Download Sermon TextNovember 30: It’s the end of the world as we know it. How can we feel fine?
John Bellaimey
November 30, 2025
First Sunday of Advent
John Bellaimey, St. John’s
It’s the end of the world as we know it. How can we feel fine?
When the Son of Man comes, it will be just an ordinary day in the countryside, like when Noah finished building an immense boat in his front yard.
Somehow he tracked down pairs of wild and farm animals and herded them into the boat with–I don’t know–ten kinds of animal food in baskets. And he persuaded his wife and sons and daughters in law to come in. The story tells nothing about the neighbors, so we’re free to imagine. Comedians have pictured him as the eccentric kook, ridiculed by others. But the actual story says he was godly and had a blameless reputation. Imagine his neighbors’ panic when the water really did begin to rise.
Archaeologists have found tantalizing evidence that the Black Sea used to be below Sea Level, like the Dead Sea, but about 7,000 years ago the Mediterranean broke through and folk tales of that Great Flood are still told throughout the Middle East.
Jesus warned us: only the Noah Clan was ready. Everyone else was swept away. When the Son of Man returns, said Jesus, speaking about himself, it will be like people getting beamed up into heaven, while the person working next to them will not. It will be like a silent thief slipping into your house in the night.
Sitting at breakfast a couple weekends ago with my dearest high school friends, I told them I’d be preaching about this one soon.
I said: there never was a rapture, with only a certain kind of Christian beamed up. Jesus was wrong. He didn’t come again to judge the living and the dead. And the Apostle Paul too, 20 years later, he was wrong. He had his go-bag all packed. He advised people not to even start a family. But 60 years later and Jesus still hadn’t returned, blazing from the sky? Right after these warning stories, the later Gospel writers like Matthew, Luke, and John, added a bit of Jesus’ encouragement: the kingdom of God is not out there or up there, it’s also in here. Within you.
We were in Dearborn, the biggest Arab city outside the Middle East, where you see Palestinian flags next to American ones on front porches.
Michael, our host said: actually, Jesus wasn’t wrong. The end of the world did come soon. The end of the Jewish world.
The Romans burned their capital city and built garish temples and flashy mansion on the scorched rubble. Killed Judaism as an organized religion. It would have to learn to survive as a disorganized one. A network. A shared library. A bunch of extended families scattered to the four directions.
My friend went on, echoing his Arab neighbors: the end of the world came to Palestinians in 1948. The ones in Gaza are now living in the rubble of another apocalypse which has killed 69,000. The end came for hundreds of thousands in Sudan. The Rohingyas were driven to the sea, where they fled in anything that would float. The Syrians our 2022 pilgrims met on an island in Greece did the same. But thousands drowned when their boats sank. Thousands more couldn’t get into a boat, like Noah’s neighbors.
Michael concluded. You cannot fix it. You must not ignore it. Sadly, he can’t ignore it: his wife’s dementia is taking her toward a frightening, lonely future, about which Michael just doesn’t want to talk very much.
The damn end of the world is is always happening. You probably know the feeling, reading the latest outrage and thinking: these cruel, dishonest people can’t do any worse. We have to scroll past so much bad news it’s hard not to stop and read the latest.
The end of Jewish world did come. Jesus’ people were prepared. Their version of Judaism featured not just the Scriptures, but more important, the Word Made Flesh who died, and then returned somehow. Came back in a new form, like an angel or something. They didn’t know. But they knew he was real, and kept appearing. Christ is risen, they began to say. They became strong, loving, and wise, with Christ’s help and each others’.
I had my annual physical after I turned 70 a bit ago. My doctor ordered routine tests. Almost all of them were fine, except one Latin term that said I had probably had a heart attack some time ago. She ordered more tests, and some new prescriptions.
So far, the extra tests suggest that maybe there was no “infarct.” Seems like it’s gonna be okay. I’m grateful for my Medicare. And I’m embarrassed to be comparing my medical scare to the genocide in Gaza and Sudan. To my friend Michael’s wife’s suffering. My blood pressure is trivial compared to the end of the world. But it reminds me: everything ends. Changes. Our health, our family, our retirement income, our country’s democracy, this little church that loves us so well – all of this is changing, and like all living organisms, moving towards the inevitable winter. And spring.
A couple of weeks ago, Rex said this in a sermon about the three parts of the Book of Isaiah,
“The sacred narrative we call the Book of Isaiah reminds us that we have been here before. Isaiah is not one prophet but a chorus—a centuries-long testimony that God’s truth never belonged to kings or elites, but to ordinary people who refused to forget or fall silent.
The end of the world had happened. The end of the world is always happening. My friend Michael was echoing our collective lament: things are getting worse, and we might die before we see things getting better. We have to mourn that. But we also have to find ways to push against it. And not give up hope.
Here’s Rex again: “Third Isaiah emerged among those rebuilding from ruins. These visions are audacious—ecological, economic, and spiritual: “They shall not labor in vain…” “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together…” These texts reflect life after return, the challenges of rebuilding, and hopes for universal restoration, including foreigners and the marginalized. This is resistance by imagination—a refusal to accept despair as reality.”
As the old Spiritual says keep your lamps trimmed and burning.
The Way of Love is not in my news feed, except for a trickle of hints:
- people serving chili to protesters, or
- getting the training that goes with an ICE whistle.
- People with extra bedrooms ready for someone hiding from the storm troopers.
- Thousands freeloading internet readers like me paying for subscriptions to journalists who got fired for not pretending that this is all normal.
- Filling baskets for Casa Maria families.
- Joining that lone protester on the street corner.
- Looking for meetings in our neighborhood.
- Shrinking our carbon footprint by maybe one shoe size.
- Standing up to bullies.
- Listening to each other.
The Way of love tells you: whatever we do for the least of our fellow children of God, we’re doing it for God.
The end of the world didn’t come. It’s always coming. So, Jesus says, let’s be ready. Unlike Noah, I don’t think we need an ark, although maybe in lower Manhattan or Miami. But we need Wellington boots, for sure. Maybe a kayak. Lots of sandbags.
Jesus’ Path of Love is long. The rainbow at the end seems farther away than ever. The famous bend in the arc of the moral universe must be up over the hill a ways. But the road is still there, paved by our ancestors, under the flood waters.
We’re going to sit quietly for a bit now until bodhisattva Rex sounds the gong. Then, we’ll stand up because it’s so important, and remind ourselves why we are here together.
