I preached this sermon at Oxford University’s Keble College during an Evensong service. The service was one of the last of the academic year and took place during final exams. I preached it less than a week from my final departure from Oxford.
Grace and peace to you all. My name is Kari Aanestad, and I am honored to be among you all tonight. As a brief note of introduction, I am a seminary student from Minnesota and am in my last year of study for ordination in the Lutheran church. My husband Brian is a proud member of Keble College in Oxford, and we are sad to say that after two years our time in Oxford is quickly coming to a close. What comes next for us is a bit of a mystery. I only have a few courses left of my degree, and Brian is finishing his now. In other words our current life plans are finding some resolution, and we are quickly being forced once again to deal with the dreaded f-word, the future.
I am sure you can all relate on some level to the sense of impending doom and dread that I know I feel when I hear the word “future.” The time we share among friends punting the River Thames, traipsing through Port Meadow, and cycling through the city seems to whiz by us faster than Oxford’s taxi drivers. Before we know it, here we are at one of the last Evensong services of the term. Our future is hurtling toward us, there is a lot of uncertainty about what may happen next, and how we make sense of it all is seriously up to us.
Some of us respond to uncertainty by latching on to firm answers, and I have a wonderful example of this. I’m not sure if you heard about this, but a few weeks ago a group of Christians in the United States became quite public about their belief in the impending Rapture. Many of them cashed their life’s savings, sold their homes, and quit their jobs all so that they could be ready for Christ’s glorious return to earth on Saturday, the 21st of May, 2011. They were quite public with their conviction that the end was coming; they conducted television interviews, advertised in magazines and newspapers, and quickly became the object of the US media’s fascination.
As you can all probably guess, Saturday, the 21st of May came and went. No heavenly trumpets were heard, no whore of Babylon or beast from the sea were seen, and no salvific lamb finally conquered the forces of evil.
With that group of Christians in mind, when I read the assigned scripture readings for today from the Gospel of Matthew, I couldn’t help but laugh. In 24:42-46 Jesus gives us a humbling reminder of just how uncertain the future really is for everyone. He is quoted as saying, “You do not know on what day your lord will come…the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” Maybe those Christian Rapture enthusiasts in the United States were spending a bit too much time in the book of Revelation and not enough time in the Gospel of Matthew.
But my point isn’t to have a good laugh at gullible people. My point is that we are all a bit more like those Rapture enthusiasts than we would like to think or admit. If we’re honest with ourselves, we can acknowledge that we too respond to uncertainty with firm answers, plans, and decisions. Whether we are a Rapture enthusiast or an Oxford student, we all make decisions about our lives now according to our best guess of what the future may be.
Though we probably haven’t cashed our life’s savings because we believe we will be bodily subsumed into heaven tomorrow, we may have spent our life’s savings on a degree from Oxford or on adventurous travel designed to help us find ourselves. Though we may not have sold our homes in anticipation of our heavenly home, we have sold ourselves on the transient life of a student – one where we have many homes and yet none are permanent. Though we haven’t quit our jobs because we believe the world tomorrow will not exist as it does today, we may have chosen our studies here based on certain careers prospects.
Now I am not suggesting that the decisions we have made in order to be here make us the object of ridicule comparable to the Rapture enthusiasts. I am suggesting, however, that we all make decisions about our lives according a certain idea of the future. We operate in a system of meaning that holds in tension the fantastic possibilities of tomorrow and the somewhat mundane decisions of today. We all need something that we are not only working toward but also that provides the daily-ness of our lives with structure and meaning.
And there is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with that. But I do think there is danger when we forget that we are always operating according to our best guess of what may happen and start to believe that we can and do have certain answers or that we have some semblance of control over what happens to us. Frameworks of meaning built on that type of certainty crumble quicker and faster than any other, and the results are often personally devastating. Last year I spent five months in the John Radcliffe Hospital on a chaplaincy placement. Nearly every day I saw how one diagnosis, one car accident, one blood vessel completely changed an entire family’s trust in the world and hope for the future. “You do not know the day or the hour…”
I do not mean to depress you all, but I am trying to invite you to reflect on what sort of answers, plans, and frameworks for meaning you have that help you respond to an uncertain future. What is your equivalent of the Rapture? I ask all of this because I think that when we are able to be truly honest with ourselves about how much really is out of our control, we find ourselves gently cupping little mustard seeds of faith. A faith that grows not into a trite belief that all things happen for a greater purpose, but rather blossoms as a deep trust born from authentic struggle. There is opportunity in uncertainty.
