Wars and Rumors of Wars

Last updated on: November 9, 2015 at 2:04 pm by Nancy Rockwell

Wars and Rumors of Wars 2015-11-09T14:04:32-04:00 Nancy Rockwell

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Friends and Readers:

It’s a great joy to share the news that I am now a contributing blogger for Patheos. The differences in format you will be seeing over the next weeks are part of moving onto the Patheos platform. I will still be linked on Textweek. If you are a subscriber, you will still get notices of new posts. Your comments about all this, as well as each post, are very welcome. As always, thanks for reading! Nancy
______________________________________________________________

What large stones and what large buildings! The country fellows from Galilee who were Jesus’ disciples are awed, on this first trip to Jerusalem. Jesus pushes back against that awe:All of these building will fall, he tells them, and he speaks about wars and rumors of wars, calling it all thebeginning of the birthpangs.

Well, who isn’t awed by buildings? The icons of cities are their buildings: the Eiffel tower is Paris; Big Ben is London; the Capital Building is D.C. ; the Brandenburg Gate is Berlin. I pick travel destinations, in part, for the buildings I want to see.

So where’s the good news in Jesus saying they will all fall? I can believe Paris, London, D.C., Berlin, will go on after I die. But I don’t want to believe in an age in which all I find awesome – and familiar – in this world will be gone.

Wars and rumors of wars have abounded in my lifetime. Cuba, Vietnam, the Cold War, Iraq twice, Iran, Afghanistan: I’ve lived through these, rumors and wars. Now it’s Syria: a war and a traffic of rumors, a flood of refugees and destruction, undeniable images of treasured buildings lying in rubble. Echoes of the destruction of Jerusalem in 71 C.E., when all those buildings the disciples admired became rubble.

It has been conventional wisdom to understand Jesus’ predictive words about terrible times as pointing to the end of the world. And the end of history. Both of which would immediately re-open as a strange new world.

My former professor, Stephen Jay Gould, had coffee mugs in his office with the words No Vestige of a Beginning, No Prospect of an End written on them – a motto and a manifesto against Christian insistence on end times, and on Eden as a literal history of creation.

But what if Jesus meant something else?

What if Jesus meant us to understand that empires and eras, temples and traditions, all rise and fall, and idols come and go? That the familiar, the treasured, and the dear, do end, but without shattering the nature of creation or the reign of God? What if Jesus meant us to understand that God is beyond all that – and the fullness of time is both within these times and beyond their ticking time-ends? What if Jesus meant us to understand that the mammoth and magnificent achievements of empires cannot begin to represent what is really eternal? What if Jesus is pointing to the power of beginning again as the real story of God, whose creation is not fixed and lasting but endlessly evolving?

America is a creation of immigrants who arrived here when the life they had known was shattered, by war, by despotism, by shifting political winds, by rising tides of hatred. They arrived, survivors of an old world now in rubble who will build a new world, using their scars to limn possibility that does not lead to the old death. From every part of this world they have come, brining remembered food, songs, prayers, customs, comforts, worries. Shift the details, and the survivors of more horrors than I can name arrive to become new people in a new world.

Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. We’ve seen all this come to pass. And we’ve seen how, through it, the world has been reborn.

It takes incredible courage – even more than courage, it takes faith – to begin life again. Ask the wounded vets whose shattered bodies endure unceasing pain. Ask middle-aged Americans who lost good jobs nine years ago in the recession, and haven’t earned a decent living since. Ask all the families who have someone in prison now. Ask the children in the foster-care system. Ask people struggling with addiction. Ask all those who lost homes in the west coast fires this year, or in the Texas floods.

The language of end times gets a particular workout in the presidential hunting season. Candidates predict the rise and fall of the nation, and proclaim themselves the ones who can produce the rise and prevent the fall. We are challenged, as Jesus said we would be, to discern good shepherds and dismiss the rest, without giving in to cynicism or despair.

Environmental disasters, the current end-time story that grips us all, threaten to alter something far more essential than a landmark building: the earth around us. And even environmental disasters need us to have the courage not to give in to cynicism or despair.

As most of the world’s nations gather this month in Paris to address climate change, Jesus’ words – this is but the beginning of the birthpangs – urge us to invest our awe in hope – not in the old stone structures of the past. In these old structures, beloved as they are, we heard rumors of wars. From them, wars came about. Our deep iconography of them cannot help us, though in them we have written the history of vast mistakes. But there are new possibilities for the future: wonderful life, which is never made of stone, but is born of the power of life itself to dream dreams and see visions of God’s world. Jesus’ eye never wavered from this vision: not the end, but the fullness of time.

___________________________________________________________
Illustrations
1. A man prays at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Image from Wikipedia, Western Wall page.
2. Tour Eiffel. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
3. Big Ben in Elizabeth Tower, Parliament Square. Image from Wikipedia Big Ben page.
4. The Capitol Building at Dusk. 2013. Image from Wikipedia, The Capitol Building page.
5. Athletes compete at Wounded Warrior Trials. US Marines Corps veterans, Camp Pendleton. Image from Wikipedia page for Wounded Warrior Trials.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

October 31, 2015

Spotlight on Pious Frauds

Next Post

November 15, 2015 What Is Truth?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Bites Uncategorized

Select a Month December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz