This is week two of our series titled Yours, Truly. It’s an invitation of sorts, to all of us, to lean in. When winds are strong, you have to lean against them harder to press on. Just like that, we’ve come upon times now when we have to lean in harder than ever.
Last week, when C preached, she made space for our various reactions in the aftermath of the U.S. election results. They predict greater pain and marginalization for vulnerable people – for people to come, for all of creation.
And last week, on my own, I read the lectionary selections of scripture for that Sunday. (If the word “lectionary” is new to you, it’s basically a calendar of scripture readings from different parts of both testaments, the gospels, and the psalms. The hope is that if you preach the lectionary, then you can’t just coast on the scripture you find comforting; you’ll have to confront the tough stuff, too, or the parts you don’t understand.)
Anyway, I read the lectionary selections for last Sunday and thought, “This is so relevant. This is what we’re dealing with as a nation right now!” And then I read this week’s lectionary in preparation for today’s message, and I thought, “Wow, again, this is right on topic.” What are the chances?!
But the reason the lectionary selections have been so resonant to me these last two weeks is that we find ourselves thrust upon times like those described in scripture. Much of the first and second testaments are apocalyptic literature. And we find ourselves now in apocalyptic times.
Yes, you did hear that here. At HopeGateWay. Weird, right?
What we’re facing now is apocalypse.
By “apocalypse” I don’t mean “run for the hills” or “turn and face the meteor.” I mean that it’s the end of one kind of world and the start of another. The world ends often. And is often remade. On one hand, there is that. The indigenous peoples of the Americas, for example, have a lot to teach us about the end of the world because they’ve been there.
But on the other hand, this is also a precipice of change our generations may not have seen before.
And it’s also an apocalypse in the Greek sense, the word’s original meaning, which is that it’s a time that reveals something about us.
About six centuries before Jesus was born, the Israelites experienced a period of captivity. You might hear it referred to as the Babylonian captivity or the Babylonian exile. Much of the Jewish population was deported, and the holy city of Jerusalem was destroyed. With this upheaval of community and life came a loss of identity and a sense of mass moral injury – the notion that something that went against all their morals had occurred.
From this period came an immense amount of apocalyptic literature. Much of the Bible, both testaments and the psalms – are an account of people living through the end of their world.
The lectionary readings for today contain two passages from 1 Samuel, which is an account of apocalypse. (And I would’ve read both, and I threatened to S and P that I might reference all six of the lectionary passages, on top of a few stories I wanted to tell, but they said no because we have an annual meeting and a potluck following the service.)
But really, it’s incredible how relevant the Bible becomes when we’re in a time of widespread upheaval.
* * *
Today, we’re going to read a snippet from a letter to the Hebrews, which was written not too long after Jesus was murdered. People don’t know who wrote it, but it was written to people who were facing persecution. They were thinking about abandoning the way of Jesus and fleeing to safety.
The author of this letter wrote to say, “Hold on tight. Things are really rough right now, but hear this! They’re going to get even worse! …before they get any better.”
And, spoiler alert: they do get worse! They get a lot worse.
Not long after this letter is written, Rome destroys Jerusalem. The city falls a second time… And then, soon after that, the Roman emperor, Nero, starts killing Christians. (Yes, that’s the guy who famously played the fiddle while Rome burned, or so the story goes).
I don’t know about you, but sometimes when history gets presented as facts and dates, my mind glosses over the fact that these were the homes of real people who had hobbies and families and dreams, and who lived all their lives in communities that suddenly, and violently, didn’t exist anymore. So I just want to take a moment to pause and remember that.
Anyway, that’s the backdrop I want us to keep in mind as we read a bit of that letter. Here’s Hebrews 10:23-25 real quick:
Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
This past week, a colleague of mine said he thought that people had murdered moral decency. And for a while I agreed. It seemed like people in the public eye and in politics could hardly be self-governed by any ethical standards. We keep thinking we’ve hit rock bottom, only to find another level underneath.
But as a species, we’ve been here before. And as a species, we’ve also, all the time, been the best version of ourselves, too.
In the years leading up to today, and in the four years to come, we will likely witness increasingly cruel and appalling behavior, rhetoric, and policy.
When this happens, our temptation will be to move in the direction of that downward slump – maybe in the hopes of compromise, or maybe out of our own exhaustion. The bottom floor keeps lowering, and we’ll be tempted to lower the moral status quo down with it.
