Bending Toward Justice

Every year at this time, as we near the end of the church year, we read from the texts associated with end-times in general. The church year begins in Advent, 4 weeks before Christmas, and ends in November, and so November brings us the poetry of the end times, which seems particularly appropriate here in the northern latitudes.

In the Hebrew scriptures, which were the scriptures of the early church, the "end times" never signifies the end of the world. That would be unthinkable. The world God made is infinite and eternal, as God is. There is the story of the great flood, but the point of that story is that God promised there would be no do-overs. No more destruction. And God put the arc of the rainbow in the sky as a sign of peace, a sign of the promise never to destroy the earth, ever again.

So what the end times, or the day of the Lord, or the Messiah’s coming would mean to Jews like Jesus, is that the day would come when finally, evil would be punished, and good rewarded, and justice would roll and righteousness flow.

The end of suffering, the beginning of salvation. The end of hunger, the beginning of a feast.

So the end times which were announced by prophets and Jesus, these are not about the destruction of the earth, but about right-relationships restored on the earth. Not by bloody battle, but by the only thing which can restore relationship: love, repentance, and forgiveness.

I begin with this clarification because there seems to be renewed interest, in popular culture, in the end of the world. The violent vision of the destruction of the world seems to come in cycles, and gain special momentum in what we call “hard times.” It happened early enough in the life of the church to warrant a special mention in the gospel.

Just before the gospel of Jesus Christ was written down in the form that we now recognize as the Gospel according to Mark, Jerusalem was besieged by Rome, and the temple was destroyed. Marauding legions carried away everything that was valuable, burned what they couldn’t carry, and pulled down the walls, so that not one stone was left standing atop another. Over one million citizens were killed in the siege.

Let the reader understand, and the reader would understand—the destruction of the temple does not mean the end has come. Every generation since has suffered wars and disease and lamentable tragedies of its own kind, and some have said, this is it, this is the end… but, look around, here we are. It wasn’t the end after all.

The apostle Paul and Jesus (according to the gospel) said these are just the birth pangs. Birth pangs, not death throes. New life is coming.

“The universe is bending,” is a song from our new UCC book, “Sing!” The universe is bending toward justice, toward peace, toward righteousness. It may not look like it from one particular point in history, but from a God’s eye view, the whole span of history must arc like a rainbow. From creation, to conflict, to new creation, that is our story in a nutshell. God creates a world and declares it good. Then bad things happen. Evil triumphs over good, for a time. The righteous seem to be forsaken, for a time. The innocent suffer and the wicked thrive, for a time, but these are just the birth pangs. For eventually, we are promised, a new heaven, and a new earth, on this earth. And God will be with us and be our God. No one will have to say to another, “know the Lord.” For God will live right here with us, and wipe away every tear from our eye.

And in the meantime, we live in hope, we live in the hope of those who know that the victory is won, though violence persists. We are healed, though relapse may come. These are but the birth pangs. New life is begun. Thanks be to God. Amen.