Where are we in Revelations?
One of my co-workers asked me that this week. He meant it as a joke, but with a hint of seriousness. There’s a plague. There’s unrest in the country. Maybe this is the beginning of the end of all things and, before long, Jesus will return to Earth.
If you’ve read what I’ve written on this site, you should find it no surprise that I welcome that long-awaited return. I’m wanting to do whatever I can to speed that day along, to inch us just a moment closer to when all tears are washed away and death is no more.
But that wasn’t what this discussion was about.
I grew up on the idea of Rapture and Tribulation. It was as certain as Jesus’ birth that the world would continue to grow worse. Wars would increase. Famines and, yes, plagues would become common, all as part of the great preparation for the moment when Christ takes his Church out of the world and leaves the world to suffer as none ever have.
It is a comforting theology when things are bad. As the cases and deaths continue to mount from this pandemic, as the news is full of turmoil, as the world once so familiar becomes so strange, it’s a consolation to believe that this is the way of things must be before Christ makes this world his own.
The problem with that belief is that it takes the responsibility off of us. It leads us do doing nothing. Who are we to interfere with God’s plan?
Things…are bad. This virus that has disrupted our lives is poised to continue doing so. We lack the courage and leadership to deal with it properly. Add to that the damage we continue to inflict on our environment, the impacts of which, due to greed, are growing worse. And we find that the country we have built has not held up the idea that all are created equal.
But none of these things are signposts on the road to the Redemption of All Things. There is nowhere in the Book of Revelations or any other book to which we can point and say soon. These are things, Jesus told us, that no one knows.
What I do know is that if we do nothing, if we choose to believe that our world must become hell before heaven descends upon it, then that day on which we wait will never come. We have been given the opportunity to help realize the dream of the Holy One. The dream where all are one as the Trinity is one. Where we act not as an exercise of our liberty, but for one another for their liberation.
Then, before we know it, we will find ourselves beside a crystal stream where we can drink and rest from our work as we hear the One declare that it is done.
And what a revelation that will be.