The author of Hebrews exhorts us today, as they did then: encourage one another all the more as you see the Day approaching.
The word “moral” might give you the heebie jeebies – especially if you’re here healing from a different kind of Christianity. But I challenge us to claim the moral heritage of humanity and the moral example of Jesus.
Moral strength doesn’t come from a well-articulated list of values. It’s the sum of our actions, commitments, and investments. A map of where we’d planted the treasures of our hearts. Who we are is revealed by how we live our lives – what we do with the gifts and limitations we have.
* * *
As a kid, I spent a lot of time learning about what to do in case of natural disasters that’ll probably never happen to me. (Quicksand, for example. I’ve actually experienced quicksand once. And it wasn’t as big of a problem as I thought it would be.)
Avalanches were another one. What do you do if you find yourself bowled over in the snow and you can’t tell up from down, so you don’t know in which direction to dig? People can get fatigued and they can die trying to dig themselves out of an avalanche in the wrong direction.
The circumstances we find ourselves in were manufactured to disorient us.
But that hardly means that every way is an equally valid direction. There’s still an up. There’s still a down. There’s still love. And there’s still apathy.
The German Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt said once in an interview about Nazism:
“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer
And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”
When Hannah Arendt wrote her most popular piece – the coverage of the trial of a Nazi officer, she depicted him not as a monster but as an ordinary person afflicted with loneliness and hopelessly lost in a poisonous ideology.
The Bard College Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities said this book:
“Eichmann participated in the greatest act of evil in world history because of his inability to think critically about his fidelity to a Nazi ideology that he clung to as a source of significance in a lonely and alienating world. Such thoughtless ideological zealotry is, Arendt concludes, the face of evil in the modern world.”
So, how you find your way out of the snow after an avalanche is to spit. A lot. And soon, you’ll start feeling the snow melt in a trickle toward the ground. And when you do, you start digging – up in the opposite direction. You dig against the current of least resistance. You dig against the easy flow to come up for air.
* * *
In a time when it seems like we’ve been gutted of moral fortitude as a society – when no amount of hateful rhetoric or harmful behavior seems to dim the popularity of our public figures, remember:
This may seem like uncharted territory. An apocalypse may be happening now. But apocalypse has happened before. And Jesus showed us the way and instructed us.
Here’s one of the places where I wanted to tell a story, but there’s no time. But I think you all have stories of your own. So, for a second, if you’d like, close your eyes. And think of a time when someone’s joy provoked your joy. Or someone’s compassion provoked your compassion.
Love provokes love. Joy provokes joy. Generosity provokes generosity. And mercy provokes mercy.And so the author of the letter to the Hebrews encourages us as they encouraged the Israelites living at the end of one world:
Provoke one another. Dare one another. Your example matters.
Collectively – with the sum of our power greater than their parts, our example matters.
Today, you’re going to get a letter from S. It’s an invitation. In the letter, she says:
What can we do at times like this? We can invest in community. We can support communities that are actively engaging in the work of justice, kindness, and compassion. We can find allies, create networks, and commit ourselves to be part of the greater work of resistance to violence, oppression, and discrimination.
What we have to steward is what we choose to pool together. Our time, our attention, our financial resources, allyship, presence, prayer, and more.
You all who tended this space yesterday to honor the gifts of this building and land…
- You who pray,
- who attend Laundry Love,
- who scheme about networks of aid…
- you who help us move,
- who give life-affirming hugs,
- who march and write letters
- and watch one another’s children,
- who feed us
- and reach deep into your pockets
- and write cards
- and drive trucks
- and speak truth to power,
- who lead us in song
- and stir us to action,
- and make hot coffee to warm our neighbors,
- and you who meet us online each week from afar,
- and you who make that connection possible,
- and you who nudge us toward the Holy Spirit in a thousand ways and languages of love…
All this is the work of the people of God: the people who provoke one another to good!
In the midst of apocalypse – and I believe we are facing apocalypse now – there is a lot being revealed. Our actions will reveal to us what our moral fortitude is, what it is we believe, and who it is we are.
In the way that Jesus was for us – in the way that he gave us the gift of himself, we are invited to hold out our arms for our neighbor, for this community of open arms, and say: “I am yours, truly.”
Ophelia Hu Kinney 
Leave a comment