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“Endurance” 

Daniel 12:1-13

Hebrews 10:31-39

Mark 13:14-23 

November 16, 2003

The Church of the Redeemer

Chestnut Hill, MA

Continuing the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill’s long and proud tradition of progressive political activism, both members of your clergy boarded a bus Wednesday morning bound for an interfaith environmental demonstration in NYC.  The occasion was the anniversary of the signing of the Kyoto accords on global warming – a treaty that the United States signed but never ratified.  We marched carrying banners through the streets of Manhattan and then gathered across from the United Nations for a service of repentance and renewal.  We joined in chanting led by a group of Buddhist monks who had walked from the Peace Pagoda in western Massachusetts.  We joined in prayers led by rabbis, Unitarian ministers and Episcopal clergy, including our own suffragan bishop, the Rt. Rev. Bud Cederholm. 

We also heard an address by Enele Sopoago, ambassador to the UN from Tovalu, a small island nation in the South Pacific.  The highest point in Tovalu, we learned, stands three meters above sea level.  Rising sea levels due to global warming have already inundated several islands.  Sea levels are projected to rise 0.8 meters in the next ten years.  Tovalu is a tiny nation with a tiny population.  They are not responsible for the greenhouse gases that are melting polar ice caps and causing the seas to rise.  But they have sent Ambassador Sopoago to the United Nations to see what can be done to save them from destruction. 

At the end of the service, members of our delegation dispersed to visit a number of UN missions to discuss global warming, and then we reconvened to share our experiences.  Visitors to the Maldives mission heard that an island culture thousands of years old could face extinction in our lifetime.  Visitors to the United States mission learned that our nation’s present administration rejects the Kyoto accords as being too costly to the economy.  The Bangladeshi mission told of a nation so vulnerable to poverty, disease and natural disaster that contemplation of the issue of global warming would be a luxury.  The British mission expressed hope that their ally the United States could be convinced to sign the Kyoto accords.  And one member of our group reported this conversation with a member of the French mission: 

“Many of us in the United States are turning off our lights when we leave the room and trying to drive less; what more can we do to stop global warming?” 

“I live in Paris,” she replied, “and I have been in NYC for just three months.  Americans do not strike me as a people who are turning their lights out when they leave the room.” 

It is difficult if not impossible to prove that carbon emissions are responsible for the melting of glaciers, the increasing incidence of extreme weather patterns, the incubation and epidemic spread of tropical diseases, etc., but dire predictions made by environmentalists can often sound remarkably similar to apocalyptic scenarios we hear in our scripture readings.  As the church year comes to an end, our lectionary turns to passages that speak of the end times. 

There are two things that I would like to note about the apocalyptic writings of the Old and New Testaments.  The first is that these writings are the spiritual cries of politically oppressed peoples.  Our reading from the prophet Daniel dates from a time when Judea was invaded and occupied by the Seleucid empire.  As a sign of their political and military domination, the invaders had desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem by offering pagan sacrifices in the Holy of Holies.  The prophet foretells the deliverance of God’s people by a direct act of God, a heavenly intervention.  The prophecy is meant to give hope to a people who might be tempted to despair; they are to persevere in faith, trusting in the coming day of God’s justice. 

In the same way the reading from Hebrews recalls a time when the early church was persecuted, subject to imprisonment and confiscation of property at the hands of the Roman Empire.  The writer of the letter encourages the faithful to endure despite their physical and material sufferings, promising that endurance will lead to salvation.  This is spiritual counsel given to a people suffering political oppression. 

The second thing to note about apocalyptic writings is that they both reveal and conceal.  The Greek word ‘apocalypse’ means the same as the Latin ‘revelation’; something that was hidden from sight is disclosed.  What is revealed is the imminence of God’s justice at a time when it seems to be absent:  God will act, God will save the righteous; God will punish the faithful.  What is kept hidden, however, is the timetable of God’s action.  “How long will it be?” the prophet Daniel asks the angel.  The answer comes as a riddle:  “a time, two times and half a time.”  Jesus himself -- when his disciples asked him, “When will these things take place?” -- discouraged their speculations.  Efforts to decode the riddles of riddles of timing only distract from the clear message of apocalyptic:  to endure suffering, to persevere in faith, to live life every moment as if God’s justice would dawn the next. 

What, then, is the message of apocalyptic for those of us who do not live under political oppression, who do not live under the threat of physical or material deprivation?  What do these writings have to say to people like us, people who make plans for their lives, who do not feel threatened with extinction by rising sea levels, who do not feel their lives overruled by powers beyond our control? 

If the powerless face the temptation of despair, then we face a different temptation: denial.  If the rising seas are not encroaching on my village, there is no problem.  If HIV/AIDS has not decimated my family, there is no problem.  If there are no armies walking the streets of my community, there is no problem.  If I am able to feed my family and educate my children, there is no problem. 

The apocalyptic writings shake us out of our complacency with the message that God’s justice may appear to delay but ultimately it will not be denied; God righteousness will be vindicated in the end.  In the face of this revelation we are called to a different kind of endurance, a different kind of perseverance in faith.  We are called to summon the moral courage to resist the anesthesia of good fortune; to pierce through the denial within us and around us.  We are called to see clearly that the encroachment of the seas around the islanders of Tovalu is not ‘their’ problem because there is no ‘them’; there is only us. 

When we break through the numbness and see the world as it is, we can be tempted to lose heart.  We can be paralyzed by a sense that the problems of the world are beyond our power to address:  What can I do to stop the rising of the seas?  Here again we are called to endurance and perseverance in faith – faith in a savior who shook the world, though he was born in a cattle stall.  Take courage, then, and know:  the salvation of the planet can begin with as humble an act as turning out the light when we leave the room. 

The Rev. Steven Bonsey

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