After the Apocalypse - Acts 9:1-20

Not long ago, I heard an interview between Ezra Klein of the New York Times and the novelist Emily St. John Mandel.  St. John Mandel’s novel Station Eleven was written in 2014, but given that it concerns cultural survival in the face of a global pandemic, it had a recent revival. HBO even turned it into a miniseries. 

Station Eleven is a novel that is described as “Post-Apocalyptic,” and as he introduced the conversation Klein quoted from a character in Mandel’s new novel who said: “My personal belief is that we turn to post-apocalyptic fiction not because we’re drawn to disaster, per se, but because we’re drawn to what we imagine might come next.  We long secretly for a world with less technology in it.”  Post-apocalyptic fictions may contain our nightmares, but they may also represent our fantasies.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I believe this is certainly true for me.  And it is not simply an escape from our tech saturated world and a desire for some simpler way of life.  Instead there is a sense that the current configuration of the world is wrong in myriad ways and the only way we can imagine a change to that wrongness is a radical disruption. 

This desire for radical change can explain a great many of the realities of our world.  Some of us turn to fiction while others are drawn to disruptive political leaders.  Far too often, there are those who engage in war and violence as strategies of upheaval—ways of turning the world upside down in hope that it will all come out better in the end.

The apostle Paul was one of those people.  As the young man Saul, he sensed that the world was not right and he came to the conclusion that the only way to return to goodness was terroristic violence.  The Romans were occupying Israel and so were preventing the restoration of God’s kingdom on earth.  And if that wasn’t enough, there were now a group of Jews who said that the long awaited Messiah had come, had been crucified, and had risen again.  These Jews were now extending friendship in the name of this messiah with people who were unclean, gentiles who violated the very purity codes that Saul was sure were key to bringing God’s justice to earth.   So like so many before and since, Saul decided to turn things upside down—violently bringing disruption so that hopefully God would make the world right from the rubble.

But on the road to Damascus, in that long war torn land of Syria, Saul had an encounter with disruption of a different kind—an encounter that changed his identity and name.  Instead of bringing change into the world through violence, he was changed by the one who had taken the violence of the world onto himself.  Paul met Jesus and through the disruption of his life he found what he was looking for—a life of reconciliation with God and neighbor that can only come through a letting go.  Paul found healing disruption, not by bringing a resistant world into order through violence, but by joining Jesus on the cross.  It was through way of the cross, Paul found, that resurrection and the healing he’d so long sought could finally be realized.

What Paul experienced on his way to Damascus was an apocalypse. As I preached before, the term apocalypse comes from the Greek title of the book of Revelation.  It means to unveil, to reveal.  An apocalypse isn’t necessarily a disaster or collapse, but an unveiling of the truth about the world.   Sometimes that truth is monstrous.  As Paul saw in his apocalypse, the violence he’d been perpetrating was not bringing about the goodness he sought.  With this truth Paul realized that it was he who must be changed; it was he who must die to so that he could live anew in Christ.

The fact is that, in the biblical sense, what comes after apocalypse isn’t devastation but renewal.  Post-apocalypse isn’t a nuclear wasteland or  pandemic emptied streets.  The true apocalypse of the cross is the ultimate victory of God.  What comes next is the healing of all creation, the renewal of heaven and earth.

What does this mean for us as we again worry about the dire realities of our world? This past week I had the opportunity to attend some lectures from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.  As the leader of the world-wide Anglican communion, he knows the realities of upheaval, especially the ecological disasters already ravaging the global south.  In an address to the graduating class, Archbishop Welby told them that there is no form of proper preparation for the world in which they are going to be ministering. What we need to develop instead of readiness, Archbishop Welby told them, is resilience.  The way you do that, he said, is by staying close to Jesus, worshiping the one who took on the violence of the world and rose again as a first sign of the new creation.  We learn to be resilient not by worrying about what may come, but through the worship of the God that we have faith will bring healing in the end.

At the close of his remarks, Archbishop Welby shared the story of a friend who was a priest in Congo.  This priest had witnessed the worst of atrocities one can imagine.  Archbishop Welby asked this Congolese priest how he handles such chaos and suffering, such vast human need all around him.  The priest replied, “I stay in prayer to God and do what I can with what God gives me.  Everything else is God’s problem.”  That is the attitude of someone who has witnessed apocalypse, it is an example of someone who has formed his life through the worship rather than worry. 

We have not experienced the kind of suffering that this priest in Congo has, and hopefully we never will.  But our future no doubt has plenty of perils. Whatever comes, good or bad, if our lives are going to have any hope of true resilience they must be formed through the worship of God, living a life of constant prayer, doing what we can with what God gives us.  And like this priest, we must have the ability to let go, leaving everything else as God’s problem. God has already won the victory, but the world writhes in a violent rebellion against that truth. Still, in the light of Christ’s resurrection we know that our post-apocalyptic future awaits—a time not of disaster and disruption—but the healing of all things.  In the meantime, in a world full worry, let us worship; in a world full of grand plans, let us pray.  God has come to disrupt our hearts and lives, not for devastation, but for life anew.  Amen.