Are you looking forward to the end of time?

Woody Allen was once quoted as saying:  “I am not afraid of dying.  I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”  Though he was speaking in jest, I wonder if that is the attitude of many Catholics when we get to the end of the liturgical year.   These last two weeks of the church’s year invite us to think of dark things as the world grows darker.  The readings we hear use end of the world images – war, plague, famine, tribulations - the seeming destruction of all that is familiar – to describe the ‘last things.  It was all a part of a style of writing that was popular during the years preceding the birth of Jesus and through his life time.  It was called Apocalyptic literature, and as Woody Allen surmised, if you take the images on face value, you don’t want to be there when it happens. 

Yet the word Apocalypsus simply means ‘the unveiling of something new.’   To exit an old world is to enter a new one.  And the period that immediately precedes the new is filled with tribulations, birth pangs, and waves of sufferings.  They are not the ‘end’ – but rather, the beginning of something new.  So even the destruction of the temple, the most amazing thing the apostles would have seen with their own eyes, was for Jesus a foreshadowing of something good – the age of the messiah.  That is what these stories are about – the birth pangs of a new era coming to be. 

The good news is all these things that Jesus is speaking about are not relegated to a distant past, nor are they about a date to be feared or predicted (wrongly in each generation so far) or to be run away from.  THE NEW AGE OF THE MESSIAH IS ALWAYS AVAILABLE TO US.  The age of the kingdom that Jesus ushered in is always waiting to be born in us.  In order for it to happens, the old world that we are living has to give way for the new to begin.  So these apocalyptic stories, these ‘stories of unveiling’ are stories of conversion. They give us keys on how to let go of the old to get into the new,

So what are some of the keys that Jesus gives us in their unveiling?  First:  “Many will come in my name.  Do not follow them!”   Jesus is asking to be the Lord of your life.  Not your wife, your parents, your CEO, your best friend.  As wonderful as they might be, we have to get rid of anyone we put in Jesus place.  All those people we submit our lives to in the hopes of getting happy.  All those we turn to quell our loneliness – they have to go.   Jesus will not be one figure along side of others.  To get to the next age, he must be the Lord of your life.

2) There will be wars and insurrections.  Of course there will.  Before Christ can reign, the false powers in you have to be defeated.  Something is reigning in you – some idea, power, or conviction, some assumptions condition you and set the tone in your life.  If Christ is to be king- we need to get rid of those assumptions.  But no one likes to give up power.  Nor do these authorities in you.  They will fight to oppose the change.  There will be wars and insurrections, an inner struggle in you.  Ask anyone who gave up an addiction to cigarettes or alcohol about that war.  They’ll tell you how real it is.   So don’t be surprised when they happen. 

3) There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, plagues.  Again, this is about you and me.  What is the foundation that you stand upon?  Pleasure, money, power, friends, family, self esteem, own ego – whatever it is – it will be shaken when Christ arrives.  Because HE will be the foundation!  Therefore, if he comes, there will be an earthquake.  Old foundation has to give way… Things will be destroyed like in an earthquake when Christ comes to take over.

4) Famine = No food = Starvation = Desperation.  What feeds you?  Where do you draw your strength?  It’s something.  Pleasure, power, money, esteem.  Something.  Christ wants to be your food.  The very things that fed you – now will no longer feed you.  You’ll experience famine.
And so the gospel goes.  I invite you this week to reread this section of Luke’s gospel – and instead of looking ‘out there’ for the end of the world signs, look within.  Realize that these readings ARE about the end of the world – but the end of our world so that the world of Jesus might come to be.  And, unlike Woody Allen, I do want to be there when it happens…