Happy Martin Luther King Jr. weekend.
I’m moved to preach to you this morning; Apocalypse Now
In our neighborhood, there are a few households that all belong to the same congregation of Jehovah’s witnesses.
They are some of the kindest people on our street.
When we go walking around our neighborhood, they are often outside talking to one another or taking care of their lawns.
I can almost always count on my neighbor Ron to be outside and ready for a conversation, and Randy to smile and wave from his porch or while riding his bike.
Now, if you know anything about Jehovah’s witnesses, besides saying the Hebrew term Adonai Yireh as Jehovah Jireh, and having a singular focus on God’s literal name,
One of the most important pieces of their theology is the apocalyptic end of the world being imminent; it’s going to happen any day now.
I can remember having a conversation with Ron near the beginnig of Covid, when people were doing their daily walks in the middle of the street and talking to each other from 100 feet apart;
And I can remember Ron, calling out to me with a smile, “it’s happening, Chris, it’s like the days of Noah.”
And I called back, “I sure hope it’s more like the days of Jonah and God changes God’s mind about Ninevah.”
We both laughed as he finished his walk back home and I sat on the porch playing my ukulele.
This idea that the world is imminently coming to an end is not new.
And, it’s not only the Jehovah’s witnesses that believe that it is coming soon.
During my normal week, I come into the church for a couple of hours, but I spend most of my time out in the community.
I sit in the Cream and Sugar coffee shop quite often and work on my dissertation, or run to different community meetings.
And it feels like I hear lots of people talking about apocalypse.
I wonder if you’ve had similar experiences.
So many people are convinced that the apocalypse is coming, and it’s coming now.
Honestly, I don’t blame them, Tik Tok just went offline, the world must be ending.
And, if that doesn’t convince you, think about tomorrow; January 20th 2025 will witness millions of people marching in remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr. and everything that he stood for.
It will also witness the swearing into office of a new/old president for our country.
The juxtaposition of these two things is inescapable; like the juxtaposition of January 6th and the Feast of the Epiphany.
No wonder why so many people are convinced that we are at the point of Apocalypse, now.
One of the things that I love - and this will not surprise you – is when we have two words in English for the same thing.
This happens quite a lot in English, because our language is a remix, a mash-up of so many different languages.
We have Latin words, Greek words, German words, Old English (which is a mix of Anglo-Saxon languages), Gaelic words, African words, and Arabic words.
You get my point.
When we have these types of words in English, there’s something interesting that happens.
Eventhough on their surface the two words would seem to have the same meaning, we use them differently.
The classic example for churchy folks is Ghost and Spirit.
Ghost comes from the German word Geist,
Spirit from the Latin word Spiritus.
Though many of us grew up saying Holy Ghost, or singing, “nothing but the Holy Ghost... the Holy Ghost.”
I would guess that if we sat and thought about these words, we would feel a difference in the way that we understand them and what their connotations are.
One of my favorite words like this is adumbration.
It comes from Latin. The “ad” part means “toward,” and the umber part is related to our word umbrella, it means “shadow.”
And so the germanic word that is its equivalent is… foreshadow.
And we know, foreshadowing is used to talk about those times in a story, when the author shows you something that will be significant later in the story.
Adumbration is basically the same, but is usually more specific and pertains to objects shown to you that will become significant later.
Like the murder weapon in an Agatha Christie novel, or Joseph’s coat at the end of Genesis, which his father Jacob gives him and is then used to convince Jacob that Joseph was killed by a lion rather than being sold into slavery by his brothers.
Foreshadowing and adumbration are the beginning of a process that ends with a revelation; the unmasking of the murderer, the trick that means Jacob doesn’t go looking for his son, and Joseph ends up in Egypt.
In biblical terms, prophecy operates as a type of foreshadowing.
You may remember a few years ago, when we did our Lizzo themed sermon series “all the rumors are true;”
Where we looked at how the early Christian church viewed the prophecies about the Messiah and connected them to Jesus’ life and ministry.
As Christians, when we read the prophet Isaiah saying, “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I shall not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch.”
