Sermon: “What is Wrong with the Rapture”
First
When the first angel blew his trumpet, there came
hail and then fire mixed with blood, which was hurled down to the earth. A
third of the land was scorched, along with a third of the trees and every green
plant.
When the second angel blew his trumpet, something
like a huge mountain all in flames was cast into the sea. A third of the sea
turned to blood, a third of the creatures living in the sea died, and a third
of the ships were wrecked.
When the third angel blew his trumpet, a huge
star burning like a torch crashed down from the sky. It fell on a third of the
rivers and the springs. The star’s name was “Wormwood” because a third part of
the water turned to wormwood. Many people died from this polluted water.
When the fourth angel blew his trumpet, a third
of the sun, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars were hit hard enough
to be plunged into darkness. The day lost a third of its light, as did the
night.
As my vision continued, I heard an eagle flying
in the mid-heaven cry out in a loud voice, ‘Woe, woe, and again woe to the
inhabitants of earth from the trumpet blasts the other three angels are about
to blow!’
Second
Why are human beings so fascinated by scenarios
of impending destruction? From the expectation of the End of Days in the
monotheistic traditions, to current predictions of ecological disaster, from Hopi
prophecies of ashes falling from the sky, to the apocalyptical contemporary
rave culture, from Hindu myths of the Kaliyuga, to the ever-popular
Nostradamus, we are haunted by images of a massive catastrophe awaiting us.
Why, moreover, is this projected catastrophe almost always followed by a
millennium in which unprecedented harmony reigns? Messianic Taoist and Buddhist
sects, Marxist groups that look to a socialist utopia all express the view that
a new era of peace will emerge out of a time of chaos. The pervasiveness of
these twin themes in drastically different cultures and historical periods
suggests that they some key role in the human psyche.
My own understanding of the function of
apocalypse comes from Judaism… In Judaism there is a catastrophic scenario for
the future, but there is also the catastrophic quality of the past: a series of
shattering losses, beginning with the Garden of Eden itself, stretches down
into the present century… One mourns…for a brokenness at the very core of the
world.
We moderns tend to dismiss the apocalypse as a
neurotic death wish and the millennium as a naïve fantasy. It may be, however,
that desperate, coded messages from our own psyches are telling us that we need
an outlet for our terror and our rage. We are, after all, the ones destroying
the world around us; we are the ones lashing out at each other in blind fear.
When we refuse to face the demons within us, we see them instead in others, and
we are haunted collectively by apocalyptic nightmares. To avoid playing out
these grim prophecies, we must find a way to come to terms with the inner
impulses they express as the myth of apocalypse keeps reminding us, the
darkness will not just go away. Instead, it must be transformed.
Sermon: “What is Wrong with the
Rapture”
I am of the generation that spent some time in
the early years of elementary school under our desks. That was the then
preferred method for protecting small children in the case of nuclear bombs
going off in the vicinity. Even in 2nd grade, the desk seemed to me
a little small to protect me from powerful bombs.
But the fear of real annihilation was transmitted
to me by my mother when I was about 11 or 12. As an Admiral’s wife, there came
a day when she was invited on a special tour of the White House, and the
General’s wives and the Admiral’s wives were taken into the War Room and were
shown the Box. She described to me, in great detail, the button that, if
detonated, would release all of the nuclear missiles into
But a recent speech by Bill Moyers, the retiring
TV commentator on PBS, refocused my attention on those who claim that we are
now at the end of human history.
Previously, I had dismissed as a few fanatics
those with bumper stickers proclaiming that their cars would soon be vacant due
to the “Rapture.” Rapt up in the love of their Lord, they are the inheritors of
a 19th-century prophecy, the “pre-millennium” believers: that before
seven years of catastrophic events, before the thousand year reign of the
ascended Christ, the Christian believers would be taken out. Jeremy Falwell is
pretty specific about what will happen:
You say ”what’s going to happen on this earth when the Rapture
occurs? You’ll be riding along in an automobile; you’ll be the driver, perhaps;
you’ll be a Christian; there’ll be several people in the automobile with you,
may someone who is not Christian. When the trumpet sounds, you and the other
born-again Christians in that automobile will be instantly caught away, you’ll
disappear, leaving behind only your clothing and physical things that cannot
inherit eternal life. That unsaved person or persons in the automobile will
suddenly be startled to find that the car is moving along without a driver, and
suddenly somewhere crashes. Those saved people in the car have disappeared.
