The End of the World is Nigh

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.


“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”


I had to think long and hard about which reading to preach on today. I seriously considered preaching on grace today. After the past week, I really didn’t feel like tackling the end of the world as we know it.

Well, none of you chose the easy way out, so I guess I don’t get to either. So end of times it is.


THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH!!!

Or as Chicken Little put it – “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!”


What happens when the world ends? According to our Gospel today, “the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars will be falling from heaven and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”

Has your world ever ended? -- Mine has. – When I was young, fresh out of high-school, I asked my high-school girlfriend to marry me. She said yes! My future was set. I knew who I was and where I was going. My fiancé and I were both in university. I was studying engineering and she was studying music. Then something wonderful happened. She got accepted into Julliard School of Music – one of the best music schools in North America. Off she went to New York City while I stayed in Vancouver.

We managed to keep our long distance relationship together for nearly two years before we realized that we didn’t have anything in common anymore.

All the light went out of my world. Saying that I didn’t know what my future would be isn’t quite right. At that time, I wasn’t really sure if I had a future. The sky had fallen so slowly and quietly that I didn’t know it was happening until there wasn’t a star left in my sky. My world ended.
About six months later, with the help of my family and my doctor, I re-entered life. I started building a new future for myself.


If I hadn’t had that experience, I probably would never have met Victoria. I might have kids, but they wouldn’t be Rosa and Paul. I might never have studied music. Unless she’s changed drastically, my former fiancé would never have supported me going into the priesthood. My life is brighter and more fulfilling now than it ever was before the darkness.


I’m sure some of you have your own experiences of the end of the world. I’m sure some of them are more personally devastating than my own story. And not every story has such a bright ending.


Right now this parish is having its own dark times. I believe that our financial issues are just a symptom, not the root cause of our problems. I am not completely sure what true problem is. What I do know, is that as we go forward from today, we’re going to find out.

This past week, we took our first step into the future. It is still too dark to see very far into the future, but we can see the start of it. Any future other than a short one, has us working as a parish – not as two separate churches. Our future includes a major commitment of time to work with our Archdeacon, Gloria, and others from the diocese to understand how our past brought us to this darkness and what we need to do to find new light.


That’s one neat thing about darkness – unless this truly is the end of the world (and if it is, this sermon is pointless) – darkness doesn’t last forever.


After the darkness comes the dawn. A new day. New life.


I see a potential for a bright future here in this parish. Not because of what has happened in the past, but because of the people I see here in God’s house. When I read the words Paul wrote to the Corinthians, I look out at you and hear them echo in my mind. They could just as easily have been written about this parish.

“I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind – just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you – so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”


Amongst you all, with both churches put together, you have the gifts to be a strong parish. You have the vision to make a bright future here in this community. You have the will to make that future happen.


After the darkness comes the dawn.


So I say again: THE END OF THE WORLD IS HERE!


Thanks be to God!