, because I’m pretty sure that real Jesus, non-quotation marks Jesus, talked about God as love and provision, not as anger and judgement. Also, Jesus almost certainly didn’t talk this much. He stood somewhere on a hill or sat in a boat and shouted stuff at the crowds, and it probably was short and sweet. It was probably really funny ha ha or funny absurd, so they would remember it, like having a log sticking out of your head while you poke around in your neighbor’s eyeball for a speck. Something like congratulations, gross poor people, you win all the best prizes! Like love the people you hate; like give it away for a rainy day.

People are asking “Jesus,” When will this world come, already? Because we’ve been waiting and waiting for it. We thought that the Maccabees were going to make it happen, they say. Then we thought Judas in Galilee or Simon in Perea or John at the Jordan River were going to make it happen. Then we thought you were going to make it happen, once and for all, with a swift and mighty hand like in the old days when Moses could make the mountains quake. But the Maccabees didn’t do it and Judas and Simon and John didn’t do it. And non-quotation marks Jesus didn’t overturn Rome and return the land and authority to the Jewish people, but only overturned temple tables and died violently and humiliated. The community of Matthew’s gospel has been waiting and waiting. And our communities – queer, genderqueer, grandchildren of kidnapped and enslaved Black elders and First Nations and Chicano y latine and immigrants – our communities have been waiting and waiting. When will this world come that we long for, this world that will save us and free us, with just and fair laws and policy, and an end to hunger and war?

And Matthew’s “Jesus” says, Here’s the sign: You’ll know because people will be eating and drinking and marrying. People will be planting crops and grinding meal. That’s how you’ll know it is the beginning. And that’s how you’ll know that it’s time for that good and just new world.

The new world order isn’t a cataclysmic event that a God is sitting around waiting for the right moment to spring on us. (Surprise!) Every moment is right for love and justice. Every moment is right for feeding and healing. A sinister God isn’t lurking and hiding, waiting to catch us out. (Jesus is coming! Everyone, look busy!) God isn’t a thief sneaking at night into your house when you’re asleep. For pity’s sake, goodness knows that we sleep at night and wants us to get a good night’s sleep.

I’m not a fan of scary God. People act like fear is a great motivator. Religious people for forever have been trying to scare us with the end of the world and a terrible God’s surprising sudden arrival and Judgment Day and missing the top secret heaven train because we were sleeping or distracted or ran out of oil. These folks think they can shame us or frighten us into being good. But what does anything good want with our shame? What does anything good want with fear? We are not created in the image of fear. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not fear. Fear not, the angels said. Do not be afraid, post-Easter Houdini “Jesus” said as he passed through locked doors.

I don’t think Matthew’s “Jesus” or any Jesus wants us scared; but I think he wants us getting to it, he wants us to begin. Jesus is saying, This is a good day for it; it’s always a good day for it. He doesn’t want people thinking, How long can I put it off? When do I absolutely have to get on board? How long can I keep hating people I hate and hording my stuff and ignoring anti-trans violence and the racial wealth gap before I have to repent and act? How long can I be complacent about harm to immigrants and Muslims and broken binding treaties with sovereign first nations? Does it have to be today? I don’t want to miss out on the reward, but I’d like to enjoy my privilege and comfort for as long as possible. I don’t want to be left behind, but I don’t want to stick my neck out too soon. So what are the signs of the times?

And Jesus says, You don’t get it. There’s no deadline. The deadline is always. The time is ripe and always has been. Get to it, now, like it’s your own idea, like you love it.

The end of the world isn’t a train we catch or a bus we miss. “Jesus” is talking about a day and an hour that nobody knows, not even the angels, but not because it’s a secret. It’s the opposite of a secret: there’s not a day or hour to know. It’s every day. It’s every hour. It’s whenever people are eating and drinking and marrying, whenever people are planting crops or grinding meal. It’s not going to happen upon us or happen to us suddenly, because it isn’t going to happen *to us at all. It’s going to happen because of us. It’s going to happen through us. *We are the new buds pushing the old growth off the trees. We’re going to make it so, because we’re going to be doing it, building it, growing it.

The new world order isn’t going to happen without us, and now we know that’s why it’s scary.

Turns out it is scary, after all, because no God is doing it for us. *We have to do it, and it’s going to cost us. It’s going to hurt. If it isn’t awful, if we aren’t scared, we may not be doing it right. Some of us will have to interrupt our white privilege. Some of us will be expected to cough up some of the wealth we have been hoarding with the help of redlining and bank loan advantages. It is scary. But if we weren’t scared already, then maybe we haven’t been paying attention. Folks are going to the grocery store and being shot down in the aisles. Folks are dying in our clubs. Folks are being shot in church, in synagogue. Folks aren’t surviving the school day. Folks are being hunted down and shot during their morning run. Folks are dying shopping for a BB gun at Wal-Mart in an open carry state. Folks are dying all around us for living their Black lives and queer and genderqueer lives and Jewish lives.

These times call for frightening boldness, terrifying audacity. Scary. It means we stick our neck out, call attention to ourselves, make trouble, get in trouble. (Good Trouble, rest in power Representative Lewis.) Maybe it means we risk the dogs and the water hoses, risk arrest, risk our surplus, our stockpile, risk getting on bad terms with the bosses, risk upsetting the family at dinner. It means we will and must say unpopular things and be criticized sometimes and unthanked, sometimes unthanked by the people we think we’re supporting, sometimes criticized by those folks we thought we were helping. That’s hard. That’s hard, take a breath; that may be its own kind of discipleship. And all this is legit scary because we know that every disciple of no-quotation marks Jesus died a martyr. It’s scary because we’re told again and again throughout the gospels to take up our own cross and follow. It wasn’t done once and for all for us, no matter what we were told; he was showing us the way. He was showing us the way. So maybe that’s where the guy in the field disappeared to; maybe that raptured women grinding meal got raptured to taking up her cross. Maybe that’s what we’re heading toward.

And that feels scary. But if we aren’t scared already, then we haven’t been paying attention.

I always feel awkward trying to pawn this off to folks as good news. Jesus bids you come and die! Happy day! That’s weird. That’s a hard sell. And it is good news. It is *the good news, no matter what we’ve been told. And it’s what we do, what we’re supposed to do, here, everywhere. It’s what we create community for, how we come together, and for whom. This is our reason for being, going at least back to the Mark gospel, probably more; it’s our bread and butter. Like breathing in. Like marrying and planting and grinding meal. Like life; like the kitchen table. I don’t know that it will ever stop being scary; but I do know that it’s the best and most good news we are.

Perhaps the World Ends Here…
Wars have begun and ended at this table
It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror
A place to celebrate the terrible victory
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite. (from Joy Harjo)

Peace.