This Advent, I’m preaching a sermon series with the cheery title ‘Getting Ready for the End of the World’. Last week I talked about how Christians have approached our beliefs about the end times and the return of Christ. I think where I got to (though honestly, who can say?) was that the way we think about the end of the world affects how we live our lives in the here and now. If we believe that the culmination of ‘all this’ is love and justice, then that is going to shape how we live in the moment right now.
Today, I’d like to talk about whether the end of the world, in the Christian way of seeing things, will be violent or nonviolent. Spoiler alert: it will be nonviolent. But in practice, do we behave as though the end of all things will be nonviolent, and what does that even mean, anyway?
We’re going to start with John the Baptist. Now, John the Baptist is a Christian hero. His story is the curtain-raiser in three of the four gospels, and in the fourth (Matthew) he is a the first major plot-point after the birth narrative of Jesus. He pops up in the story from time to time, including a report of his execution by Herod in two of the gospels, and he sends messengers to speak to Jesus. There’s a lot of chatter about ‘John’s baptism’ vs ‘Jesus’ baptism’. John is a big deal in the gospels, especially considering he never became a disciple of Jesus. But it’s not just in the scriptures that John gets a big profile. The other major non-biblical source for both Jesus and John the Baptist is Josephus. And Josephus gives quite a detailed account of John – longer than he does for Jesus.
So John, we can be confident, was pretty famous in the first-century. When the gospel writers began their work, they would include references to John, presumably because their listeners would know who John was. All of them identified John in a particular way. He was the forerunner of Jesus. He prepared the way. Luke paints a delightful picture in which Jesus and John are cousins, and John is the son of one of the priests at the Temple.
But. The pictures of John presented in the gospels are literary construction. Even Josephus gives us a representation of John, that relates to his particular narrative flow about King Herod. But what objective facts can we state with relative certainty about the historical John?
Here’s what I reckon. (Actually, it’s not what I reckon, it’s what John P Meier reckons). John spent time in the wilderness. John baptised Jews as a form of moral cleansing. And John believed that fiery judgement was imminent, and that no one was safe, unless they confessed their own sin and the sin of their whole people, changed both their heart and their conduct immediately, and experienced the baptism of John. Only a small portion of the chosen people would be saved from the coming fire of God’s holy wrath.
Now, if you think that sounds like the kind of person who stages tent revivals in Arkansas, you’d be pretty much right. John, as far as we can tell, was bonkers. He was popular and influential, and he certainly made an impact. I don’t doubt that he believed everything he was saying. But he was a fire and brimstone preacher before it was cool. When John started slagging off Herod because Herod married his own sister-in-law, you can see why he became a threat and had to be eliminated. You can well imagine, too, how a youngish Jesus, just starting out, would have been to visit John and perhaps even spent time learning from him, and you can imagine how the early church identified John, in some way, as a forerunner to Jesus and began to put a narrative framework around him.
But, make no mistake, the message of John the Baptist was of a violent retributive God, who would save only the smallest remnant of the Jewish people, and who would destroy the rest of the world with fire and wrath.
John was an outlier, both theologically and geographically, but his views were an extreme version of beliefs that were commonly held. Many Jews in the first century believed that the end was close, and that perhaps a military saviour would come, someone who was descended from David and who would drive out the Romans and establish a new kingdom. Some believed that God would invade the earth, drive out all evil, and provide a beautiful new realm where the chosen people could live in peace and harmony. This was Jesus’ milieu – it was normal to imagine that there was a great cataclysm coming.
But Jesus is not John. No matter how many times through two millennia people have tried to put John’s message into Jesus’ mouth, Jesus did not come preaching a vengeful God who would destroy everyone but a remnant of true believers.
Which is why, if you ask me, John has been rehabilitated by the gospel writers and by Christian history. Angry, violent preacher John has been transformed into slightly odd, but basically decent opening-act John. This wasn’t for John’s sake, but for ours. Because John’s message is perversely attractive.
Imagine it? You can be pure and righteous and holy, washed clean of all iniquity. And you’re part of a select group. An in-crowd. Everyone else, all your enemies, everyone who has ever wronged you, will be violently punished by God. Who among us wouldn’t be seduced by that, at least at some point in our lives?
But Jesus commands us to love our enemies. Jesus invites us to follow him in a life of generosity and selflessness. Jesus rejects violence, even when it leads to his own suffering. And the risen Jesus? He does not return like a spectre from beyond the grave, seeking to attack those who betrayed and killed him. He offers only forgiveness.
So as you’re getting ready for the end of the world – and I hope you’re starting to get the sense that we’re doing it every day – what kind of ending and new beginning are you imagining? When Jesus returns in glory, to judge both the living and the dead, will it be an enraged, spitting soldier seeking revenge on all those who have done wrong? Or will it be the one who returns be the one who took children in his arms and blessed them? The one who reached out to lepers and outcasts? The one who welcomed tax collectors and sinners?
When you think about the end of the world, who is coming to clean things up?