November | 2019 | Life and Faith

End of World

Our lives consist of many moments when ordinary life and the sacred connect.

Many Christians live their lives awaiting the return of Jesus Christ. We see nations rising against nations. We hear about earthquakes and famines and fatal illnesses and disease. This morning, I learned that the government of China has begun to arrest Muslims and remove them from society. We hear about children shooting each other in our schools. We see world leaders rattling their sabers in an effort in intimidate each other. I’ve even noticed that every time something happens, like a “Blood Moon,” people start saying that this is yet another “sign” that the End is near. And it all simply wears me out….

John the Baptizer proclaimed that the Kingdom of God is near to us. Reza Aslan, who wrote the book Zealot got it right when he said that the message of John the Baptizer was carried forward by a much more famous man named Jesus. In a world that’s filled with nations rising against nations, the Kingdom of God is near. In a world filled with bad news about earthquakes, famines, diseases and school shootings, the Kingdom of God is near. When your life is filled with abundant blessings, the Kingdom of God is near. And, the Kingdom of God is near when you climb out of bed, when you kiss someone that you love, when you’re afraid that you’re going to flunk a test, or when you lose someone who was dear to you.

Our lives consist of many moments when ordinary life and the sacred connect.

What would life look like if, instead of waiting around for Jesus to return, we went out into the world to proclaim that the Kingdom of God is near? Maybe, realizing that God journeys with us each day, we could bear witness to the fact that the Kingdom of God is near by buying a child, whose family is struggling to make ends meet, a new winter coat – or maybe, we could proclaim that the Kingdom of God is near by visiting people and sending them encouraging messages when life is hard? Maybe we could proclaim that the Kingdom of God is near by not running away and hiding from people when we know that they need our help now more than ever? Maybe we could try harder to speak-out on behalf of people in our world who aren’t being heard by people who look at them as nothing more than a drain on society? Maybe, especially at the holidays approach, we could tell other people that the Kingdom of God is near by carrying light and love into dark places where people are grieving, fighting diseases, trying to escape from abusive relationships or fighting a battle with some kind of substance that’s taken over their lives?

One of the most important lessons that I’ve learned in my journey of faith is that every moment that I live is a “holy moment” when the Kingdom of God is near. And in those “holy moments,” God prepares me to go out into the world and tell other people about God’s love and to remind them that the Kingdom of God is near in every moment of their lives, too.

You see, it doesn’t really matter what day, or month, or year Jesus returns. It doesn’t matter if the End arrives before I have a chance to post this message, or if the End comes long after I’m dead and buried.

What matters is that I have the wonderful opportunity to live a life that’s full of times when God is near. What matters is that, in the “holy moments” when the Kingdom of God is near to me, God always points me back to people who believe that things are so bad in their lives that the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.

When we realize that the Kingdom of God is near and that each moment of our lives is a “sacred time” when God is close to us, our walk of faith becomes more about learning to live faithfully in a world that can be pretty scary, rather than about waiting for some Day when Jesus will return to fix everything. When we realize that our lives are filled with “sacred moments” when the Kingdom of God is near, we have something to share with people – when their lives are going well and when their lives are falling apart.

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Funeral Pic

It’s always difficult to face the death of people that we’ve loved.

God brings special people into our lives because God knows that it’s not good for us to travel through life alone (Genesis 2:18). We share our lives with a wide variety of other people: parents and grandparents, perhaps siblings and a spouse, teachers and friends, perhaps a pastor or someone at the place where we worship. And our lives are enriched by relationships, and we even learn about life from other people.

But, sooner or later, we need to say, “Goodbye.”

Death can come suddenly, or it can come after a long illness. We, sometimes, see people trying to make everything “right” with their friends and family members before they die; but, sometimes, people die leaving unresolved conflicts and people who have been hurt and alienated behind. But, no matter what the circumstances, death is always hard and one of the things we often do is wrap people in thick layers of sentimentality that leaves us believing (or wanting to believe) that they were more perfect than they really were.

I’ve heard people say things like, “Nobody could ever bake an apple pie like Grandma did,” but people don’t want to talk about the fact that Grandma’s coffee almost always tasted burnt. We want to remember “Mom” as a lady who did wonderful things for other people, but we don’t like to talk about the fact that Mom loved to argue with others so much that, when nobody else was around, she’s stand in front of a mirror and argue with herself.

In Psalm 149, the writer speaks about something called a “two-edged sword.” Two-edged swords are forged to pierce armor. Two-edged swords are forged to puncture and pierce through something that is wrapped around people in order to protect them. And, I think that’s a helpful image to remember when we honor and memorialize those that we have loved who have died on a day like All Saints Day.

We, sometimes, wrap people in a thick layer of sentimentality when they die. When we are remembering those who have died, we might want to remember them as people who were somehow bigger than they actually were. And that can leave us thinking that we are somehow “less.” The thick armor of sentimentality that we wrap around people who have died can cause us to forget that their lives were a mixture of both bad and good, great strengths and character flaws just like our lives are marked with those very same things today.

But, what would happen if we allowed a “two-edged sword” to pierce through the thick layer of sentimentality that we wrap around those who have died?

Perhaps, we could more authentically celebrate the goodness in the lives of people who have died while remembering that they were no more perfect than we are. Perhaps, we could more clearly see that, in every Age, God’s people have displayed a rather odd mixture of both good and bad – a bold reminder that we all live our lives as saints and sinners at the same time. Perhaps, we could more honestly admit that people who have died had a few quirks and flaws; and, yet, God worked in their lives anyways. And, in that realization, we could begin to more easily understand that God is working in our lives to do good things – even though we sometimes live our lives as our own worst critic.

God has done wonderful things in the lives of those who have gone before us who now rest in the arms of the God who has promised us the gift of Eternity. And yet, if we allow the “two-edged sword” of God’s Word to pierce the “armor of sentimentality” that we all too often wrap around those who have died, we can see them in a much more authentic way. And, when we do that, we’ll find it easier to understand that those who have died were not any more qualified to have God work in their lives than we are.

And that’s a word of Good News, isn’t it?

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