I do not pretend to have all of the answers about this stuff nor do I expect any of you to have them either. These are lifelong issues with which we will all continue to struggle. It is fundamental to who we are as creatures of meaning. My parting prayer as I leave this great city is simply that we find the courage to be more honest with ourselves and more vulnerable with each other, that we find a balance between the plans that drive our productivity and the opportunities that exist in uncertainty, that we find new depths of being in this world after the loss of old ways, and that we ultimately find a future so unimaginably dazzling that all our present hopes, dreams, and plans seem a dull gray at best. God be with you on all of your journeys. Amen.
Thanks for sharing this reflection, Kari. The “rapture” is not exclusively the property of fundamentalist prognosticators, nor is it exclusively the realm of theologians and religious leaders. As you’ve described it here, a concern with the future is something that is common to all people. At a very practical level, all of us worry about the individual decisions we’ll face in the future—jobs, relationships, health, children. Global warming and the multiple wars being waged heighten our concern for our common future. In this way, discussion about the future and “end things” may prove to be fruitful for interfaith dialogue by helping people find common ground.
Kari, I was delighted to see you’d posted something from your last term and, after reading it, really appreciated the point you made. Thanks for sharing!
As one who, like you and your husband, finds himself facing considerable uncertainty about the future, I found this fine sermon quite timely, and its reflections very much to the point.
Your concluding point about balance is well taken, but I wonder if you’d be willing to share something about your experiences trying to strike it. I’d bet, given the sort of pondering that clearly went into this sermon, that you’d have something instructive to say on this topic.
For my part, the balance seems to involve pursuing each possible opportunity with full vigor, while not letting myself get too attached to thinking that any particular path is the “right one.” This has let me see how the different things I’m pursuing play to different aspects of who I am. I’ll be quite interested to see what the future brings, when Schroedinger’s box finally opens up.
As for you, to quote David Foster Wallace, I wish you way more than luck.
Yeah, there is no rapture. Basically, the world will end when a local star goes supernova, or when we human beings murder each other with nuclear weapons (currently most likely to begin in India/Pakistan due to religious reasons primarily between Hindus and Muslims). Beliefs in the rapture are motivated by a desire to sneer at the unsaved and an overblown and arrogant view of one’s own significance.
If you are truly afraid of the rapture, just think about silly you might look in front of your Hindu, Buddhist, and Atheist neighbours, none of whom are predicting the immediate end of human civilisation, and all of whom will be laughing quietly at predictions of end-times. And isn’t it just a little bit arrogant to assume that Jesus will return in your own lifetime?
The difference between the somewhat ridiculous religious folks (religious Christians who believe in the rapture at some point in history) and the religious insane (those who believe in the rapture and divine intervention in modern times) is a a matter of mere scale. We atheists, on the other hand, find the whole arrogant notion of the judgment of humanity ridiculous. Religious Christians who believe in the Rapture in contemporary times are not really that much less gullible than those who believe that Criss Angel and Penn and Teller perform actual magic. I feel sorry for these poor, deluded folks. And if you really believe in the rapture, you ought to leave every last dime you’ve got to the atheists doing the most to alleviate human suffering, Doctors Without Borders (https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/). At least they’ll do something useful with your donation money while the rest of us are fighting off daemons and other assorted hell-spawn with shotguns and katanas when all the “saved” are gone.
John – after reading your comment, I fear that you may have missed Kari’s point. I don’t believe that she is on the side of the Harold Campings of the world, preaching a fear- and hate-filled message of judgment. Rather, she is asking each of us to consider what our personal “equivalent” of the rapture is? In her words, she is “trying to invite you to reflect on what sort of answers, plans, and frameworks for meaning you have that help you respond to an uncertain future.
