You’ve no doubt heard the news by now that the end of the world is scheduled for December 21, 2012.  Remind me to plan Christmas differently that year, since we apparently won’t make it to the 25^th… All of this concern about 2012 – now available for mass consumption in a movie with the title “2012” comes courtesy of the latest end of the world theorists who have consulted an ancient Mayan calendar that ends on that day.

Most of us have lived through several of these predictions, and all of us have lived through real events that ended our world as we knew it.  In fact, the world as we know it is always ending.  For my parents, the news crackling over the radio on December 7, 1941 ended the world as they knew it.

August 6, 1945 is the day that the world as it had been known ended for the people of Hiroshima.

The dates when the world as we knew it ended just keep coming.
November 22, 1963
April 4, 1968
December 11, 2001

And now, for the men and women stationed at Fort Hood, Texas:  a November day will forever be the day when the world as they knew it ended.

But these are not the same kind of endings as those predicted by the Mayan Calendar folks, or the many others who surface from time to time to tell us that the end is hear.  Their kind of the end of the world is closer to the kind that Jesus and his disciples are talking about in Mark:  a cataclysmic once and for all, possibly catastrophic and undoubtedly frightening transformation.

In fact, the Jewish religion of which Jesus and his followers were a part had long harbored a tradition of an apocalyptic turning upside down of the world which survived to influence the early Christian church as well...and which survives today.

We cannot easily understand that tradition if we do not understand the hope out of which it is born.  The hope that the world will be radically, maybe even violently transformed into a different kind of place is the hope of people who do not feel secure in the world as it is.  The Jewish people had been subject to slavery in Egypt; to exile in Babylon; to oppression under the Roman Empire.  The generations of injustice suffered by people who must live as a powerless minority under the rule of a powerful majority gives rise to a desperate need to believe that things will not always be as they are today.  And so the people looked forward to the Messiah; or to the day of the coming of the Lord; and to the turning of the world upside down that would, at last, fulfill their hopes for justice.

End of the world conversation in the Bible is deeply rooted in a deep hunger and thirst for justice.

In Mark’s gospel, the story of Jesus is being told and lived after his death at the hands of the Romans within the community of those who have now suffered an unthinkable injustice.  The temple where they carried out the rituals of their worship has been destroyed at the hands of the Romans.  It is some small comfort to hear the suggestion that Jesus may have foreseen this event.

Some decades later, the writer of Hebrews is encouraging the early church in the midst of their wavering commitments to the gospel.  In this writer’s words, we learn that the worship rituals themselves which used to take place in the temple are no longer required.  Hope of reconciliation with God no longer rests in the sacrificial system of the temple.  Hope of justice no longer rests in some future end of the world scenario.  The religious system into which Jesus was born is done.  No temple.  No sacrificial system.  What, then, are people who harbor a heartfelt desire for reconciliation with God and a deep longing for justice to do?

If religion practice is no longer about temple traditions, and if it is shaped by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, then what does religious practice require of us.

Well...there is a stumbling block right there.  We share the hope that the world would be set right.  We long for the people who are messing it up to get their justice...which usually means either a life sentence in prison or the death penalty.  But we are loathe to consider that something is required of us.  We are looking for a religious system that will give us what we want.  Or we’re looking for no religious system at all.  We want to be spiritual, but God forbid we should be religious.  Religion requires things of us.  It requires that we participate in worship and prayer, gifts and offerings, that we get involved with the messiness of human relationships with one another.

The writer of Hebrews talks about baptism, the corporate confession of hope, and what some would call “meddling.”  Here the Greek word is translated accurately.  “Provoke one another.”

“²⁴And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, ²⁵not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching “ As one commentator put it, “That’s the inconvenient thing about religion:  it asks you to do stuff – like worship with other people, love other people, do good to and for other people.”

There are some who claim that Jesus meant to found a community based on love of neighbor and not a religious system.  But the fact is, before the New Testament canon was complete, the apostles had begun to organize a religious system to be the vessel for the hope that is in the world because resurrection life is real.

Today, as always, we hear and ask the question, “what is this world coming to?”

The writer of Hebrews has that answer.  It is coming to fulfillment in Christ.

The writer of Hebrews – which itself is a sermon – challenges the church to know that the justice for which they have been hoping is already done.

Its already done.  The writer makes this point by giving us a picture of Jesus sitting contentedly at the right hand of God.  I don’t for a moment buy this as a literal truth.  Jesus is not watching passively with a sense of satisfaction that his work is complete while the trials and tribulations of the world seem to go on unabated.  But I do think that this imagery is offered to the church to give us pause about what we believe and how we behave.  We believe that the world the way it appears to be is not the way the world really is.  If you want to see the world as it really is...then look, Hebrews says.  Look at Jesus already seated there...the work complete.

We see the world as it appears...and we see the world as it really is.  That’s what that image of Jesus seated at the right hand of God is all about.  It’s about having the assurance that the world as it is now is not the world as it always must or will be.

And then, like all good sermons, the preacher of Hebrews challenges the listeners:  “now live like you believe it.”

We are the people who are called to paint the picture of the world already redeemed in Christ so that others can see it too.  If we do not gather for worship, if we do not provoke one another to good deeds, if we do not love our enemies and advocate for the ones whom Jesus comes to heal and lift up and feed and care for, if we do not encourage one another, if we do not fill this sanctuary with witnesses...

The world just sees, where the picture of Jesus bringing new life should be...the world just sees a blank canvas.  And on that blank canvas anyone can paint any crazy thing about end of the world scenarios.

But there is no sense in Hebrews that we get to sit down and join Jesus in watching.  We are here, and we are human, and we contribute to what is wrong with the world.  We no longer make meaningless symbolic sacrifices to atone for that.  Jesus finished that.

We now make sacrifices of our lives, not to buy our forgiveness, but to express the love with which we are loved and the forgiveness we’ve already been given.  We get involved in the world, and with each other, and we provoke and respond to the provoking of our neighbor.  We put away the credit card and the black Friday ads and we shop at Share the Light and SERRV.  We put aside our own idle entertainments and show up at a prayer vigil or a march to advocate for justice.  We put aside our own hungers to feed the truly hungry.  We give up re-runs of TV shows that aren’t that good anyway, or a commitment to an activity that will give us a sense of achievement but never a sense of fulfillment to show up for small group Bible study and participate in mutual provoking.

It’s what we do.  We are not the Body of Christ, seated idly while we wait smugly for the world to turn our way.  We are the Body of Christ, living not what we see with our eyes, but what has been revealed to us:  The world as we know it has already ended.  No more crying.  No more tears.  No more sorrow.  No more hunger.  No more injustice.  There is an alternative world already being born.

And a picture to be painted with our lives that creates that world and gives birth to hope.

Don’t just believe that the picture exists.  Live like you believe it.  Paint the picture with your life.  And realize...the artist has chosen community as the medium.  And somebody, sometime, is gonna provoke you to live like you believe it.