Lenten Apocalyptic: Rending Our Hearts

Apocalypse is an unveiling, thus why the book of Revelation is called Revelation, and in some Bibles the Apocalypse of St. John. In a sense the book is to show what is underneath the events and happenings in this age that is passing away. This revealing of apocalypse removes an outer layer and opens up to view what has been covered over.

The second chapter of Joel calls for a tearing off of clothes and a tearing of the heart. This is in response to this terrible and unsettling geopolitical event of Joel's day, that Joel also identifies as the day of the Lord. The uncovering of this looming event as the Day of the Lord is to also bring about an opening of the hearts of the people of God.

This rending open of the heart as a response to apocalyptic is perhaps counterintuitive to how apocalyptic thinking is presented to us. Many "End Times" focused and/or obsessed Christians can seem to cover over their hearts within apocalyptic expectation and prediction. Their is an appearance of heartlessness in expecting, looking for, and basing political decisions and actions upon expectations of the end of the world being near.

But as I think about what I have studied and read in the Hebrew Prophets, and in my reading of the Apocalypse of John, this covering over and hardening of the heart to what happens in the world is not the only direction their words can be taken. Rather, I am coming to think that apocalyptic is supposed to lead us to repentance. This repentance based on hearts opened to the levels of meaning and the suffering in the world, uncovers the suffering and upheaval as itself a sign that something other needs to come, if not also the revelation of its coming.

At least a Lenten apocalyptic should be this. Fasting (of various kinds), alms giving, greater perseverance in prayer and meditation during Lent should lead us to large and small Apocalypse, and thus lead us to ever greater and deeper repentance. An apocalypse of our hearts, where our hearts are rent open to the world and its suffering and thus opened up to the nearness and approaching age to come, The Day of the Lord. Apocalypse (properly understood) then should make us a compassionate people without judgment, who identify with a failing world, and wish to bring what Good is here into the world to come, confident this is what God, the Good, is doing.

Uncover your hearts and see the coming of the Day of the Lord.

Lenten Apocalyptic

One of the Readings for this past Ash Wednesday was From Joel. Something about the urgency and upheaval Joel saw coming in the world and which Joel names as the Day of the Lord, struck a chord with the upheaval in the middle east the continuing strife and wrangling in our civic and political processes. I have been lead into a bit of Lenten apocalyptic. I was wrestling to articulate this Lenten unveiling in my Ash Wednesday Sermon Apocalyptic as seeing in the upheavals in our lives and the worlds as revelations, as those things that expose truth, and proclaiming the coming of the Day of the Lord. Thus leading to repentance and preparation to receive God's judgment and transformation, that is salvation.

I hesitate to say much more. There is a mystery here, there is something profoundly sacred and thus something that can be profaned. Apocalyptic, God's unveiling has been seen as God doing the destruction that reveals, and that brings the world to its big destructive end, like the lair of a villain whose finally been exposed. Like bond or the super hero those in the know somehow make it out of the imploding lair unscathed, but not so lucky are others. Though there is probably something to this image: the destruction of the villains lair is due to some flaw in the villain, or the plan or the operation of some device that brings everything crashing down. There is in our current state of affairs, what we might call this present age, or "The World" and in humanity a fatal flaw. We and the world aren't as we should be. This is the Christian story. this is why there is Ash Wednesday, Lent, Good Friday, and Easter.

The earth quake in Japan, in conjunction with so much else that is going on in these past several months in the world, held my attention as I thought of Joel's and the prophet's (like Amos) Day of the Lord and their poetic and prophetic utterances. In these confluence of astounding and devastating, and even hopeful but staggering events of recent months is there something to be uncovered, is something being opened up to us and are we to repent and open ourselves up to what is coming?