Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

Our reading from the First Epistle of John this morning begins with an apparently panicked exclamation, “Children, it is the last hour!”

Now, I imagine we might be forgiven for having a somewhat jaundiced view of immanent apocalyptic expectations. Folks’ve been saying “The End is Nigh!” for millennia…but look around: things don’t seem to be ending any time soon. Sure there are crises environmental and social and political and cultural and moral and biological and spiritual and more, but look at any period of human history and things seem remarkably similar—the sets and costumes may have changed from one era to the next, but the story and the players are largely the same. Some folks will say, “No no no! We’re much worse off!” Others will say, “No no no! Look at the progress we’ve made!” But in the vast scheme of history, grand narratives of progress and/or decline both appear a bit fabulously illusory in the end—comforting, maybe, but illusory. Perhaps the most accurate thing we can say about all this is: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose…the more things change, the more they stay the same. Which suggests that time is little more than a dreary deathly monotony of changes that don’t appear to change anything very much at all…a mechanically graceless chain of events stretching indefinitely into a future virtually indistinguishable from the past. The passage of time cannot produce or evolve grace or salvation: it can only ever result in the continued passage of time.

…None of which suggests that John’s word to us isn’t actually true or that we ought not approach John’s word to us with deep seriousness. This is, in fact, the last hour! And that exclamation point is not a sign of panic, but of excited expectation. Because what John understands, what Christians of every age ought to understand, is that because of the Incarnation, because of the in-breaking of Heaven into Earth in Jesus Christ, because of the Resurrection and the flooding of Divine Life and Light into every corner of the human experience (including death!), because Jesus is in fact the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, because Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity, because of all this...every hour, every minute, every second, every moment, however dreary or exciting with change: it can all be a window onto something more than time—it can open out onto God’s own Eternity. Eternity is present, now, to this moment and to every moment, waiting to burst into our lives and experiences with healing and redeeming grace, with the power to heal and redeem every moment in which we live, have lived and will live. Every hour is the last hour because every hour can give way to the Infinite Mercy of the Eternal One in which all time is finally fulfilled.

This isn’t a plea to live every hour as if it were your last. That may sound like lovely advice, but it’s unreasonable, exhausting and unsustainable. Rather, this is an invitation to let God’s vibrant life of love live in you so fully that the pattern of your being and living is indistinguishable from the pattern of Eternity which is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s an invitation to see each hour as, in Christ, making an end of sin and death and a beginning of new life. It’s an invitation to abide in the love of God that transcends all time and space. It’s an invitation to discover how God may be redeeming the time in you.

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+