The End is Near?

It’s not uncommon to see someone holding a sign in Times Square with a rather disturbing warning:  “The End is Near.”  It’s enough to cause sleepless nights. 

This week’s epistle (1 Thess. 5:1-11) has St. Paul holding such a  sign.  “For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (v. 2).  Paul and the earliest disciples believed the world would soon end.  From their perspective, the end was just around the corner.

And that fact had concrete consequences for how to live, according to Paul.  “Let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation” (v. 8).  With God so close at hand, it ought to call out in Christians, not fear, but faith, love, and hope, the most important Christian virtues. 

Here’s the problem with the end.  No one knows when it is coming.  It will come suddenly according to Paul, like a thief in the night or the sudden onset of labor.  So, the coming of the end calls for perpetual vigilance.  One must be constantly prepared.  Paul specifically calls for disregarding any thought that the coming of the end has been delayed.  And that’s the way it is, nearly 2,000 years after Paul did the equivalent of taking to Times Square with a scary sign.

It seems to me there’s only one approach to this reality.  It has been a long time since Paul announced the message, an awfully long time to be on the edge of preparation.  The End is Near?  Who knows?  I think we’re better off to treat the end as if it’s here now, not near but already come.  So let the faith, love, and hope Paul counseled prevail.  The end is here!  Or at least we’re going to act like it is.

Peace,