“Apple Trees and the End of the World”
Earlier this year I couldn’t drive down Hiawatha without thinking about the end of the world. Near Walgreens, there was a huge billboard admonishing me to “Save the Date:” May 21, 2011. That was supposedly the Day of Judgment when Christ would return to earth. According to Harold Camping, the Christian radio and television mogul who did the calculations and paid for hundreds of billboards to be put up all over the country, Jesus was going to return on May 21st and the righteous would fly up to heaven. The next five months were to be filled with fire and brimstone, plagues and locusts, with millions of people dying each day. Then on October 21, 2011, the world would be no more. From the perspective of a Minnesota Vikings fan, the last five months have been admittedly quite awful, but let’s not jump to conclusions about the apocalypse. The Packers are 11-0 and even the Lions are worth watching, but here we are in November and the world hasn’t ended quite yet!
You would think that Harold Camping would know better. He had previously predicted that the world would end on May 21st…way back in 1988! When that Day of Judgment didn’t pan out, Camping rechecked his math and came up with a new date: September 6, 1994. But Camping was not content being a two-time loser. He had to go for the trifecta. He invested his money and what was left of his credibility gambling again on May 21st but this time in 2011. This time when the rapture didn’t pan out, Camping retired and retreated from the public eye. According to one report, Camping has finally come to the conclusion that no one can know when Christ will return. It’s about time!
After May 21st came and went, some other Christian churches rented those billboards and put up their own clever message. “That was awkward!” they declared, followed by the following scripture verse, “No one knows the day or hour…” That is the message we turn to this morning as we open up our Bibles to Mark 13:24-37. Jesus is talking about the end of the world, not to fill us with dread, but to fill us with hope. When Christ returns, evil will be overcome and things will finally be as God always intended. Advent is the season of watching and waiting, not just for the Christmas story, but also for the final chapter when Jesus returns in glory and power. Turn with me to page 925 in you pew Bibles as we read all we really need to know about the end of the world.
Mark 13:24-37
24 ‘But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25 and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory. 27Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
28 ‘From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 31Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
32 ‘But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. 34It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. 35Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.’
When he was asked about the end of the world, Martin Luther responded “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” What did he mean by that? I take it that Luther was skeptical of anyone’s attempt to predict the end of the world. But that’s not all. Confronted with fear and calamity, Martin Luther would still do something productive, even fruitful. He would still plant his apple tree. And years later, when the rumors of doomsday had come and gone, Luther would be able to sit in the shade of what he had planted, sinking his teeth into fruits of his labor, and into the grace of an apple he never could have enjoyed without sun and rain and all the gifts of God.
There are two crucial errors Christians tend to make when they speak about the end of the world. The first we are quite familiar with because of the outlandish predictions of Harold Camping and others like him. They think they can take the Book of Revelation and apply it to their calendars and come up with an accurate prediction of the end of the world. In times of trouble, there have always been those whom claimed they knew when the world was going to end. For some reason these failed mathematicians are not daunted by today’s scripture where Jesus himself says he does not know the day or the hour when he will return in glory. The angels don’t know, the Son doesn’t know, only the Father knows when the world will end. I am always astonished when followers of Jesus claim to know more than Jesus about the end of the world. Not only is such thinking arrogant and foolish, when the predictions invariably fail to materialize, the whole Christian church loses credibility.
The other crucial error that Christians make about the end of the world may not be so obvious. After enduring all sorts of bizarre false predictions, it is tempting to just stop talking about the end of the world. This is just as misguided as claiming to know the day and the hour when Christ will return.
You see, every story needs an ending. Imagine checking a mystery novel out of the library and discovering midway through the final chapter that someone had ripped the final pages out of the book. If the mystery were any good, you would be devastated to be denied the rest of the story. Or imagine getting a romantic movie in the mail from Netflix. A young couple falls in love, only to be separated by unforeseen circumstances. As you near the dramatic conclusion where the man and the woman are about to be reunited, the DVD stops working. The disc has been scratched so badly it has become unplayable. Hollywood loves a happy ending, but without the end of the story you’ll never see for yourself that love really does conquer all.
Christians should be every bit as protective of the dramatic conclusion to our story as mystery readers and romantic movie watchers. We have no business ripping out the final pages; we need to be frequently reminded that God’s love really does conquer all. And that’s what today’s scripture is teaching us: that Jesus who died on the cross and rose from the dirt, will one day return in glory. When Christ returns the sun and the moon will go dark and the stars will fall from the sky. These are actually quotes from the Old Testament. They poetically express that God’s power trumps everything, even the spinning of the planets. No longer will anyone’s life be controlled by fate or the stars, but by the judgment of God. The greater point is that evil will be annihilated, and Jesus, the true light of the world, will shine brighter than anything in the universe. All you have to do is follow Jesus and you too will belong to his heavenly light.
As we await the end of the story, Jesus invites you to stay awake and watch carefully. In fact, he wants us all to be like doormen, waiting to open up the doors for Jesus whether he returns early or late. When we see dark and scary things on the horizon, we don’t need to be afraid. We know that at the end of the story, God Almighty will make things right again. Don’t fall asleep as we get near the end of the story, because it is at the very end that God redeems the world and saves those who follow his Son.
In fact, because we already know the end of the story, we should feel motivated to live fruitful lives right here and right now. The Gospel is not some apple pie in the sky, bye and bye kind of faith. Yes, Jesus will save us at the end, but in the meantime, we are supposed to bear spiritual fruit. Rather than running around like Chicken Little claiming that “the sky is falling, the sky is falling,” Christ calls us to spend our time serving the needy. Rather than hiding underground in a fallout shelter with Spam, Twinkies, a battery operated calculator and some hackneyed schedule for the end of the world, we should remain above ground sharing the hope we have found in Jesus. Once we know that the end of the world’s story is the redemption of all who believe, we should plant as many good seeds as we can in hope that God will cause them to grow and produce fruit on their own.
On May 21st, 2011 I dug a hole in the ground. Earlier that morning Amy and the kids drove to a municipal impound lot and waited in the pouring rain to pick up a free tree, compliments of the city of Minneapolis. Amy had applied months earlier and got her first choice, a honey crisp apple tree. None of us were thinking about the end of the world the morning of May 21st, but the torrential downpour was so dramatic, perhaps we should have been. Later that day, when the clouds parted and the sun was shining bright, I grabbed some compost and a shovel, and I dug into the soft turf on the south side of our lot. Amy and the kids ran out to help dig the hole and to save the worms. We did it quite accidentally, but just like Martin Luther we planted our apple tree on the rumored last day of the world.
As I was raking maple leaves away from our new apple tree yesterday, I paused to celebrate that the world hasn’t ended quite yet. From now on, whenever my kids pluck an apple from the tree, we can remind them that no matter how bad things get, they can always produce fruit for God’s kingdom. Whenever they fall from the branches of the apple tree all battered and bruised, we can remind them that this injury is not the end of the world. And the next time someone fixes a date for the apocalypse and sticks it on a billboard, we can show them the photographs of the five of us covered in dirt, planting an apple tree on what was supposed to be the last day of the world. Perhaps that apple tree will remind our children and those of you who park on our street when you come to church, that no one knows the day or the hour of the end of the world. And in the meantime, Jesus wants our lives to be fruitful.
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