Year C
 Malachi 4:1-2a
 Psalm 98
 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
 Luke 21:5-19
May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

According to The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Third Edition)…  the word eschatology first appeared in English in the 19th century…  and it refers to the doctrine of last things…  that is…  the ultimate destiny of both the individual soul…  and the whole created order…

And the word apocalypse brings to mind images of devastating events…  which themselves may cause the end of all things…  like in one of those movies when an asteroid as big as Manhattan is heading straight for Manhattan…  but according to Elizabeth Dias…  who writes for The New York Times…  the original word in Greek — apokalypsis — simply means an unveiling…  an uncovering…  and nothing more…  it’s like how we bring a negative connotation to the Sanskrit word karma…  as in bad karma…  when the word itself simply means action… 

In the article Ms. Diaz wrote…  she cites Jacqueline Hidalgo…  who’s the Chair of Religion at Williams College…  who herself wrote that apocalypse…  “helps us see something that was hidden before…  but the story of apocalypse is an old one…  one of the oldest humans tell…  in ancient religious traditions beyond Christianity — including Judaism, Islam and Buddhism — it’s a common narrative that arises in moments of social and political crisis…  as people try to process unprecedented or shocking events…”

And yet…  for a variety of reasons…  many of us are drawn to such events…  in an article posted last year on the Psychology Today website…  this impulse was described as…  that feeling of not wanting to look…  but not being able to look away from something that is threatening or horrific…  and I just recently heard this tendency we have described as doom scrolling…  as we scroll on our computers from one depressing meme…  or comment…  or news story… to another…  and like the disciples…  we too wonder when this apocalypse will happen…  and what signs we ought to be on the lookout for… so we can somehow be more prepared for it… 

Pastor Martin Billmeier writes that he remembers back in the 1970s when there were a lot of TV evangelists who were predicting that the end of the world was right around the corner…  they held up things like homosexuality…  and the women’s rights movement…  as signs that evil days were upon us…  and that a day of reckoning was near…  and any who didn’t believe as they did were among the evil and arrogant who needed to repent…  or be burned to stubble on the Last Day… 

Now almost all of us took an Earth Sciences class in eighth or ninth grade…  and in the geology section…  we learned about plate tectonics…  continental plates which float and drift above the mantle… and which get stuck at their edges because of friction…  and when the enormous pressure along one edge becomes too much to hold…  that tension is released…  sometimes at first…  in little tremors…  but which often foreshadow earthquakes like the one in San Francisco in 1906…  in which upwards of 3,000 people died…  and by the way…  the last time an earthquake was recorded in Michigan was this past July 11…  in the southeast corner of the state…  a mild 2.2 on the Richter scale…

The prophet Malachi was angry at those priests who were not being faithful to God’s Word…  at priests who were not speaking God’s truth to God’s people…  and he was angry at a people who spoke against God…  they saw that the wicked were prospering…  that good things were happening to bad people…  and they questioned serving God at all since it did not profit them to do so…

These days…  some of God’s people push back at their pastors when they do speak God’s Word…  may even call it persecution…  for example…  a bakery owner who feels pressured to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple may feel persecuted…  and that same couple who’s denied service may also feel persecuted…  they may all be coming to that conclusion from completely divergent points of view…  that’s why it’s helpful to use Richard Hooker’s three-legged stool as we adjust our understanding of how God’s Word informs the many issues we currently face…  that is…  we need to look at the dynamic relationship between scripture…  tradition…  and reason…

But God is like…  You can do what you want…  it’s why I’ve given you free will…  just remember that everything you do…  that which manifests my Word…  and that which doesn’t…  has consequences…  and some of us who strive to embody God’s Word will be hurt by those who don’t…  and those who seem to mock God’s Word will appear to get away with it…  but as Galatians 6:7 says… do not fool yourself…  God is not mocked…  for you reap whatever you sow…  and that YOU…  applies at least as much to nations…  as it does to individuals…

Tracy Hartman…  from Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond…  writes…  it’s likely that Malachi was written after the Babylonian Exile…  a difficult time in Israel’s history…  the Second Temple had been completed…  but messianic hopes had not been fulfilled…  and worshipping YHWH…  which should have been the unifying center of the community…  and could have been a source of life and hope…  deteriorated into rote and meaningless duty…

Malachi’s goal… was to win the people back to God…  this morning’s passage is the sixth and final exchange between the prophet and the people…  and it served to call the doubters and evildoers to repentance…  and to comfort those who had lived righteously…  but Malachi is clear that while that day is coming…  it had not yet arrived…  and there is no promise that the people will see a change in their present circumstances…

Likewise…  Jesus says that there will be many signs before all of this occurs…  and Pastor Patrick Wilson…  of Williamsburg Presbyterian Church explains that theologically…  Luke intends to distinguish the end time of all things from particular historical events…  the Temple may have come to an end…  but that is not the end… peace will come to an end and be swallowed by war…  but war is not the way the world ends…   security will end…  shaken in earthquakes…  but fear and uncertainty are not the end either…  people will try to mimic Jesus and misuse his name…  attempting to prophesy as he did…  but the world does not end with truth’s impersonators…  Jesus affirms that even those things which seem immutable and permanent…  are in fact transitory…  and remember…  in all three of the Synoptics…  Jesus says that heaven and earth will pass away…  but his words will not pass away…

I believe that there are not only physical earthquakes…  but spiritual earthquakes too…  stresses which build up when there’s friction between our ways…  and God’s ways…  friction between our willfulness and God’s will-for-us…  and that energy is transferred into the physical realm…  and the divisiveness we experience is not God’s punishment…  but is the collective result of our collective free will…  and the choices we make…  which includes the free will decision for someone to say they’ll only accept the outcome of an election if they win…  or their decision to offer up a concession speech as soon as they don’t…

And when Jesus said…  not one stone will be left upon another…  all will be thrown down…  I think not only about the actual destruction of the Temple…  the physical expression of a spiritual earthquake…  but the destruction in Ukraine…  also a spiritual earthquake…  and in this week’s election…  there was a kind of apocalypse…  an unexpected unveiling of sorts…  I pray…  as we all do…  that God’s will for us in heaven…  and in this time and place…  be done…  that the stones of democracy remain intact…  and that…  as Jesus says…  we’ll have many opportunities to testify…  and by our endurance…  we will gain our souls…