Apocalypse When?. Jerry L. Sumney

Apocalypse When? - Jerry L. Sumney


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homiletician, my commitment to preaching both Law and Gospel will likely be evident in many of the sermons. Martin Luther taught that God’s Law drives us to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Gospel without the Law leads to pablum and what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.”25 But Law without Gospel leads to despair, fear, and hopelessness. Therefore, the Law-Gospel dialectic will be helpful for preaching about apocalyptic texts so that we are forthright about both individual and systemic sin but also the necessity and sureness of God’s response of justice, grace, mercy, reconciliation, and a “new creation.”

      Having traced the contours of the complexities that accompany preaching about apocalyptic texts, we can establish some parameters for apocalyptic preaching. A sermon that preaches both “law” about our crisis as well as “gospel” proclaiming God’s grace in the midst of our failures finds a way to do three things. First, the sermon will honor the intrinsic value of God’s Creation, inclusive of humanity. Second, the sermon will realistically state the dilemmas in which we find ourselves today and offer prophetic critique in order to participate in God’s transformative justice. Third, the sermon will look to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ for clues as to how we as the church might creatively live into the proleptic vision of Christ’s return that leads to hope, restoration, and community.

      Fundamentally, we hope that this book will bolster the confidence of the preacher to undertake apocalyptic preaching in the first place. As Philip Quanbeck notes, when it comes to preaching about apocalyptic passages in the Bible:

      This means that when we are preaching apocalyptic texts, we are on a kind of frontier, a liminal place between the Divine and the people. Thus we have a very important job, which is to help people keep God’s horizon in sight. There is a tension between the immediate time and the eschatological time always coming to us from the horizon. As people are so caught up in the hurriedness and scatteredness of everyday profane living, the worship service and preaching help to bring the horizon of holiness back into our focus. The liturgy and sermon help to reorient us in time and to step back into that journey towards the eternal. God’s horizon of holiness keeps calling to us.

      9. Keller, Apocalypse Now and Then, 14.

      10. Keller, Apocalypse Now and Then, 14.

      11. Rossing, “The World is About to Turn,” 141.

      12. Rossing, “The World is About to Turn,” 141.

      13. Rossing, “The World is About to Turn,” 141.

      14. I make the decision to capitalize the word Creation so as to denote the level of respect I am affording the other-than-human world as a subject rather than object. I do the same with the term Earth when addressing it as an entity (as opposed to lowercase earth, which is a synonym of soil). Capitalizing the term indicates that this is an entity with a name, and that the entity is worthy of such.

      15. Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, ch. 4.

      16. The song “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” is a song by the band R.E.M. released on their 1987 album Document.

      17. Dinnerstein,


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