Christian Time and the End of Times

I took this picture earlier in the year of my favorite prayer shack at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Ky.  Famous as the monastery of Thomas Merton, I can completely lose track of time during my retreats there.  This particular Rosary Hut is my favorite place to forget about things and concentrate on prayer. I leave behind the time that often rules me and enter into the liminal space of eternal time.

In my studies on the book of Revelation, I am coming to the growing conviction that the book is less about a linear dating of a dramatic close of life and instead that it is a narrative of Christians living inside the world.  How we further identify our own dwelling place, either in the city of God or in Babylon, Revelation speaks to the timeless breadth of the Church. 

I have been surveying what others think about this idea and I have found some very interesting thoughts.  In the book Narrative Reading, Narrative Preaching: Reuniting New Testament Interpretation and Proclamation,Stanley P. Saunders writes a chapter titled Revelation and Resistance: Narrative and Worship in John's Apocalypse. Saunders quickly sums his reading of Revelation in this quote;

Revelation was created for oral performance amid the eucharistic gatherings of the early Christians.

Saunders trots this out by dealing with the linear structure of the way that we assume narrative generally takes place, and explains it as only making sense inside a non-linear "imaginative participation".  I have also been listening to lectures by Thomas Hopko's Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation Within Orthodox Christian Tradition. This series outlines the book of Revelation within an Orthodox framework.  The Orthodox lectionary doesn't have a single reading from Revelation, it is the only NT book left out of their reading cycle.  Hopko goes on to teach that its inclusion is not necessary because Revelation is woven throughout the Orthodox liturgy as a foundational principle.

Christian time differs from earthly time.  It is caught up in the idea of time being something that is conceded to man so we can better understand who God is. Worship is then an active rehersal of the world according to God.  To think of time being final to God is quite silly.  Revelation as scripture is highly illogical in the most rational sense, because it must be read in relation to the entire canon. By removing the fairly recent interpretation of Revelation being a calender and instead integrating it within Christian time gives us a better reading, and a truer one to the larger tradition of Christian history.

Doing this isn't easy, and it takes stretches that might need a generation.  Revelation must be preached, and not just to ease congregational concern.  It is like remolding play-dough, and even having to add some water to it in the process.  Revelation is a book of worship acted out in participation.  It is an apostolic narrative of resisting the world.  The 7 churches in chapters two and three set the stage, and the rest of the book is a culmination of biblical idolatry and the consequences of it. 

In the end (no pun intended), we live against the idea of the end of times and actually think of the book as the entirety of time.

Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit:
As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall ever be, world without end.

 

Comments

[JD Swartz]

When I first clicked on the link to this post (via Facebook), I misread the title as being, "Christmas Time and the End of Times". I wasn't disappointed with not reading about Christmas and eschatology, but was surprised that Christmas was not mentioned - until I reread the actual wording of the title.
"Christian time differs from earthly time."
For we Orthodox, no where is this more evident than in the Liturgy, where we stand with a foot on earth and a foot in the heavens, as a unified body: an icon of our life before the Fall and an icon of our life in the Kingdom which is and is yet to come. When living properly, we take this with us in our personal lives, yet it is incomplete when lived individually (just as it is incomplete if we live it corporately yet not personally).
As Christ is both the beginning and the end of all things, all things are icons eschatology-
I feel like I'm just rambling. So, I'll shut up now. Thanks for the post.

[Ihop]

Great post Chad! So the question is this, how do we convince congregations to read Revelation as a narrative of Christian life with elements of prophecy instead of reading it as purely future prophecy of the 'end times'? One of the many problems of a loose ecclesiology is that we lack a broad tradition within which to read and interpret scripture. We simply don't know what to do with books like Revelation, and have no tradition older than ourselves to provide a guide for interpretation.

[chad]

JD-I hoped you would check in. Have you listened to Hopko's lectures? The whole set is excellent.

ihop-I think you are asking some really good questions. What is frustratingly absent from most churches and denominations are the definitive statements of that traditions eschatology. I think that alone might help, at least to dissuade multiple interpretations.

[JD Swartz]

I have listened to many of Fr Hopko's talks. He has a podcast called "Speaking the Truth in Love", I would suggest checking it out if you haven't.

[JD Swartz]

Also, you might want to check out some of his father-in-law's writings, Fr. Alexander Schmemann. "For the Life of the World" is his most well known work.

[Russell Purvis]

Have you dealt with Greg Laurie's "Are We Living in the Last Days"? I'm wanting to see someone interact with it/