Apocalyptic as Abstract Thinking about the Future

1 Advent A      November 27, 2016
Is. 2:1-5      Psalms 122
Rom. 13:8-14   Matt. 24:37-44

Lectionary Link

           Happy New Year!  Happy Christian New Year on this first Sunday of Advent.  Advent refers to coming!  Advent is a time for using the language of the future to inspire our lives in the present time.

The Bible is full of language about what is coming.  It is a book of futurism.  But what do we know about the future?  Future is only a function of the present because we can only speak about the future in the present.  So, language about the future is meant to affect our lives right now.

We live by a beckoning toward what is not yet.  And so, we like to anticipate what is not yet.  In our lives, we live by what we call probable outcomes.  In our commonsense lives, we observe what we might call statistical probability.  We know that there are likely predictive outcomes for most things in life.  In fact, we don’t even think about most predictive outcomes.  We have memorized so many redundancies that we take for granted most predictive outcomes.  In fact, when the usual outcome does not happen, then it stands out as unique.

In our commonsense moral lives, we assume what is natural and normal is goodness and freedom from pain.  We assume that fairness should govern our lives.   And when our commonsense universe of goodness, justice and freedom from pain is not the rule of the day, the moral order of the entire world seems to be upset.  When the moral order seems to be upset in our lives and  in societies at large, we call this a crisis.

      During crises, leaders are needed.  Inspiration is needed to help comfort the people in crisis and to help visualize potential future end of the crises.

       Much of biblical literature was written during times of crises when the moral order of goodness and freedom from pain was upset for a significant group of people of faith.  Prophets and teachers arose in these communities of faith to try to comfort people in pain and suffering.  Prophets came to inspire by presenting a visualization of a future beyond the current situation of pain.

         Advent is a season of a future beyond the current pain of life.  Advent is a season of visualizing a better world to inform the world now living with the imperfect practice of justice and love.

In the Bible, such literature is called “apocalyptic” discourse and it is a language of the future.  We read about language of the future in the times of biblical writers, but if the language of the future events written down by writers of the Bible has not resulted in those events actually occurring, what does this tell about apocalyptic and future language?  It tells us that the language functioned to comfort the people who were experiencing a time of crisis in their lives when the commonsense moral order of the world seemed to be upset for a significant number of people of faith.

We’ve read a variety of apocalyptic language today from our appointed Bible readings.  Some apocalyptic language is utopian language.  The prophet Isaiah wrote about perfect arbitration for all the nations of the earth, so perfect that the entire military industrial complex will be converted to agricultural enterprise.  The swords will be beaten into plowshares.  War will not be studied any longer.  How’s that for a rosy future?  How many of you believe such a future awaits us in our lifetimes?  The Psalmist wrote about an idealized Jerusalem and yet requests for prayers for the peace of Jerusalem.  Jerusalem, the city of peace, has been anything but that for most of the years of its history.  St. Paul wrote even though the salvation of Christ has arrived, there is some more salvation which was soon to come.  Yes, people knew certain degree of spiritual health, and yet there was still significant more to come.  The Gospels have writing within them which include language of futurism, language of the apocalyptic.  Sometimes the early Christians were living in peace and comfort and during those times, it seemed as those God’s kingdom had arrived as the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives. But sometimes the early Christians went through times of suffering and persecution and were even subject to martyrdom.  During these times the oracle of Christ occurred within their communities to comfort them to indicate an intervention to end the time suffering.  The metaphors and images of the apocalyptic were used to proclaim that suffering, would at some point have an end.  So, we have the futurism that people often call the rapture, the theme of either being left behind or taken.

One can see in apocalyptic writing various language used for motivation and for comfort.  Behavioral psychologists refer to at least two forms of stimulus response in learning behaviors, positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement.  And probably most of us would like to think that we respond best to positive reinforcement.  For our apocalyptic language we probably prefer the Walt Disney approach to a future utopian world even though we know it is a serious abstraction from what is actual in the world.  Utopian apocalyptic discourse is the positive reinforcement of a war-free world.

If we’re honest, sometimes it is only the fear of punishment or future harm which influences us to learn better behaviors.  We don’t like to admit that discourses about what we fear can motivate us.  But they do.  And so in the apocalyptic genre we have language of negative reinforcement.  If you know that your house might be broken into and robbed or injury come to you, what would you do?  You prepare with an alarm system or a security guard.  The possibility of bad things happening influences how we behave now.  The apocalyptic discourse of the Bible includes the language of negative reinforcement.

Biblical apocalyptic language used language of the future.  We are now living in a future many years after the language of the  apocalyptic was used in the Bible.  And that future has not occurred.  So, what does that tell us about apocalyptic futurism?  It tells us that apocalyptic language is an abstraction from the hard reality of life.  Apocalyptic language presents us with rather stark contrasts with what is happening in actual life and for what purposes?

It is for the purpose of survival that such visions of hope are proclaimed  to us to enable us to live by faith now, no matter what happens.  As much as we may want to wish the free conditions of life to permit only good and positive things to happen, we know that this is not true to life.

We know that to varying degrees good and ill are spread unevenly across the years of our lives and across the world even now.   We know it is always the best of times and the worst of times somewhere and somehow.

You and I need to have actuarial ability to live with the free conditions of time.  So did the people for whom the words of the Bible were originally written.  The reason that Bible has inspired relevance for us today is that we like people of all time live under the conditions of everything that can possibly happen to us.

We need a variety of instruction and teaching about the future to help us live our lives in a state of preparation for what is yet to come.

What is coming to your life?  What Advent of God is coming to your life?  What Advent of God is coming to your family?  To our parish?  To our state, country and world?  The apocalyptic language teaches us the abstract thinking of probability thinking so that we might be both comforted and motivated to live with purposeful faith in our lives today.

The Advent of Christ is always the future beckoning to us.  Let us live toward the Advent Christ.  In the most relevant way, the Advent of Christ for each of us is surpassing oneself in excellence in a future state.   The future Phil in different conditions of time beckons the current Phil in the current conditions of this time and place.   Let each of us look to surpass ourselves in excellence as we know the motivational relevance of the continuous Advent of Christ in our lives today.  Amen.