Apocalypse When?. Jerry L. Sumney

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      These distorted fundamentalist end-time narratives pose the opposite problem of secular doomsday products. They insist that the state of the world is God’s will. The suffering endured by people and the planet is the result of God’s wrath against the heathens, and, worse, it is inevitable. Those ascribing to this theology assent to the suffering of others (and even their own suffering) because they see no possibility for a better future until they are whisked away by a vengeful God smiting the Earth and all his (sic) enemies. In both secular and Christian apocalyptic fiction, however, the result is the same. People resign themselves to having no agency in God’s work of restoration. Or, worse, they believe that polluting the Earth or stirring up war in the Middle East is going to speed up Christ’s return.

Preachers, then, have a profound challenge—to reintroduce their listeners to the apocalyptic texts in a way that takes them on a journey that is different from either the secular or fundamentalist Christian paths. It is not a journey that leads to war or ecological collapse or oppressive dystopias, but rather “a journey into the heart of God, a journey into the heart of our world,” says Rossing. Apocalyptic texts give us a way of seeing that “teaches us how to look at the stories of our lives and the structures of violence and power in light of God’s shepherding Lamb. It teaches us to challenge oppression and to look for signs of hope, even when evil seems overpowering. It gives us an urgent vision for our future in which God dwells with us, on earth.”22 And it invites us to actively participate in that future in a life-giving way.

      Homiletical Orientation

The sermons in this book will be grounded in a theology of preaching wherein “the Word of God spoken is itself the Word of God in preaching or God’s own speech to us. Thus preaching has a dual aspect: divine activity and human activity, God’s Word and human speech.”23 This dual function of preaching emphasizes both the human activity of the preacher who takes the suffering of humanity and Earth into consideration when proclaiming God’s Word, as well as God’s action of calling people to awareness, repentance, and hope in the midst of despair. Such proclamation is enhanced by engaging with other dialogue partners, as Richard Lischer states: “Beyond the preacher’s pastoral experiences lies theology’s perennial dialogue with psychotherapy, anthropology, philosophy, ideology, politics, the arts, science, medicine, cybernetics, and ethics. This dialogue not only informs preaching; it makes it possible—and intelligible.”24

As a Lutheran 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.”

My homiletic is also strongly influenced by what John McClure identifies as a liberation theology approach to preaching, which develops “a profound awareness of Christ incarnate in the pain and suffering of the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, the shamed, the shunned, the outcast, the abused, or the disenfranchised.”26 I extend this liberation theology to include an ecotheological orientation for preaching that moves to expand our awareness beyond the human community to embrace the other-than-human community of Earth-kin and Earth itself. Including these voices at the homiletical “round table” (to use McClure’s and Lucy Atkinson Rose’s phrase) arises out of, and is a natural extension of, the gospel’s concern with “the least of these” and the good news about the coming of God’s new creation. In the preacher’s proclamation of grace within a sermon about apocalyptic texts, “God’s will and power are identified not with what socially is but with what will be.”27

Consider, for example, passages such as Isaiah 65:17–19, 2 Corinthians 5:17, and Revelation 21:15, each of which contain either the phrase “new heaven and new earth” or “new creation.” A sermon about this theme will proclaim hope as “an absolutely fundamental theological category [because] anticipation of a new future grounded in faith in God conditions and motivates life,” says McClure. “The Christian life is one of hope, consciousness-raising, learning from and suffering with the oppressed (in order to come close to Christ), hope for and involvement in the work of social transformation, and joy in the present, rooted in faith’s hope for and vision of the future.”28 We’ll explore this theme of hope and new creation more fully throughout the book.

      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:

The temptation is to avoid those texts altogether. The infrequent appearance of Revelation in the Revised Common Lectionary aids in that conspiracy of silence. If, however, there is something central to Christian theology in those apocalyptic texts, those texts need to be proclaimed. If the lectionary is not going to help, the preacher needs to do something intentional, such as a sermon series on apocalyptic texts. These texts cannot be left to the Christian fringe.29

We agree with Quanbeck’s assertion that preachers must address apocalyptic texts in their sermons. Apocalyptic preaching attempts to answer the question, how shall we live in this space in between the already and the not yet?30 How shall we sojourn in this “becoming” time and space that is so precariously perched upon the abyss? The fact is that chaos does bring pain and destruction with it. The “birth pangs” described by Paul in Romans 8 may be heralding a new creation, but the woman in travail must learn how to push through the pain and violent upheaval. Ideally, she will have midwives to coach her along, remind her to breathe, and guide the emergence of the new creation. Perhaps that is one role for the preacher—to serve as a midwife for God’s people and Earth longing for the birth of the new creation.

      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.

As worship leaders and preachers, we hold these two edges together—the past and the present time—while also looking toward that horizon of the eschatological future. The poet David Whyte speaks of the “generous surprise” that comes to us in good literature and art, and, I would add, in worship services and preaching.31 This generous surprise brings us into a new world, but also a world that is familiar to us. It is the paradox of the crucified body resurrected—bearing the scars yet transformed by God’s power and grace into new life. This is what apocalyptic preaching can do. It can guide us into a world where we are changed when we come into this generous surprise. Apocalyptic preaching invites transformation, СКАЧАТЬ