We look at those references to shining and burning like a torch and we see in it the possibility that Jesus’ Epiphany (with the star of Bethlehem) and the Holy Spirit’s Pentecost (with its tongues of fire) can be seen as the culmination of this vindication and salvation that God promised through Isaiah.
The idea that Isaiah was foreshadowing the coming of our Christ.
Now, if foreshadowing and adumbration are the beginning of the process, I would suggest that the end of the process is apocalypse.
Keeping with the themes of Epiphany and Pentecost; When we look at the Gospel of John this morning, I think it is helpful to have these ideas of foreshadowing and apocalypse in mind, when we look at the wedding feast at Cana.
It is Jesus’ first miracle, which also makes it the thematic bookend for the end of Jesus’ story.
The turning of water into wine is not just a party trick that shows Jesus’ power to do miracles.
This episode has long been seen as a metaphor for the way that Jesus changes our inner nature.
We humans are all clay vessels; “from dust you were created and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19)
Jesus’ miracle is that he takes the water and turns it into spirit.
And just like there are varieties of wines, each of us – transformed by the one Spirit – become a vintage of the best blessed wine, when we allow the Spirit to enter in;
When we practice our spiritual gifts as the Apostle Paul admonishes the Corinthians to do.
In this way, the apocalypse of turning of water into wine foreshadows another major apocalypse in our New Testament; the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, when the disciples become the first to receive Isaiah’s “salvation like a burning torch.”
They become the sign and culmination of Jesus changing our inner nature from water into wine, from human spirit to Holy Spirit.
Now, I have a question.
Does it sound weird to use the word apocalypse this way?
Keeping with our theme of word pairs from different languages that come into English, I can now reveal to you the Latin word that is related to the Greek word apocalypse.
The word, of course, is Revelation; which I’ve already adumbrated a few times in this sermon.
Calling Epiphany and Pentecost apocalypses sounds weird, because we’re so used to thinking of THE apocalypse as the end of the world.
What I want to say to you today is that an apocalypse is a revelation. It became associated with the “end of days,” because we have the expectation that Jesus will be revealed to us on the last day.
But Jesus isn’t just sitting around waiting for the end.
Jesus changed the water into wine, Jesus imbues us with the Holy Spirit, because Jesus wants our lives to be filled with the possibility of apocalypse now; with revelations of His movements in us and through us every day.
Apocalypse is the culmination of what we have been preparing ourselves for; it is Epiphany when all of the pieces begin to fit together and we see the world more clearly.
I tell you this, because just like the angels that have appeared to our ancestors, I want to say to you on this Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, “Be not afraid!”
Apocalypse is nothing to fear.
So many of our neighbors are convinced of an apocalypse now, because the world has made us fear for the future; we sometimes don’t see how things can get any better.
You’re not alone.
Countless generations of our ancestors have felt this kind of uncertainty.
I would suggest that every generation does.
I would also suggest that every generation experiences an apocalypse as God continues to reveal God’s plan for salvation.
We just need to look for the signs that God is still here;
That prisoners can be set free as is happening right now in Israel; that wars can cease as is happening for the people of Gaza; that slavery can end; “that justice can roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
Fear causes us to limit our vision of what the future can hold, it gives us tunnel vision, where we only care about what is our own, because we are in survival mode.
Remember that faith doesn’t always have all of the answers at the beginning.
In our Scriptures, faith calls us to look at what is being foreshadowed, so that we can be prepared for what will be revealed without fear.
Or as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. put it, “Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."
I don’t know what the future holds for us in these next few years.
What I do know is that if we face it with fear and resignation, rather than the realization of our liberation, then we will miss our revelation;
our Apocalypse now.
In times like this, as she has throughout all generations, the Spirit is calling.
“Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed for I am your God, I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.”
This weekend, this month, this year, this life.
May you practice a faith not watered-down by fear, but enlivened by new wine.
May you use the gifts that the Spirit has given you - in all of their varieties – to make a difference, when others say there is no hope.
And, may you feel that blessed assurance that no matter what, God is - and always has been - in control of our apocalypses, now.
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