“So, What about the End of the World?”
Fr. George Wertin
Sunday, November 14th, 2004

Preaching about the end of the world is a presumptuous task at best. The topic is a minefield of multiple interpretations and misinterpretations. It is a confusing vision of fear and distortion. And, it is also an area co-opted by the religious right.

On October 22, 1844 there was an intense frenzy in much of the United States. It was the culmination of months of proclamations that the end of the world was destined to occur on that day. Well October 22 came and went like every other day and the preachers sheepishly revised their calculations. In the 1960’s, in Nigeria, students quit studying to await the end of the world to demonstrate their faith. Again we know the results. As P.T. Barnum put it, “People are suckers.” Indeed, anticipation of the end of the world has raised havoc among Christians since the time of the apostle Paul.

So, what about the end of the world? In the Scriptures the Apocalypse is part remembered history based on the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the second temple by the Romans in 70 A.D. (Remember, Luke wrote his Gospel after the fall of Jerusalem.) It is also part metaphor drawing on dire consequences if people did not change their ways. In fact, the power of eschatological rhetoric is to get people to look at how we are living now. And it had lost much of its fearsome appeal until the rise of Christian fundamentalism in the beginning of the 20th century.

Fundamentalists have captured the apocalypse as their own. It’s helpful to review the elements of fundamentalism:

1. literal interpretation of the Scriptures,
2. the inerrancy of the Bible,
3. the impending rapture when believers will be lifted up to heaven prior to the period of great conflict here on earth
4. premillenial dispensationalism with its period of turmoil ending with the battle of armagedon between good and evil, and
5. the conquering of the anti-Christ.

Let’s put things in perspective. What captures popular imaginations in apocalyptic literature as prediction is really intended as a prophetic call to change. It is a call to envision “a new heaven and a new earth.’ A prophetic call recognizes the struggle to put forth a new and alternative way beyond the injustice, violence and oppression existing in the world today. It is a call to prophetic imagination. Visualize peace. Think justice. Dream what can be. It is the first step in creating the world of compassion, justice and love.

Face it. We have no idea how this world is going to unfold – unless, of course, we initiate a nuclear holocaust, and that would very likely only affect planet earth.

Furthermore, we have a new cosmology. We have moved beyond the easily-imagined three-story universe with God remote in the heavens, us humans and creatures here on earth, and the underworld of demons down below. We recognize that the world was not created in seven days with two first parents in a Garden of Eden from which they were expelled. So we have to move beyond a literal interpretation of the Biblical account of the end of the world too. We can’t allow ourselves to be locked into obsolete categories. We live in an awesome universe that has been evolving for 13 billion years. We have moved beyond the simplistic confrontation between the forces of good and the forces of evil. We recognize our potential for being co-creators with God in shaping the world of the future.

I repeat, a prophetic people holds up a new vision. And new vision draws resistance. People prefer the security and power of the status quo. Otherwise, why the resistance to overcoming oppression and discrimination in our world? Why is it so difficult not to pass moral judgments on other people? Why is it so difficult to be welcoming and inclusive? Why is it so hard not to attack other people? Why is it so hard to be nonviolent in the transparent failure of violence?

Eric Fromm, the philosopher who wrote the popular book “The Art of Loving” fifty years ago said, “One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.” I agree.

And I also remind you that the apocalyptic vision is a call to envision a new way of living and relating. It is a prophetic call to see that there are alternatives to the status quo. We can envision an end to the world as we know it and a new one based on the vision of Jesus and the other prophets. We can envision hearts of stone being turned to hearts of feeling flesh.

As Cardinal Suenens of Belgium said during Vatican II: “Happy are those who dream dreams and are willing to pay the price to make them come true.”