I appreciated reading about your belief that the world will not end in a literal Rapture, but rather in some sort of nuclear or galactic cataclysmic event. It does strike me that even though this outcome seems much more likely than some sort of belief in a supernatural Rapture given our current understanding of the world, we cannot know for certain how, when, or even if the world will end. To Kari’s point, then, all of us—atheists, Christians, Muslims, Jews—struggle to “find a balance between the plans that drive our productivity and the opportunities that exist in uncertainty” and to make meaning in the process. And to my earlier point, the fact that all of us face this uncertainty can and ought to allow us to find common ground.
Thank you, everyone, for your incredibly thoughtful feedback. It’s always a bit nerve-wracking to put this stuff out there, and I’m always relieved when I see that it at least inspires thoughtful conversation and at most means something to someone.
Oliver, I loved what you said about the “rapture” not being the exclusive property of fundamentalist prognosticators. I think you hit the nail on the head when you named that the heart of my piece was thinking about the rapture as some sort of future that is common to all people (and not the literal return of Christ to this earth or the end of all things) – how we all (regardless of theological persuasion or lack thereof) struggle to find meaning in our lives in spite of inevitable death, and a lot of that meaning-making has to do with how we understand and plan our futures (future lives on this earth – not some lofty afterlife reserved for an elite few).
In fact, if anything I thought this piece was a very harsh criticism of any type of literalism or blind certainty. With Jonathan’s comments in mind, however, I fear now that I may have been a little unclear about that point. I will admit I was intentionally a bit misleading in the title of this piece because I wanted to inspire curiosity (and get more people to read it), and I am now realizing that the title may have strongly influenced how many people read it and even led them to missing the point.
I hope I can be clear: I do not actually believe in the Rapture, but I do have hope in a rapture (bliss, intense joy, enthusiasm) – a state of being that comes when we let go of the need for certain and absolute answers and begin to be open to the possibilities available to us here and now. My whole goal was to encourage a thoughtful reflection on how we find and make meaning in our lives in the face of an uncertain future, not to convince or persuade others that the end is coming and only a few will be saved (that is actually the exact OPPOSITE of what I tried to say in this sermon, Jonathan).
As for Jason’s comment about balance, I love to have control over my life and have found wild success so far in light of my hyper-responsibility. The older I get and the more detached from structured systems, however, I have found that a lot of what determines our path is a blend of luck, chance, and energetic pursuit of what comes up. I think you’re right that it’s about finding a balance between pursuing possible opportunities as they arise and committing yourself to one idea and forging your way toward it despite the costs.
I have struggled deeply in this regard with my notion of call. Since 13 I have suspected that the work of an ordained pastor in the ELCA could be the best use of my gifts, but it only seemed to make sense as long as I stayed in Minnesota. When I moved to Oxford, however, I quickly discovered that my potential ordination in the ELCA meant little to nothing professionally (the Lutheran church here is not what it is in MN). In order to pursue what I feel called to do, I had to find a way to hold lightly my affiliation with the ELCA and look into connecting with other groups that performed a similar function in a different place (England). I don’t know if this is making sense… I am trying to offer more of a personal reflection about finding balance between clutching to one idea/system/role/institution and being open and adaptable to the changes that life presents. It’s really hard because, well, I hate really hate change but I wouldn’t trade my time in Oxford for anything.
Thank you all again for your comments. Jonathan, I hope I have been able to at least present my case a little more clearly. I encourage you to revisit the sermon with those points of clarification in mind and see if you hear anything new this time around. I’d love to be in further conversation with you about what is meaningful and worthwhile work in this world, but I am having a hard time doing that when I feel as if my needs to be seen and heard are going unmet.
Thanks Kari. Best wishes on your future. Hope that you have been able to make something of the Church of England which has an agreement with Lutheran churches worked out at Porvoo. As a lay C of E member, with some theological training, who is also involved with Christians at the edges, I know that this may be a strange land. Like others elsewhere we are having to deal with questions that the institutions have swept under the carpet. The questions are now coming out and biting us, and they are multiplying.
I am so glad that you have a passion for interfaith dialogue. We need people like you. The churches and the world needs people like you.
Bless you.
Thanks for your response, Kari, and for sharing your reflections on “calling.” Finding a way to hold onto a deeply-felt calling when the circumstances that provided its seedbed have radically changed is one of life’s great challenges. I’m in the same boat right now as I try to figure out what to do with a Ph.D. in English besides become a professor. I hope that you’ll keep sharing your sermons as you have occasion to deliver them.