First Sunday of Advent, rcl yr c, 2021
Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-9; Luke 21:25-36
Not long after the election of Donald Trump, the doomsday plans of the ultra-wealthy began to come to light. Peter Thiel, the man behind PayPal, and, after buying early shares in FaceBook, a man who had become a Silicon Valley financial juggernaut—was profiled in the New Yorker, in a story about his purchase of a huge property in New Zealand. Thiel’s plan was, according to the story, to have a place that would be safe in a post-Trump world of social division and collapse.
And without taking you down the rabbit-hole I went down this weekend, suffice to say, New Zealand has become especially treasured for those who have the money to contemplate building a boutique doomsday bunker. To the point that, in some Silicon Valley social circles, procuring property in New Zealand is sometimes short-handedly called buying “apocalypse insurance.”
COVID has only bolstered the apocalypticism of tech billionaires. At least one billionaire bunker buyer trying to flee COVID—having never used or visited his well-heeled hideout, apparently—had to call his service provider in Texas because he didn’t know the combination to the bunker door. “He wanted to verify the combination for the door and was asking questions about the power and the hot water heater and whether he needed to take extra water or air filters,” said his security man, in a true-life illustration of the fact that you still can’t buy intelligence.
We should see these stories of wealth as apocalyptic, in that they reveal something about our world, and the powers and principalities in play. This is what “apocalytic” means. It means a revealing of things. But stories of the obscenely wealthy buying antipodean bolt-holes are apocalyptic not because the Peter Thiel’s of this world are right about some sort of coming social collapse. These stories are apocalyptic because they reveal something: the very people whose wealth is built on social division are so afraid of that social division, that instead of using that wealth and power to seek a public or shared good, they would use it to further only their own personal interests.
That, most certainly, reveals something about the powers and principalities that are at work in the world. They are misanthropic at heart; this kind of wealth-making does not create love for others, but encourages self-love and self-interest instead.
We should be thinking of these sorts of apocalyptic anxieties as we read Luke’s Gospel. The monstrous wealth, and all the intractable self-interest that is creating social division, political instability, intractable poverty, and a climate emergency—all these things should come to mind. And we most certainly should have the words “Come Lord Jesus” on our lips. Come Lord Jesus, and set this right.
The long Christian tradition, though, of reading these passages, distinguishes between two things. Two sorts of apocalypse. The first is the suffering that we bear more immediately—in Jesus’s time, a suffering felt in the social and political instability that would lead the Roman Army to invade Jerusalem and destroy the temple. That, too, was an apocalypse, revealing of the powers and forces at work in the world, and the destruction that those powers create.
These sorts of apocalypses continue to take place—the way COVID has revealed how poorly we care for the elderly and disabled in long-term care. Our climate emergency reveals just how difficult it is to regulate multinational corporations, and the ways that, in practice, wealth is more important to us than a livable planet is. There are misanthropic powers and principalities at work and they are extraordinarily difficult to control.
But the long tradition of the Church teaches also of another kind of apocalypse—the final revelation of the Son of Man, the return of Jesus to set all things right. And it will be, on the one hand, terrifying. “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then we will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.”
Not the sort of Advent calendar that I’m most familiar with. Mine have Lego, chocolate, or Scotch in them. This is Luke’s Advent calendar, with signs like the sun, moon, stars, roaring seas, and distressed nations behind its little doors.
This is though the teaching of the church: yes there will be little apocalypses, revealing something of the powers at work in the world; but there’s going to be a big one too, where all those powers will be revealed. But they won’t just be revealed; those destructive powers will be overcome and defeated in the coming of the Son of Man.
And so,“when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Your redemption, your ransom, your salvation in Christ, and the salvation too of the whole world, the whole creation made anew. And so it’s a ransom, a redemption, a making of all things new again that is ultimately something of joy, of fruitfulness: the Son of Man will descend on the clouds, and according to Jesus, it will be like a fig tree sending forth leaves.
“Then he told them a parable,” writes Luke: “‘Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near.’” So for us today, as the powers that demean us, enslave us, and diminish us, as the powers that take their toll on us, and on the planet, are revealed—we set our shoulders to work against them.
But let us pray, too: “Come Lord Jesus come.” Defeat these powers, once and for all; make justice reign, set all things right and make all things new. Make good on your promise, grant us a world that we would enjoy like a summer’s day when the fruit are in season. This is what we pray for in Advent: that our Lord Jesus would come, and that he would come soon.
The Revd Preston DS Parsons, PhD