Tuesday, November 24, 2020           (today’s lectionary)
Memorial of Saint Andrew Dung-Lac and Companions
Week of apocalypse
On a white cloud sat the son of man with a gold crown on his head and sharp sickle in his hand. An angel called out to him, “The earth’s harvest is fully ripe.” And he gave a mighty sweep of his sickle, harvesting the earth in a single stroke.
But other angels came out of the temple. They used their sickles too, and harvested the earth’s vintage, for the grapes were ripe. And these grapes were thrown into the great wine press of God’s fury.
In the midst of the black plague in England, Julian of Norwich wrote from her fourteenth century cell about God’s love. In her own illness she nearly died, but those days between life and death showed her visions of God as tender mother or father with an all-enveloping love.
Hadn’t she read Revelation?
Episcopalian priest Mary Earle says Julian “directs us all to look at ways in which we project our own bitterness, anger and vengeance upon God. In a resolutely maternal way, Julian encourages us to grow up and cast aside our immature and punitive images of God. Doing this we can more easily be honest with ourselves about those of our own actions which have their roots in spiritual blindness.”
The Lord is king. He governs all with equity. He shall rule the world with justice and constancy.
Let the heavens be glad, let the earth rejoice, let the sea resound, let the plains sing out in joy, and the forest trees exult.
Mary Earle says that Julian “employs homely imagery and language, the vocabulary of domesticity, to tell us that God is as close to us as the clothing we wear, and that God is our friend. She is firm and steady on these four points.
- God is One.
- Everything is in God.
- God is in everything.
- God transcends and encloses all that is made.”
Remain faithful unto death. I will give you the crown of life.
Luke’s chapter 21 spares no punches. Jesus, like Julian, knew the nature of suffering and would eventually know the nature of death. In all of that, and in our own suffering and our own death, the gentle firmness of God’s immovable presence prevails.
Jesus looked at the temple, and the tourists. And he said, “The day will come when there will be nothing left. But don’t be deceived by anyone who says they know the time. Wars must happen, and nations will rise against nations. Earthquakes, famines and plagues will come, and mighty signs in the sky will frighten you. Not yet. Even then, be quiet and faithful and wait.”
Jesus has much more to say about the end of things. All this week before Advent, he will say it. Let the mix of Jesus’ words and the visions of the Revelator shake and rattle and roll in your gut. In the morning’s traffic and the silence of the evening, let the words of God pour through you, the purest living water. Let them pour over you, the sweetest clover honey. Let them pour you out, a drink offering, out of life to death, and into life again.
(Revelation 14, Psalm 96, Revelation 2, Luke 21)
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