Malachi 3:1-14
Luke 3:1-6
You probably don’t need me to tell you the world is going to end on December 21st. At least, that’s what many people are saying, based on the fact that the ancient Mayan calendar ends with that day. The math is easy: the world was created August 11, 3114 BCE, and the calendar runs exactly 1.87 million days, so the last day is just two weeks away, December 21, 2012.
I learned all this last March when Andrea and I took a Carribean cruise to celebrate our anniversary and other blessings. It was our first time and we didn’t know what to expect… but we managed to enjoy ourselves! One of my favorite spots (besides the poolside lounge with an iced bucket of Corona) was Costa Maya, Mexico, on the Yucatan Peninsula. The Chacchoben Mayan ruins date back 1500 years or more, and on the bus from ship to site the guide told us about the Mayan calendar and the end of the world.
Surely some people will head for the hills or the mountain tops as they did the last time the end of the earth was predicted… and the time before that… and the time before that. They point to scriptures to support their belief the earth will end in an apocalypse – a cataclysm of wars and floods and earthquakes and famines, much as the New Testament book of Revelation tells it. In this age of climate change and financial market melt-downs, there’s a resurgence of such talk.
It’s always been so: throughout the biblical story people of faith watched for the day God would enter in and set things right. Today’s scripture tells us about two prophets – messengers who proclaimed the Word and will of God. From the Hebrew lesson, the author simply identified himself as mal’akhi meaning “my messenger.” An early biblical editor capitalized the word and turned it into a proper name. This messenger addressed the people of Israel around 450 years before the Christian era. After the exile in Babylon, the people had returned to their holy city of Jerusalem and built the second temple on Mount Zion.
This unknown prophet listened to the people complain bitterly that God is not just ‑‑ that the wicked prosper while the righteous struggle. He then said to the people: you have worn God out ‑‑ with poor offerings, with poor worship, with arrogance in your hearts. God’s pretty tired of y’all. Then the prophet bellowed: your salvation will feel like punishment, like a refiner’s fire that melts the gold and leaves the dross behind. God will send a messenger. Then God will send the savior. And: who can endure the day of his coming and who can stand when he appears?
Christian scripture tells us of one such messenger who came onto the stage shouting a similar message. John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, came to prepare the way for the Anointed One. He preached repentance and judgment. He told the people that God expected them to keep their promises. Echoing the ancient words of the Prophet Isaiah, he said “prepare the way of the Lord… every valley will be filled, every mountain made low, and all flesh will see it together.”
And for many generations Christians lived with the anxious hope that this was the time Jesus would return. They had to be ready for TEOLAWKI… t-e-o-l-a-w-k-i. I made it up – an acronym, from the first letters of “the end of life as we know it.”
The end of life as we know it may be bad news or good news depending on your life right now. As our nation faces the so-called “fiscal cliff” and leaders debate spending cuts, entitlements, and tax increases, it’s good news for some and bad news for others. As we look at riots in Egypt, a tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian Hamas, and resistance fighters in Syria, “the end of life as we know it” means very different things.
So what happens next, the day after the Mayan calendar ends; the day after the fiscal cliff, the day after I retire next June? The sun will still rise. We’ll get out of bed and prepare for the day. The world will go on.
And God will still be there – fiercely seeking the well-being of Creation. True, the final chapters of the Book of Genesis tell us God became disgusted with the Creation and sent the flood to wash away human sin. True as well, that God then made a solemn promise never again to destroy this Creation.
Don’t underestimate the tenacity of God. The Latin word tenax, means “to hold on tightly and persistently, not giving up or going away.” The French adapted it to “tendril” meaning a vine or root that grasps and wraps itself around another object.
This is the God who created humankind for wholeness, and called our ancestors into covenant, and wept when we wandered, and who brought us from slavery to Promised Land by way of the wilderness, who corrected us, and who forgave us.
Whatever else we see in the biblical story, surely we see the tenacity of God who just hasn’t let go, even now, even knowing how far we will run and how carefully we’ll hide. If you’ve been in worship very much you know that I come back to this particular attribute of God over and over: God is tenacious; God holds on. God has promised TEOLAWKI – “the end of life as we know it;” not threatening destruction, but offering redemption.
Many of us have times of feeling profoundly separated from God – times when we can’t acknowledge the possibility that God wants us even though our souls long to let go. But then by grace we pass through the anguish of the midnight of the soul and see again how God rejoices when we come with hungry and thirsty spirits, praying for an encounter with the holy. As St. Augustine said 1500 years ago, You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
We long for those encounters the ancient Celts called thin places – when the human and divine touch through the veil that usually separates heaven and earth. Do you have a place where you can go when you want to particularly near to God? Is there a church, a shrine, a cemetery, a place on the beach or the mountain top where you’re drawn in times of spiritual restlessness?
We visited many such places when we were last in Scotland in 2009. Heaven and earth came together there. There was the Church of the Holy Rude right next to Stirling Castle – an ancient stone sanctuary completed in 1414. The ruins of St. Andrew’s cathedral on the eastern shore are certainly such a place.
But most powerful by far was the expansive Kilmartin Glen in Argyleshire, where my Campbell ancestors lived 300-400 years ago. There are numerous stone circles and cairns that date from Bronze and Stone ages – perhaps 5,000 years ago. These monumental stones are precisely aligned so twice a year the sun streams through them – like the sights of a rifle – and illuminates an altar or burial chamber.
(Parenthetically, December 21, the last day of the Mayan Calendar, is Winter Solstice – the longest night and shortest day of the year when the sun seems to stand still before reversing its course)
And right near by is Dunadd, an ancient stone fortress where the first Scottish kings were crowned in the 5th century. Moving about these places we could still feel the mystery and spiritual energy of the Holy touching earth – truly a thin place.
Thin places aren’t only physical locations. There are certain moments in time when heaven touches our souls – moments when we’re open and receptive and may even feel a shiver down the spine that grabs our attention.
We try all sorts of ways to position ourselves for the inflowing of the spirit, when the human and divine can dwell together: certainly liturgy is a way for some, the crafting of words and symbols and movements that bring us, open-hearted, into God’s space. We can find the divine in silent prayer, in the broken bread and poured cup of the Lord’s Supper, in moments of intimacy, in service to others, and even in our suffering.
In this season scripture reminds us of both the reality of our shortcomings, and the relief of God’s grace. Every Advent calls us to prepare the way of the Lord ‑‑ in our individual lives, in our collective life as the Church, in our world as it groans under the weight of our own shortcomings.
All of scripture bears witness to the tenacity of God – the persistent, almost fierce, determination to hold us and heal us.
God doesn’t sit idly on high, watching us wander, waiting for us to make our way through the wilderness to come into that holy place. Imagine instead something like the great “Chunnel” project built under the English Channel in 1994. The British began at one end and the French at the other. They dug until they met in the middle… a feat worthy of its naming as one of the seven great wonders of the modern world.
God does the same – meeting us halfway, or three-fourths of the way – or even coming all the way to meet you where you’re stuck. Even so, the prophets call us to do our part, to prepare the way, to level the mountains and fill the valleys and open our hearts so this tenacious God may anchor us, hold us, and build us together into community.
Advent constantly reminds us that some time, some way, some how, God will break in and we will come face-to-face with “The End of Life as We Know It.” That may feel like good news or bad news to you personally. But keep the faith that God is tenacious… present and engaged, no matter what.
This is the message of Advent and of Christmas:
God comes to us in Jesus Christ, finds us and embraces us… or maybe holds us until our tantrum passes.
The Lord of hope and peace, love and joy seeks us in the wilderness and calls us to prepare the path so we may follow in faith.