Other cars on the highway driven by believers will suddenly be out of control.
Stark pandemonium will occur on that highway and on every highway in the world
where Christians are caught away from the world.
Now part of freedom of religion is that people can believe whatever
they want about the circumstances in which they might depart this world. But
Bill Moyers points out that some of those particular true-believers are now
occupying policy-making positions of power in our government. When the then
Secretary of Interior, James Watt told the U.S. Congress that “protecting the
environment was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Christ…after the
last tree is felled, Christ will come back,” I wrongly assumed that he was a radical,
minority voice. Now we learn that, at least according to recent polls, 40% of
Americans believe in the final battle of Armageddon; 59% of Americans believe
that the prophecies in the Book of Revelations are literally true. And there
are people we have elected to high offices in this country who sincerely
believe that war in the Middle-East is a good indication that Jesus is coming
soon, that war in
The Sumerians were sure that the world was coming to an end. They
had proof in the form of an ill-shapen sheep’s liver and some constellation of
stars that didn’t look good.
Virgil, before the birth of Jesus, in 40 B.C.E. wrote that “the Iron
Age was coming to an end and that a new Golden Age would emerge.”
The Cheyenne Native-American legend is that the “Great White
Beaver of the North” is constantly
gnawing on the tree that holds up the universe, and when he finishes the earth
will crash into a bottomless pit. (As if you didn’t have enough to worry about,
considering adding the “Great Beaver of the Apocalypse.”)
The Koran, the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Jews, and the Christians
have all told end-time stories and developed their own unique eschatologies. In
the year one thousand, almost all of
The Millerists, in early 19th century
In 1906 the
In our own time, the humanist secular tradition has taken up the
great apocalyptic narrative. Historian, Richard Erdoes writes:
“Perfectly sane people, among them scientists and Nobel laureates,
predict humankind’s demise due to overpopulation, famines, deforestation,
pollution, depletion of the earth’s ozone layer, errors in human engineering,
or simply the collapse of civilization due to the exhaustion of essential,
nonrenewable raw materials.”
People take these stories in deadly seriousness. I had one couple
resign from this church because I would not accept their apocalyptic story that
a nuclear war would obliterate all life, all hope, and God’s grace. I must
admit that I identify more with Mark Twain’s assessment that we won’t go down
in a great blaze of calamity, we’ll be done in by small fears: the daily grind,
what Mark Twain calls “one damn thing after another.” But I am in the minority.
A lot more people take to the great drama of catastrophe,
cataclysmic events and battles of epic proportion. What is that about?
From a purely psychological perspective, you could understand an
apocalyptic story as a self-referential statement that “my time is the most
important time.” “I’m living at the precise cosmic moment of the greatest
significance.” “What happens in my lifetime is what will ultimately matter for all
time.”
And for any of you who still entertain the delusional belief that human
beings are rational, consider the enormous disassociation with all memory of
previous human history. If you believe that the Rapture is imminent, then you
have to be blind to all the previous false prophecies. Even though the world
has not come to an end in the last 5,000 years of recorded human history,
despite literally hundreds of forecasts, and authoritative predictions, people
in our own day sincerely believe that this time, it is really going to
happen. Again, we must as ourselves “why?”
The novelist, Laurie King makes an astute observation:
We forget, those of us who live our lives conversant with computer
terminals and with scientists who gaze into invisible stars or manipulate the
genetic building blocks of living matter, that there is an entire population
living, as it were, on the edge, who feel as powerless as children and cling, therefore, to any sign
of alternate possibilities.
My colleague, The Rev. Burton Carly
draws our attention to that same population:
Why would 62 million people find this world-view of the Rapture so
attractive? At one level, the frame of mind that embraces a kind of survivalist
vision coupled with such protracted end-time violence seems to be a theology of
despair. It is a closed ended system that is ticking toward its inevitable
conclusion, and the only mystery is exactly where the world is in the
countdown, and the only freedom is deciding if the individual will join the
ranks of the “us” or the “them.”
As strange as it may seem, I have concluded that as hopeless as the
apocalyptic scenario is, the compelling element in it is a kind of hopefulness.
The hopefulness is that in the end, or after the end to be more precise, a
particular order and set of values will triumph over all others. This offers a
kind of certitude amid the social change and international chaos of this time.
It is the hope of certainty that people hunger for. This leads to an
absolutist theology and politics that shrinks the complexities of life to fit a
smaller certainty.
