“I think we’re living in the end times.” That’s what Mrs. Murray said to me as I was giving her a ride home one Sunday evening. Mrs. Murray did occasional cleaning at the inner-city school where I was working at the time, and because she didn’t have a car, I would sometimes drive her home after the Sunday evening Mass.
When she told me that she believed we were living in the end times, we were riding through a much-neglected part of the city. My car was fighting with potholes, as we drove past houses that looked structurally unsound. Mrs. Murray had told me before about the gun violence in her neighborhood, how she would hear gunshots at night and how people were often killed right down the street from her house. Sadly, this was nothing extraordinary for her; it was simply part of her distressing world.
I remember thinking to myself that I didn’t agree with Mrs. Murray on the imminence of the end times. But how could I fault her for thinking the end of time was near? Every day was a struggle for her and her family. It was a nightmare for many who lived in the neighborhood through which I was driving, where trash littered the streets because the city had not provided enough garbage cans and where yet another shooting was seen as just one more statistic, barely worth a mention in the newspaper.
Add to that the nation’s political situation at the time, the ever-increasing despair around environmental issues, and the deep anxiety of a world reeling from repeated acts of terrorism, then maybe Mrs. Murray was on to something. Maybe the end was near. Or at the very least, it wouldn’t be foolish to look at the signs and think so.
Mrs. Murray certainly wasn’t alone in feeling that the world was coming to an end. If I had a penny for every connection made between natural disasters and the apocalypse, I would be a rich man. Novels about the end times make the bestseller lists, and bizarre cults form around definitive predictions of when the Son of Man will appear, coming on the clouds to judge the world and gather the righteous, and of course, doom all others to eternal punishment. Everybody, it seems, wants to know when. From Scripture, we seem to know what will happen, but the real unanswered question is when.
And that’s precisely what Jesus says we cannot know. Immediately before today’s Gospel passage, Jesus has described earthly suffering—wars, famines, earthquakes, and great anxiety—that he says are not yet the end. They’re only the birth pangs. They’re the natural sufferings of earthly life that will demand endurance and patience from his disciples. It’s during those difficult times that false prophets will arise, attempting to mislead us. But the end times are not yet here.
Jesus, insistently, won’t tell us when the end will be, but he does tell us what will happen. The end of the age will be a cosmic event that upends a world ravaged by sin and subverts oppressive worldly powers. Jesus provides an image of how comprehensive this transformation of the world will be so that we can recognize it when it arrives. But the time of that exact hour is not for us to know. It’s as if what we don’t know won’t hurt us, as the saying goes.
And yet, it certainly seems as if not knowing is working against us. Think of the definitive hope we could have if we just knew when it would all occur. Think of how prepared we could be to greet our Lord at his Second Coming. Think of the hope it would give to Mrs. Murray in her under-resourced neighborhood, waking up at night to gunshots and longing to sleep for one night without being awakened to violence. Think of what such knowledge would do for Israeli and Palestinian hostages who can’t communicate with their families and to Ukrainian civilians enduring an endless crisis. Think of the hope it would give to anyone whose earthly existence feels like hell itself. Why wouldn’t we want to know when the end will come? Because if the end comes soon, things will surely be better soon. And for some, hoping for the end to come very soon is worth enduring the present suffering.
I can’t blame those like Mrs. Murray who interpret present human suffering as a sure and certain sign that the end is near. They’re looking for hope. In this sense, they’re unlike the irresponsible Christians who wield the end of time as a stick of fear to beat others into compliance. But Jesus has already told us that the vivid reality of earthly suffering is not yet the end. It’s only the beginning of the birth pangs, something to be endured patiently and bravely until God truly brings in his kingdom. We can’t know the when of that advent. It’s as if Jesus knows what’s best for us, and what’s best for us is that what we don’t know won’t hurt us. Indeed, what we don’t know will actually help us. Not knowing, it appears, is an indescribable gift.
Because if we really think about it, knowing when would do no good at all. Worrying and fretting about when causes us to be either impatient and foolish, or too patient and slothful. If we knew when, we would be tempted to sleep through the present and abdicate our responsibilities. It would cause us, like many Christians, to focus so much on the end of time that the present means nothing, giving us permission to squander creation and live recklessly.
On the other hand, worrying about the delay of when it will all happen, can create such impatience that humanity tries to become its own savior, refusing to wait in patience for the Second Coming of our true Savior. Knowing when would prompt us to do the right things for the wrong reasons. In short, fretting about when causes us to live in great fear and anxiety or in egregious laziness, which only increases the world’s problems. It causes us to look only to the future instead of receiving the gift of the present.
But maybe Mrs. Murray was partly right. Maybe we are living in the end times to some extent. Maybe this undergirds the invitation latent in Jesus’ words to his disciples as he approaches the cross. Watch. Keep awake. You don’t know when, but you do know what has happened and what will happen. And that’s a gift.
Unlike those disciples hearing Jesus’s words, we know that our Lord was crucified on a cross, inverting the world’s power dynamic for all time. And because of that what, we know that death no longer has dominion over us. We know that sin has been defeated, and the devil has been trampled down. We know that the Holy Spirit has been given to us, to lead us into all truth. We know that we are the living Body of Christ with a powerful role in God’s mission in the world. And we know that although Christ will come again to bring in the perfection of God’s kingdom, because he has already come, the end times are already, in some sense, breaking into this age although not fully realized.
The time in which we live is only the birth pangs of earthly tribulation, where violence reigns, injustice is rampant, and the world seems to be crumbling around us. It’s a time of great testing that will demand our utmost patience. It will require us to be watchful and awake. It will require us to be a people alive with the Gospel, who live not in constant fear or anxiety but with an animated sense of hope borne out of the good news we have received in Christ.
The gift of not knowing is that in the most uncertain times, we find the most surprising gifts. When we don’t know the future, we live in the present, and we see that daily, the risen Christ comes into our lives. Daily, the Holy Spirit drives us to some action that we find has blessed another. Daily, God sends yet another person to this parish to use her gifts for the building up of the kingdom. Daily, our unknown future leads us into unexpected ministry that we would never have otherwise found.
When we don’t know when but when we trust in what will happen, we live boldly. We take risks in ministry. We live generously. And while waiting patiently for the perfection of God’s reign, we also live with urgent expectation that the present can be better than it seems to be. In short, we live in hope because we know that Christ has come, and that has upended our world. We know that he still comes, and that inspires us to live fully in the present. And we know that he will come again at the end of the age to judge the world and establish righteousness.
So, maybe Mrs. Murray was partly correct. We are living in the end times. Already partly here, and not yet fully realized. And while we don’t know when that glorious end will come with Christ riding on the clouds, we do know what it will be. It will be something infinitely more wonderful than we can ask or imagine. And something that wonderful, whenever it does come, can only appear from outside our world, riding on the clouds.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday of Advent
December 3, 2023