Apocalypse When?. Jerry L. Sumney
the sermons that utilize them) can pull back the veils that obscure the presence of systemic and oppressive evil in the world and allow us to see a deeper reality that is not immediately visible. We are able to see with a kind of double vision that reveals “both the beauty of creation and also the pathologies of empire,” whether these empires originate in Assyria, Babylonia, Rome, or the United States of America.12
Equipped with this double vision, the preacher is able to name the underlying oppressive assumptions of empire and critique these assumptions and how they manifest in society, the natural world, and the lived experiences of the hearers. But a third move is needed—proclaiming the divine eschatological vision that has the power to transform our imaginations, renew hope, and empower collective action for living into this vision of the eschaton. Eschatology comes from the Greek word eschaton, meaning end times. The visionary world of biblical apocalyptic literature “can help us see both the perils we face and the urgency of God’s promised future,” says Rossing, “turning the world for justice and healing, ‘on Earth as in heaven.’ The preacher cultivates an apocalyptic imagination by helping people recognize God’s future breaking into the present, even in times of despair.”13
Our approach to preaching apocalyptic texts in this book will be to offer an eschatological perspective that is forthright about the existential realities of our present time while avoiding either extreme of doom and gloom or “pie in the sky by and by.” We’ll explore a “third way” for understanding the concepts of beginnings and endings in Scripture that looks to the hope revealed in Christ’s redemption for all Creation.14 The goal is for this lens to yield insights and heuristic possibilities for eschatologically oriented proclamation that engenders hope and invites deep and joyful engagement with God’s new creation.
Reflections on Christian Concepts of Time and Preaching
The way in which the church has understood time throughout its history, how it orients itself in time today, and how its worship rituals, Bible readings, prayers, and even music are shaped by the liturgical year are all factors to consider in preaching, especially when addressing apocalyptic texts. Genesis 1 describes the creation of time where days and nights are marked by the movement of the sun and moon and stars, the means by which Earth-dwellers measure and track time. By the end of that chapter, we reach the culmination of the seven-day period resolving into a time of rest. Thus, we see patterns: the movement of light and darkness within a single day, the seven-day week within the month, and all of this encompassed within the cycle of the year. Thus, our very existence contains the DNA of time built right into the cosmos, our planet, our bodies and psyches, and our communities.
Yet humans also have a sense of the eternal, the timelessness of the Divine. Psalm 90 gives us a glimpse into the mystery of how mortals and God experience time differently:
1Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.
2Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
3You turn us back to dust, and say, “Turn back, you mortals.”
4For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night. With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.
In other words, what can seem like a long span of time for humans is but a tick of the clock for God. Perceptions of time differ according to our perspective; time stretches, contracts, speeds up, slows down, and even seems to stop on occasion. More importantly, as Jews and Christians believe, God chooses mortal time as the means by which to reveal God’s self. Humans are not expected to train themselves to transcend time and space in order to attain enlightenment, as is the case in some religions. Instead, God enters into human time and space in very concrete ways, through specific historical events and people, in order to develop a relationship with humankind. Relationships are key for human beings, and we both mark time and build continuity in relationships by remembering certain days such as birthdays and anniversaries throughout the years. The same is true for Jews and Christians who believe in a relational God who makes Godself known through concrete acts that happen in history and are remembered yearly, weekly, and even daily.
In this way, time—past, present, and future—is a gift that is given to humanity. The fact that God is interested in being part of time with us and for us creates sacred time for believers. Mircea Eliade theorized that Archaic Man lived in the space between two planes of existence—the sacred and the profane. Human belief in the supernatural means that their actions, rituals, buildings, and how they orient themselves in time are all reflected by the desire to exist in the sacred realm even while slogging through the everydayness of life. Profane time is experienced as linear. It’s just one thing happening after another in sequence. Time flows in one direction, from present to future. But human memory also allows for time past to be remembered in the present, thus seeming to flow both backward and forward. We have the capacity to remember not only as individuals, but also as a species, as a culture. This past is remembered through story, myth, and recorded history. We also have the capacity to think about the future, to conceive of a different reality than what we see at the present. This future-thinking accounts for the tension in apocalyptic—will the future be an improvement on the past, or will we see things deteriorate? And what is God’s role in this future? What is the church’s role? What is the role of individual Christians?
In addition to the linear conceptions of time, humans are also able to experience time in a cyclical way, which is how we are able to imagine and exist in sacred time. We do this through ritual in which we attempt to re-create and thus re-experience the events of the past through sacred time. This cyclical nature of time enables us to re-actualize what happened previously, even going back to the dawn of human civilization. For example, seasons of planting, growth, harvest, and death are marked in nearly every ancient culture, including the Jewish calendar (which is, of course, where the Christian calendar draws its origins). But these seasons are also given sacred significance, connected with the realm of God as well as the stories of God’s saving history with the people.
Human culture celebrates all manner of festivals around the change of seasons and years, and this is no different in the church. The liturgical year marks both the internal cycles of time (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost), and the progression of time over weeks, months, years, centuries, and millennia. Eliade explained that through myths and rituals that give access to this sacred time, humans can protect themselves against what he called the “terror of history,” the fear that human existence is a pointless exercise ending in oblivion.15 In other words, sacred time always involves a return to a paradigmatic mythic period in the past in order to give meaning to the present and to bolster courage for the future.
For Christians, the liturgy within our worship services gives us access to that sacred time. Both the cyclical and linear timelines converge because God is active in history, is active in the here and now, and will be active in the future—what the Greeks called eschaton, the end times. Every worship service in a sense proclaims the in-breaking of God’s kingdom into this world, bringing the fullness of time upon us. This means that the liturgy (and thus preaching) situates us in that liminal, in-between time which transcends past, present, and future, but is also very much a part of real time as well.
How does God’s future manifest itself in our present time? There is another interesting Greek word called prolepsis, which means “anticipated.” When we participate in and lead the liturgy, we are in the midst of a paradox: Christ’s coming has already happened, but it has not yet come upon us in the fullness of the present moment. We can catch glimpses of it, but we only experience his return (called the Parousia) in an “already but not yet” way. Thus, we exist in a state of anticipation and expectation. Prolepsis allows the liturgy (including the sermon) to create hope because it anticipates the return of the resurrected Christ within this very time and place.
Think of it this way. Ephesians 1:9–10, states: “[God] has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” In other words, time is moving forward