2 Timothy 2:8-15
Mark 13: 24-37
This Sunday we are ending our church’s Pick Your Own Sermon series with a sermon about the “End Times.” Quite ironic really, but truth be told, I was supposed to preach on this topic last week but the worship service was cancelled. First came an earthquake up and down the East Coast earlier, then came the threat of hurricane Irene. It made me wonder if these cataclysmic events were a mere coincidence or if the sermon that I was supposed to preach, “The End of the World?? What's up with all those Billboards?” was part of the signs of the apocalypse. This week I am supposed to preach about why we take the Bible seriously and not literally and so I am combining these two sermon topics by studying literalism and the Book of Revelation.
The book of Revelation has been “captured” by the end-of-the-world folks, who read John’s vision as part of a biblical blueprint for the final days of life on earth, which are understood by to be close at hand. “According to one national poll, 62 % of Americans (not just American Christians mind you) have ‘no doubts’ that Jesus will come again. Another poll reports that one-third believe the world will end soon.”[i] Books such as The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey and the popular Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins fly off the bookstore shelves because they claim to be able predict the end of the world through a literal reading of the Bible.
Recently, Family Radio president Howard Camp used passages from the Bible coupled with mathematical calculations to proclaim May 21st, 2011 as the veritable Day of Judgment. As we all know now Howard Camp was wrong. He now claims he miscalculated and has changed it to October 21, 2011. But how can Howard Camp and others like him make such predictions. As we heard Jesus say in the gospel this morning, “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Mark 13:32)
The majority of mainline Christians are reluctant to acknowledge the troubling text of the Book of Revelation, considering the imagery of this text to be too bizarre and surreal. We don’t like to recognize the four horses of the apocalypse, the harlot of Babylon
The interpretation of the Bible, the Book of Revelation being one of the most controversial texts of interpretation is one of the things that divide the Christian Church. We are all passionate about the Bible because as biblical scholar Marcus Borg states, “The Bible has been foundational for Christianity for many centuries. How one sees the Bible and how one sees Christianity go hand in hand.”[ii] On one side of the divide are those who believe that the Bible is the inerrant and infallible word of God and thus the Bible has ultimate authority and truth. For these folks allowing any non-literal translation of the Bible opens the door to evading the Bible’s authority and watering down the word of God.[iii] Then there are those who read the Bible as a human product of two ancient communities - the Old Testament coming from the ancient Israelites and the New Testament coming from the early Christian communities.[iv] Reading the Bible through this lens does not deny the inspiration of God in the scriptures, but rather it recognizes that God’s inspiration comes through human minds and hands. That even as the authors work in concert with the Holy Spirit, they are still influenced by their culture, their life experiences and their worldviews.
Looking at the Bible as a whole, we see that the stories of the Bible are trying to answer questions which center upon God’s relationship to humankind. Questions such as: How and why did God create us? Why is life a struggle? Why does evil exist? How does God interact with us? How are we to interact with God? What happens to us when we die? Using the knowledge that they had in their time and place, the authors of the Bible attempted to answer these questions. In his book Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally Marcus Borg states, “I see the Bible as a human response to God. Rather than seeing God as scripture’s ultimate author, I see the Bible as the response of these two ancient communities to their experiences of God. As such, it contains their stories of God, their perceptions of God’s character and will, their prayers to and praise of God, their perceptions of the human condition and the paths of deliverance, their religious and ethical practices their understanding of what faithfulness to God involves. As a product of these two communities, the Bible thus tells us about how they saw things, not about how God sees things.”[v]
Does this make the scriptures irrelevant to us, absolutely not! The Bible is relevant to our Christian faith because it shows us that God is real and knowable, shows us how our lives can be made whole by living in right relationship with God and God’s creation and proves to us that God is a God of justice and compassion. As Borg puts it, “God cares about suffering, and the single greatest source of unnecessary human misery is unjust and oppressive cultural systems.”[vi] Knowing this we realize that the Book of Revelation was not written as a predictor of the end times but was written as a protest against the oppressive cultural system of the Roman Empire .
Many believe that John of Patmos wrote the book of Revelation in the last days of Emperor Domitian 95 years after Jesus’ life and ministry on earth. History tells us that the Roman Empire dominated the world through a combination of power, wealth, seduction, intimidation and violence. A small elite class controlled all the production of wealth, resources and land in their own interests and declared the order they imposed to be the will of God.[vii] The Emperors of Rome were deified as gods and the people that they ruled were expected to worship them as such. The Book of Revelation was written to stand over and against the supremacy of the Roman Empire by stating that there is only one God and that one day God will make things right on earth. Some note that John was not giving his readers a fantasy of the future, but rather he uses metaphors to recognize the struggle of his time and give his readers a portrait of life as God intends for all to live. It is an expression of the human longing for God to heal the world from the harm done to it through the human sinfulness of domination and greed. In the midst of loss and tears John preaches the promise of a new thing, a new heaven and a new earth, a new Jerusalem. He unveils for all who hear his message “worship God alone and become the people of freedom and joy that God has been calling throughout history.”[viii]
Knowing this about the Book of Revelation we can apply it to our time and place. It becomes a text of hope for those who are oppressed by our modern day empires and it serves to keep domineering nations on notice that ultimately God is in charge and God will make things right.
So how do we determine what to take seriously in the Bible, hear the words of Paul to his protégé Timothy. “Remember Jesus, Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—That is my gospel… Remind them [your congregation] of this, and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening.” (2 Timothy 2:8, 14) We are to remember that Jesus life and ministry is our bottom line as Christians. We are to remember how Jesus preached and lived the good news of God’s grace freely given to all. We are remember these words that Jesus preached about the gospel, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind and .you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22: 37-40) That my brothers and sisters in Christ is what we need to take seriously! May it be so. Amen!
[i]Borg, Marcus J. Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally. (San Francisco : Harper San Francisco
[ii] Ibid., 11
[iii] Ibid., 4
[iv] Ibid.,
[v] Ibid., 23
[vi] Ibid., 300
[vii] Ibid., 286
[viii] Wes Howard-Brook, “Living in New Jerusalem, the Bibles celebratory vision of what the church is to be.” Seasons of the Spirit Congregational Life Lent, Easter RCL Year C (2007), 114Ibid., 114.
1 comment:
I like it!
How has the whole series gone over? I like this idea and may try it sometime.
If I get a chance.
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