“Don’t worry: it’s not the end of the world.” That’s the sort of thing you say when something breaks but it can be mended; when something’s lost but it can be replaced; when something bad happens but you can recover. It’s the sort of thing you say to a child when a favorite toy goes missing: I think I remember my own mother telling me this. “Don’t worry: it’s not the end of the world” means that what’s happened is not catastrophic: it may be unfortunate and even tragic but life will go on.
What lies behind this, of course, is that if it is the end of the world, it’s bad news! They tell us that catastrophe on a worldwide scale has caught the popular imagination. Dystopian scenarios abound in film and television, and in popular culture more widely. From zombie apocalypse to asteroids hurtling toward the earth, to climate catastrophe, we contemplate the end of civilization or even life on earth. It’s even infected our news feeds, which have learned to mimic this apocalyptic tone as they narrate current events.
Last week on a long plane ride I finished in one sitting the recent bone chilling book Nuclear War, shortlisted for one significant award for non-fiction, that nevertheless outlines a happily fictional scenario for nuclear Armageddon. How does a speculative scenario pass itself off as non-fiction fact? Certainly this is yet another disturbing cultural vision. I assure you, it was a gripping but not a cheerful read.
Maybe these sobering reflections fit in with this time of year, in which light decreases and shadow grows. I suppose these imagined dystopian futures say something about us: about a pervasive societal melancholy. Or perhaps just a pessimistic realism about our prospects, and a desire not to go through certain doors into the future. The truth is that the future is never fixed. In the meantime between now and then there is always the possibility of action.
Our reading from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Thessalonians gives us another perspective on the times in which we live. “The day of the Lord” (2 Thess. 2:2) that Paul writes about is the day of the coming of Jesus Christ at the end of all things. For Paul, the “day of the Lord” is an event that still lies in the future. In fact, we’ll hear next week about how some Christians in the Church at Thessalonica had decided that the day of the Lord had already arrived, absolving them from any need to take action at all, or even to work for a living! “Keep away from believers who are living in idleness” (2 Thess. 3:6), Paul writes, because the day of the Lord is not yet here (2 Thess. 2:2). There are still events to unfold, an order to be observed, before the day of the Lord arrives.
For St. Paul, “the day of the Lord,” unlike our dystopian visions of the future, is a cause for rejoicing. The coming of the Lord at the end of all things establishes God’s reign of justice, peace, and love. It’s not a catastrophic event but what J.R.R. Tolkien called a “eucatastrophic” event: a happy ending, like “they all lived happily ever after.” The day of the Lord is marked by righteous judgment that puts all things in order, and rectifies a world that has run amok.
Where the day of the Lord intersects with our dystopian visions is in the realistic assessment that sin still remains to be overcome. That’s part of the timing issue that St. Paul is concerned with. Hence the verse with which we began this sermon: “Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction” (2 Thess. 2:3). The “lawless one” is the embodiment of the power of sin, inspired by Satan, himself the personification of evil. It seems at times that evil and sin have a power that is almost personal, capturing our imaginations and even ourselves, as St. Paul says elsewhere in the letter (2 Thess. 2:10-11). That power is real, and must still be dealt with.
The good news, according to Christian belief, is that whatever disruption and deception is yet to be revealed, our Lord Jesus Christ has already triumphed over sin and death. In our liturgy today, our baptismal candidates will “renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God.” Our confirmation candidates will re-affirm their own vows, as we all seek together to follow Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Through these sacraments, we live in the meantime of action, between the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and his coming again with power and great glory.
“Don’t worry: it’s not the end of the world.” God has yet given us this time in which we can act. This is the time of Christian vocation, the time remaining, when we all share in Jesus’ call to follow him. There is time to mend what is broken, to find what is lost, to turn around and recover from the delusions that sin has sowed among us. All of this comes from the power of God, made manifest in Christ, and lived out in the sacraments we celebrate today.
