Apocalypse: Then and Now

Macabre fascination or teenage PTSD? Full-throated world-ending transformation or the blossoming of God’s own realm of peace with justice?

Rather than choosing among those modes and moods, a combination of all of them (and more) bounces around my religious imagination as the season of Advent approaches—this very weekend! This seems especially the case as the first Sunday of Advent is upon us, which launches what I have come to call, rather affectionately, “National Eschaton Week.” The lectionary and prayers always set an apocalyptic tone for what many assume is just prep time for gift wrapping and soaking fruitcake in more rum.

I sound flippant, and part of me is, which is likely a survival mechanism). I grew up in an Evangelical subculture resting on the edge of Christian fundamentalism—let’s just call it “Fundagelical Christianity”— in which “apocalypse” meant only one kind of thing: the second coming of Christ, the rapture of believers, and the terror (especially as a teenager) at the prospect of being “left behind” (no, I have never read those novels and never will). And still, and yet: I have come to love Advent, even the first Sunday, which is quite likely my favorite Sunday on the church calendar.

I stumbled upon a poem just recently by Steven Charleston—an indigenous elder of the Choctaw nation and a bishop in The Episcopal Church. It does not at first seem related in any way to Advent, at least not the kind of Advent brimming with the apocalyptic undertones of my childhood. But I find it exactly the thing for the season now upon us:

Come sit with me beside a pool of wonder.
Take time to watch still water.
See how deep your mind can go,
when you drop it like a stone,
into hidden depths of the heart,
where even reason cannot follow.
We will never know every answer.
Our task is to be stewards of the mysteries of God,
in awe of what we have yet to learn,
mystics beside the pool of living water,
where shadows
are as welcome as the sun.

Those words (from Charleston’s book Hope as Old as Fire: A Spiritual Diary) invite me to frame Advent as a season of stillness and reflection, a time of embracing a raw hopefulness as we “steward” the profound mysteries of God. This kind of introspection, laced with a quiet anticipation, can feel quite counter-cultural while holiday music blares from sidewalk speakers along streets lined with brightly lighted trees and a sense of holiday bustle shimmers around nearly every corner. (Even in the cute, nearly Norman Rockwellian resort town where I now live, a local restaurant was blasting heavy-metal versions of Christmas carols through their outdoor speakers at such a volume this past week that I was tempted to eschew my longstanding commitment to pacifism.)

Charleston’s invitation to find stillness stands in contrast not only to the wider culture at this time of year but also to the biblical texts assigned by the lectionary for this coming Sunday. We don’t even have any hints about the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem on the first Sunday of Advent; the lectionary will instead, as it always does, present us with images of the end of the world itself—at least, that’s what I used to think those texts signaled.

The Greek verb from which we get our word apocalypse simply means “to reveal” or unveil. While most of us (myself included) usually use the word “apocalyptic” to refer to something horrific or for some kind of disaster, there’s nothing about the word itself that demands that kind of meaning. We will hear a wonderful passage from the ancient Hebrew prophet Isaiah on Sunday (2:1-5) that invites us to embrace a hidden trajectory of hopefulness in Earth herself, a divine commitment to life revealed and unveiled in ways which we might miss if we aren’t paying attention.

The character of “unveiling” in such texts seems to invite not a “conclusion” to the world but that sense of an ending that means something more like “goal” or “purpose.” And that helps me read Paul’s letter to the Romans quite differently than I might otherwise. The portion assigned from that letter for Sunday (13:11-14) has Paul urging the Romans to stay awake. He doesn’t mean we ought to prepare for a day of doom (even if circumstances might become dire), but rather to stay awake to the presence of God’s life-giving Spirit in the world around us, and to take note of its shimmering emergence and gentle blossoming in places we may not have expected.

This might well be why I have come to love Advent so much, even the first Sunday of this odd season. The commotion and chaos of the wider world, both in the first century and today, can easily prevent us from seeing the tender flow of divine grace running through our own lives, and in our relationships, and throughout our communities, as well as the ecosystems of this precious Earth; Advent invites us to notice.

Here in the northern hemisphere, Advent always begins as Earth is tilting toward the darkest time of year, when the deep stillness of winter does not signal death but rather the quiet preparation for the renewal of life in the spring. The planet’s tilt and the seasonal lectionary, as well as our liturgical prayers and hymns all invite us into that same kind of interior space.

These rich textures for Advent seem especially important when the wider world around us appears hellbent toward disaster and destruction. In such a time of anxiety, whether in the first century or today, I actually relish Advent’s robust apocalyptic tone. As Bishop Charleston would say, the texts for this season invite us to dip into hidden pools of living water, hopeful and confident of a much deeper unveiling of life still to come.

My reasons for loving Advent seem to grow and shift every year. Mostly I embrace the somewhat rude and jolting textual images for the season as a powerful reminder about why Christmas itself matters: God remains in solidarity with us and with the whole world of God’s creation.

Advent’s seeds of hopefulness, planted in the winter soil of a wounded world, shall not fail to take root and blossom into new life at the hands of the God who remains forever faithful.

That outrageous assurance is why I love Advent.