Alright, be honest. Have you started listening to Christmas Music yet? We have not. We have a strict family rule, not until dessert on Thanksgiving! But I have started listing to my favorite Advent playlist (Don’t @ me. It’s different!)

The list titled “Apocalyptic Advent Bangers” consists of over three hours of music around the old school advent themes: the apocalypse, Judgment Day, the end of the world as we know it. In fact that’s the first song on the list!

Next up is Dave Matthews Band’s “When the World Ends,” Then there’s the Man in Black, of course, Johnny Cash, with “When the Man Comes Around” in which Cash literally recites passages of Revelation in a way that makes you wonder if he’s trepidations or excited about it. 

But one song on my Advent list which you probably don’t know is by the modern bluegrass band Nickel Creek. It’s called “The 21st of May.” 

Sinner, heed these words of mine
‘Bout the coming Judgment Day.
Yes, the end is drawing nigh.
Hallelujah, the 21st of May.

The song is based on a real-world preacher who tallied up all the scriptures, did the math, and was certain that the End would arrive on the 21st of May, 2011. 

They laughed while Noah built his boat,
Then cried when came the rain.
They mock me now, but I will float
On the 21st of May.

In fact, the song was written by a member of the band on May 10, 2011, the day before the world did not in fact end, with this closing verse: 

Well, I’ve never been so sure
And I’ve never led no one astray.
‘Cept in the fall of ’94.
But Hallelujah, to the 21st of May. 

In today’s lesson the disciples are leaving the Temple, passing through one of its great gates supported by stones as big as your bedroom. “Oooooh” they say, “What great stones!” 

“See those stones?” Jesus replies, “Not one of them will be left unturned on the last day.” 

“When Lord!?” they ask. See? We always want to know when. But Jesus doesn’t tell them! He says “What hour on what day is not for you to know. Only God knows. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars,” Jesus tells them, “do not be afraid. This is not the End, but the beginning of the birth pangs.” 

I got a note this week from someone who knew we were reading this passage. The email was about something else but toward the end they asked “Pastor Drew, I read the scripture for Sunday and I have to ask. Do you think it’s happening? Do you think the world is ending?” and I chickened out on my response. I responded to the email, but not to that question. My first impulse was to say “Of course not. All that apocalyptic rapture stuff is 19th century Christian hogwash, and there’s no point in even trying to predict it anyway. It’s not for us to know!” 

And then I read the question again, “Pastor, do you think the world is ending?” And my most honest answer is, “of course it is.” 

As I mentioned, today’s passage goes on and it gets worse. More terrible things are listed. “There will be arrests, beatings, persecutions. Flee to the mountains. Pray you’re not pregnant! Brother will betray brother. Desecration. Sacrilege. The works!” In reading the whole chapter and reflecting on it, you know what came to mind? You did. Your stories. Our world. Stories of pain, loss, grief, death, our world’s stories of war, violence, corruption, oppression, persecution, disaster, and more. The signs are all there. Of course the world is ending… The hard fact, from which Christians may not turn away, is, worlds end every day. 

Among my new friends in Alabama is a fun, goofy dude named Ralph. Ralph calls himself a recovering Baptist. He’s a silly, gentle soul with a big belly and ever present suspenders. Well, this week he showed up with his wife and clearly had lost a whole lot of weight. Ralph let us know he has pancreatic cancer. You could hear it in his voice. He’s afraid, and in so many words he confessed that he felt like his world had ended. And it has. 

The world in which Ralph is care or cancer free is gone. The world he thought he lived in, the life he thought he was living, is over. Many of you know this feeling. The world in which you are able bodied and pain free is gone. The world in which your family looks like the family you dreamed of is gone. The world in which your marriage is what you thought it would be. The world in which your children die long after you. The world in which you fill in the blank. They are gone. 

Worlds end every day. 

Now, I still believe in an ultimate ending, in an ultimate second coming of Christ; but part of what our Lord reveals to us again today is that the End with a capital E is preceded by myriads of other worlds’ ending. 

These are the real, painful birth pangs, he says. Birthpangs. He tells us these are, contractions of the world as we know it, and they hurt, and they’re frightening. Our only hope is that someday, in the wake of all our bygone worlds, a new world is being born. 

This is precisely the hope our Lord offers us. Birth pangs, in the light of Christ, remind us of a new birth which has already begun in him.  

In John’s version of this same story, John includes an explanatory note. When Jesus foretells the distraction of the temple, John says “Jesus was speaking of the temple of his body.”

In a world with far too many endings, our Lord offers up his body, so that we, his body today, might know the Good News “I died,” he says in Revelation, “My world was ended. And behold, I am alive forever more. I am Alpha and Omega. The beginning and the End.”

While we were together this week I overheard Ralph saying, “It’s going to be okay. It’ll all get better in the end. If it ain’t better, then it ain’t the end.”

Worlds end every day, on the 21st of May, and the 17th of November. But a new world has begun. A new world is being born. Here it springs up. There it surprises us. And one day it will be brought to completion. In the meantime, because he lives, we live also, we feel every birth pang, but by the light of the resurrection, in the midst of every ending, we look for and bear witness to the newborn beginnings of the world begun in Christ, a world whose end has no end. 

Everyday Apocalypse
By Rev. Drew Colby

Worlds end every day
It’s not just leaves that fall
But trees
Mighty bulwarks of the forest
Sentries whose watch has ended
Does it hurt?

Worlds end every day
Well laid plans
Perfectly managed lives
Least expected outcomes
Foregone conclusions run their course
Is this the end of the world?

Of course it is
So little is permanent
Then again
So much