33rd Sunday 2022
Malachi 3:19-20; 2 Thess 3:7-12; Luke 1:5-19
It is some years since I travelled by train out of London Euston, so I don’t know whether that slogan is still painted on a gable end, to be seen to the right of the tracks within the first minute or so of your journey. It reads (or read) “Prepare to meet thy God” not perhaps the most comforting message when you have just entrusted your life to the railway company.
I recall too the Sporting Sam cartoon strip in the Sunday Express of the 1950s and 60s. The particular version which I have in mind came at the end of the football season when all the issues of promotion and relegation had been settled. In the first frame, Sam is confronted by a man wielding a placard reading “The end of the world is nigh”. He smirks, and heads around the corner, where a newspaper flyer reads “Who goes up: who goes down. Official”. In the final frame, Sam can be seen gulping, his hair on end and his eyes like saucers.
Are we confronting the imminent end of the world? Certainly, there are enough wars and revolutions to disturb the most sanguine among us. Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, Nigeria, Iran, Nicaragua, Lebanon, DRC, Ethiopia are only some of the countries where either open war is raging, or rebel movements or oppressive governments are making life precarious for many.
Earthquakes, plagues, and famines are numerous. Recently we have heard of high death tolls from crushes at a football match in Indonesia and an outdoor party in Seoul, South Korea; mud slides in the Philippines, and a bridge collapse in India. Famine again stalks parts of Africa, and the effects of pollution and global warming threaten the very survival of the human race.
So is the writing on that north London wall grimly prophetic? Is the end of the world at hand? Are these the last days?
I think we have to admit that we do not know. Jesus warned His disciples that the Jerusalem Temple, the focal point of the Jewish faith, would soon be destroyed, a prophecy fulfilled during the crushing of the Jewish revolt against Roman rule in 70 BC.
This must have seemed to many Jews like the end of the world, but says Our Lord “the end is not so soon”. The so-called Wailing Wall of the Temple stands to this day, a reminder of both glory and destruction, and a sign of ongoing conflict, as Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians struggle over the holy site and the right to live in Jerusalem and surrounding areas.
Many thousands have died in this conflict, and in its equivalents throughout the world. For such victims of violence, their times have indeed been the end times, as their own lives, and much that they fought for, have been destroyed. Natural and man-made disasters have brought the end times for countless others. Growing up in the 1950s and 60s, many of us feared the end of the world via a nuclear holocaust, particularly at this time of year sixty years ago during the Cuban missile crisis.
Now our fear concerns the destruction of planet Earth, the result of a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, many of whose effects are already both visible and tangible. It is surely ironic that the Cop 27 Conference, meeting to discuss ways of averting disaster, entails the pumping of vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as delegates fly to and from Egypt.
What does all of this tell us? It reminds us that we, at least as individuals, are not built to last. We have built-in obsolescence, and we need to be conscious of living each day in the light of eternity. Each day, we must indeed prepare to meet our God.
Perhaps, for the world as a whole, it is still true that “the end is not so soon”. We do not know, but we must do all in our power to ensure that we leave a beautiful and habitable planet for succeeding generations for as long as God deems it good. Let our carelessness not be responsible for a premature ending.
