St. Paul’s L’Amoreaux, November 18, 2007
In his commentary on our lesson from Luke, Fred Craddock makes a lovely little observation. ‘Calculating the end of time,” he says, “is not the same thing as contemplating the fulfilment of time.’
‘Calculating the end of time is not the same thing as contemplating the fulfilment of time.’
You probably get the point right off. Our responsibility is to understand God’s purpose in the world through prayer and contemplation and to conform ourselves to it. But trying to calculate when the world will end has had great appeal to people and can serve as a tremendous distraction.
When I was a teenager in the 1970’s, with the cold war, the threat of nuclear bombs, and fears of oil and gasoline shortages, there were many prophets warning about the end of time. There were some scoundrels who made millions of dollars off of books and movies they produced, such as The Late, Great Planet Earth. They frightened, confused and discouraged a many people.
And yet when faced with a similar question, Jesus answers his disciples by focussing their attention on the fulfilment of time, rather than the mere end of time. He does so in two ways.
First of all, he says, don’t be fooled. Wars and natural disasters is the way the world is. It is not a special sign of the end.
Secondly, however, times of tumult are purposeful for Christians.
They are times in which the Christian can be a witness.
They are times in which Christians can serve confidently, because no mortal or eternal harm will come to them.
And they are times in which, through endurance, the roots of the Gospel can go further into the Christians heart and character.
‘You will gain your soul,’ says Jesus.
In other words, don’t be distracted by trying to calculate the end of time. Rather, let your mind focus on God’s purposes in time, contemplate what God has revealed in Jesus Christ, let that take root and, having done so, serve boldly and faithfully, just like Jesus Christ.
A few years ago, Joseph Ratzinger, the man who is now Pope Benedict XVI, was asked an interesting and related question. Christianity promises God’s redemption. But we’re now at the beginning of the third millenium since the time of Jesus Christ. Given the wait, and given, specifically, the horrors of the 20th century, has Christianity actually brought with it salvation or has it, instead, been quite fruitless?
And I liked his answer. First of all, he emphasized a point that the journalist questioning him had glanced over. The last century was not just one of pure horror. In fact, there are now more people alive on earth than ever before, and living for a length of time and at a level of comfort never before imagined.
Christianity has contributed to this, as, from Christian principles, it has motivated the development of democracy, of the rule of law, the arts, tremendous structures of health care and education, and of science itself.
But secondly, said the Pope, God’s redemption of the world is related to human freedom - and God will not annul human freedom in order to bring about his final purposes.
Humans are part of God’s plan of redemption. And humans have the freedom to cooperate - or to refuse, letting the world fall into darkness.
I admired the candor of the Pope.
Redemption or disaster - both are possible. And when God revealed himself to the world in the man who would be handed over and crucified on a cross, he took a risk on whether or not humans would cooperate.
I don’t know why God has taken the form he did in Jesus Christ, says the Pope. Who gave up the power and authority of heaven, and who will only succeed where men and women respond to him from the heart.
I don’t know why has revealed himself in this way. A way in which God has held back power available to him.
But I do know what the alternative has been in the world. When people have turned away from God and to their own devices. It is to use power and violence and force people into line. And its way, too often, has been one of unspeakable cruelty and death.
Our challenge, says the Pope, is to confront the remarkable powers placed in human hands and to measure what can be done by what should be done. We must confront our enormous physical ability with moral discernment. And this can only occur where God is a force and strength within.
The Pope used as an example the ecological movement which rightly protests the outer pollution of the world. And yet, many within the movement have treated the inner pollution of the soul as a fundamental right to be protected. I quote:
Instead of making it possible to breathe humanly again, we defend with a totally false conception of freedom everything that man’s arbitrary desire produces. As long as we [defend] the freedom of inner spiritual self-destruction, its outward effects will continue unchanged . . .The eighth chapter of the Letter to the Romans says this very plainly. It says that Adam, that is, the inwardly polluted man, treats creation like a slave, tramples on it, so that creation groans under him, on his account, through him. And we hear today the groaning of creation as no one has ever heard it before. Paul adds that creation waits for the appearance of the sons of God and will breathe freely when men [and women] appear in whom God shines through - and who only then will be able to breathe again themselves. (Salt of the Earth, Joseph Ratzinger, Ignatius, 1996, p. 231)
A few years ago the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman was brought to the screen in the movie entitled “The Pianist”. Szpilman was a talented, young Jewish and Polish pianist and composer. He had written quite a number of popular songs, including children’s songs, and many loved to listen to him. But during WWII, Szpilman’s family were sent to the
But when the day came, and as the Szpilmans were being crammed onto the train,
one of the policemen grabbed Wladyslaw by the collar, yanked him out of the throng and refused to let him through to rejoin his family on the journey to death.
Szpilman continued to avoid death’s clutches, surviving against all odds, often half-starved and usually alone, hidden in obscure corners of bombed, burned or empty buildings, intermittently helped by Polish friends risking their own lives to bring him food or find him shelter: helping a Jew automatically brought a death sentence (www.szpilman.net).
The strangest twist of all in Szpilman’s story came at its end. He was discovered by a German officer. Szpilman proved his profession to him by playing Chopin’s C sharp minor Nocturne on an abandoned piano. From then on, the German officer hid him and brought him food and a blanket for warmth. In the end, Szpilman would survive, passing away in July, 2000. And the officer who protected him - died in a communist ‘prisoner of war’ camp in 1953.
And as the movie portrayed matters, in the midst of the stifling darkness of Nazism, a family, a people, a city - and even a Nazi soldier - rose to the defense of a brilliant artist. In a violent time, it was a singular tribute to the beauty of a life, and the beauty of the music that one life was able to create.
How do we live in tumultuous times? I like the answer of Jesus. It is not to be spent calculating exact days and minutes. It is not to be spent interpreting the latest war and calamity. It is to be spent contemplating the Saviour we have seen. It is to let that life take deep root within us. And it is to share the light and life of Jesus Christ in the world.