In
the past, I have kept my silence about the Rapture and about the apocalyptic
stories of the religious right. One of the foundational principals of liberal
religion is religious tolerance. Even though I don’t agree with the
fundamentalists, they have the right to believe whatever they want about God
and history. Even more important (to me personally) is my conviction that
Unitarian Universalism has to stand on its own strength; we are never to
belittle or attack another faith. We do not grow stronger by attempting to
argue that someone else’s religion is weak. Too frequently we judge ourselves
by our own best principals, and then judge others by their greatest flaws and
limitations.
So
why am I focusing on the Rapture this morning?
Well,
it began with Bill Moyer’s speech; that illustrated with great clarity that
there are many people today who will not protest if 1/3 of the land is scorched
from global warming – if 1/3 of our trees die, or if every single green plant
perishes. (They will think that the Book of Revelation if finally coming true.)
But
with the terrible tsunami in
When
it was reported that the earthquake was so severe that it caused the earth to
wobble on its axis, these groups were disappointed to find no reference to this
possibility in scripture. I must admit that I was pretty amused by one man’s
comments. He said that he was certain that the end of the world had come; that
there was nothing he could do to stop the perilous events (nor would he want to
because it was the Lord’s plan)…but nevertheless, he “is going to leave his
coastal home for a safer location, not wishing to be in the path of potential
harm…even so, come Lord Jesus.”
Now,
the folks in the evangelical community who are happy about the tsunami are
clearly the radical fringe. I would bet that the evangelists give more
generously than Unitarian Universalists in sending aid and relief. But at the
very least, out in the market-place of ideas, they are winning impressively.
There are 67 million of them, and only 150,000 of us.
But
even when religious liberal voices are few, I believe that the time has come
for us to be louder and more public in at least three aspects.
First,
we need to teach others that we believe the Bible to be a book written by human
beings about the human condition. And while Jewish and Christian scripture is
full of sublime truths and great stories and tremendous insights into the
meanings and values that make life worth living, the Bible is also full of
errors and dangerous, violent fantasies. The Bible has a lot of wrong
information and terrible prejudice. The darkness of human hatred, desire for
revenges, and indifference to the suffering of others is fully described and
sometimes recommended in the Bible (as is love, compassion, and the
possibilities for transformation. It is a complicated, contradictory book.) We
need to say that loudly.
Second,
rather than attacking the “Rapture” narrative with a dismissive, cold,
rationalist critique, we would do well to bring our curiosity and compassion to
those in our culture who feel profoundly disempowered, frightened, and uncertain
about their futures. I don’t believe it is an accident that the places where
fundamentalists religions thrive usually have the highest unemployment rates,
the highest divorce rates, and the lowest health insurance coverage. Sometimes
old-fashioned despair and frustration can be disguised in the form of a cosmic
showdown, in a desperate cry for change. In apocalyptic stories the
disempowered believe they will be the winners (and everyone else will be the
losers.) It is an ancient story; us and them. We are absolutely right, and you,
you are completely wrong (and lost and damned.) Religious liberals need to
acknowledge the pain that this stance comes out of.
Which
brings me to the third (and most important) responsibility that I believe
religious liberals have to take on in today’s world. As religious conservatives
focus on judgment and final resolutions, let religious liberals focus on the
religious principals at the opposite pole. Let us focus on what mercy is like,
on the ultimate acceptability of every child of God…on the ongoing creative
endeavor of human effort. If we do not believe in a God of harsh judgment and
terrible torture, but a God of mercy and forgiveness and love, then how will
people know that? I mean when we disagree politically How will the world know
that we believe every child’s suffering is significant no matter what their
religious beliefs, their religious doubts, or their educational level?
How
will we model mercy to our own children? To our neighbors? To the stranger? How
will you model mercy and compassion and patience with Jerry Falwell, or with
the “Rapture-believing” relative in your extended family? How will people in
What
is wrong with the “Rapture,” is only what is wrong with human beings. We get
scared. We get discouraged. We get angry. And we seek comfort in stories that
assure us that ultimately we are loved.
The
work of the free church is to convince people everywhere that they are loved
right now. What a wonderful day that will be, when people won’t need to believe
that they will have to vacate their cars in order to know that they are
important. Today, may we work at building a world where no one fears a “Last
Day of Judgment”…a land where what is broken is made whole, where human
fearfulness is turned into courage. It is our common and sacred work to create
a world where everyone feels welcomed.