For a decade or two I’ve had a plan for the zombie apocalypse – or other catastrophic, civilization-destroying end of the world situation.
I have several friends who have well-developed survival skills and supplies, and think about disaster prep with some regularity. After listening carefully to their plans and advice, I developed my own.
In the case of Zombie Apocalypse, eat me first.
While I still have some useful meat on my bones.
While my plan isn’t really an option for someone raising kids, or providing primary care for a loved one – or many others – I think it would work for me.
I am not a fan of roughing it, which there will be a lot of when the world ends. And I’m not especially afraid of death – I know it’s not the end of the story. So in the collapse of civilization, I’d like my death to be useful to my community.
Mostly, I think this seems like a faithful plan – laying down my life for my friends, even. But this week, I’m starting to wonder if Jesus himself would agree that my “die early, serve the community” plan is the right one.
We just heard him predicting the end of civilization as his contemporaries know it. The end of the world as we know it. Earthquakes and wars and insurrections and famines and plagues and false leaders and disasters in the heavens.
Everything – everything is going to be falling apart.
And the disaster won’t be just general, but personal, too.
We – the folks Jesus is talking to – will personally experience arrest and betrayal and killings.
So “Do not be terrified,” he says. “Not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
Not a hair of your head – my head, your head – will perish.
What if we knew we were going to survive the end of the world?
What if all of civilization, and all the small essential parts of our personal assurance and safety are yanked away, and you knew we were going to survive.
Be here, right in the middle of all of it, all the way through, without losing a single hair.
If not a hair of my head will perish, I … might have to re-think the “eat me first” plan.
It won’t work.
I’m going to have to take in the whole disaster, the whole collapse, and keep going.
I mean, that’s more alarming than ever, in a lot of ways. I do not expect to like roughing it through the collapse of civilization, no matter how protected my hair and life and soul might be.
But it’s a little exhilarating, too.
And it’s full of possibilities.
Knowing the end of the world won’t kill you is like having a superpower.
You could take on all the zombies in single combat certain that you’d come out alive (and with your brains still in their original container, uneaten).
I could protect other people.
I could try things that aren’t guaranteed to succeed.
I wouldn’t have to be afraid.
Instead of spending my time on airplanes wondering if my body would be identifiable in the event of a crash, if I knew I was going to survive, I could spend my flying-anxiety energy on imagining the opportunity to help other people – to be the voice of calm, reducing panic, reminding people of the stuff they didn’t listen to in the life-vest briefing, getting people to work together.
(Just imagining it now it feels so good to be able to help, to make a difference.)
Or, instead of getting stuck in slow existential fear for myself, my family, and our world when the news is full of stories about extreme weather, famines, and even wars fueled by climate change, I might be motivated to do even more than I think I can. Become more persistent in the little things and big ones.
Instead of feeling a guilty sense of relief that I probably won’t live to see the worst when we hear that the world of natural disasters is going to get much worse unless we change quite a lot, if I knew I was going to survive – live to the days when 100-year-olds are considered bare youths, as Isaiah prophesies – I know I’d have to be more passionate about the actions I can take. More interested in planning how to help others survive.
What about you?
Maybe I – maybe we – could approach the end of the world as we know it not as something to be avoided at all costs, but as an opportunity – a very uncomfortable one, but an opportunity still – to share our blessings. To count up the gifts we’re grateful for, and give away hope and peace and confidence and joy and calm and opportunity.
The world doesn’t end every day. Fortunately!
But every day you and I face anxieties, losses, fears: we experience little bits of the things that could add up to an end of the world.
The anxieties, losses, fears come from the news media; from fractures in our relationships with family members or friends; from disease; from screw-ups at work; from weather; from politics and the stock market and the price of gas – all the things that make us vulnerable, all the things that remind us that we can fail, and that the world can fail us.
So what if we knew that not only would we survive the end of the world, but that we – you specifically, me specifically – would survive the layoffs at the office, the collapse of the stock market or housing market, the flood or the fire or the loss of a spouse or an endless plane ride over the dark uncertain ocean?
What if you know you will survive this thing that you fear might break you? (Whatever that thing is for you.)
Would you use your protection to protect others? To carry a stranger with a broken leg down the staircase in a burning building?
To buy a meal for someone else with the last dollar in your wallet?
To keep speaking of hope and opportunity when everyone in the meeting is predicting disaster and recommending giving up?
To make promises of generosity and love for the future even when the future looks threatening?
To pray with joy and confidence and trust – or at least stubborn cranky persistence – in the times when it seems like God isn’t even listening?
Those last two, at least, are what Jesus is telling us not just that we can do, but that we will do, because he will give us words and wisdom for all we need.
There’s a story that when asked about what he’d do if the world were going to end tomorrow,
Martin Luther said “If tomorrow were the Judgment Day, today I would plant an apple tree.”
He’d plant the future. Tend fruit even for days that may not come. He’d plant hope, and patience, and care.
What about you?
If you know you’d survive the end of the world,
what would you plant?
Do not be terrified, Jesus tells us. Not a hair of your head will perish.
You will survive unbroken.
It’ll be every possible kind of uncomfortable or frightening or chaotic or intimidating or disruptive or just hard you can imagine, yes, but you won’t even lose a single hair.
And by your endurance – by committing to that apple tree of hope, and trust, and patience and love to be shared with others – by your showing up and not giving up, and trusting God for the rest- you will gain your soul. Gain the abundant life, the heart of God within you, that can never be extinguished, or lost, or end.
No comments:
Post a Comment