As I approached this service and read the appointed readings I was struck by the sense of end times captured there. In our present era it feels as if we are in the end times. It gives me more sympathy for the writers of these apocalyptic pieces and helped me decide not to jettison them in favour of Maya Anjelou or Richard Wagamese as I might otherwise be tempted to do.

Of apocalytic texts in general, the theologian Ched Myers, who has preached here on a few occasions has this to say:

“Apocalyptic discourse in the Bible is not about predicting God’s cataclysmic destruction of the world, as so often assumed in popular culture.  Rather it expresses the fierce imagination of those who long for the end of destructive oppression by the imperial state.  After all, for the poor, the “end of the world” is already and forever being visited upon their communities by soldiers and fortune hunters and police.