Snowpocalypse

      It’s not like anyone should take television and web news writers and forecasters seriously about word invention, but the recent flurry of made-up storm headlines featuring “snowpocalypse” or “snowmageddon” show a lack of theological knowledge and bring out my inner Andy Rooney linguistic rage. (If you are younger than me, google him.  Rooney raised irritation to an art form.)

      Snowpocalypse? Seriously?  Lots of people just think “apocalypse” is a superlative indicating “really really big and dangerous, life threatening even.”  The idiosyncratic use of “apocalypse” as a synonym for cosmic cataclysm goes back to 20th century evangelical writers of the dispensationalist bent who became emeshed in preparing for the End Times.  So the blizzard to end all blizzards gets grafted together into a snowpocalypse.  Bleah.

      The Greek word, “apocalyptic,” used in the Christian Bible really means “the uncovering,” or “the revealing.”  The apocalyptic literary form is represented by several passages in the gospels about the end times and in the last book of the New Testament, the Revelation to John.  Underneath a lot of symbolic language and stories and weird plot lines there is a sub-narrative of faith which the knowing readers would understand, because they had the key to understand the truth hidden under the surface.  If the book fell into the hands of the authorities who didn’t have the critical decoder, it looked like the ravings of a deranged mind.  But if you had the interpretive key, it makes sense and tells you that God is still in charge, even though evil seems to be on the ascendency, and God’s people will be ultimately delivered from evil.  In the case of Revelation, being very early in Christian history, the secret keys may well have been passed along verbally by travellers between churches.  That information for interpretation has been lost, leaving interpreters to sort things out since.  That also means two millennia of trying to unravel the secrets have led to many, many, often competing, interpretations.  And in that time, the meaning of apocalyptic as the revealing and uncovering of spiritual truth hidden from the unbeliever was forgotten, and it slowly came to mean something big and life threatening.  But it really means unhiding something important.

      So actually, the apocalyptic part of the Blizzard Juno was the clean up, the snowplowing.  In fact the most delightful “uncovering” was that bartender who went and shoveled off the finish line of the Boston Marathon.  Now that was a revealing worthy of the word!

      The other meteorological fabrication, Snowmageddon, comes from a single reference in the Revelation to John to the site of a climactic battle.  It seems to refer to a minor mountain in the Jezreel valley west-southwest of the Sea of Galilee, Har Megiddo.  On present day maps of Israel, look for Megiddo.  It was the location of several big battles over centuries, so for John to situate a cataclysmic battle between forces of good and forces of evil there made literary sense.  Think of how we refer to someone’s “Waterloo.”  However, since it was in the apocalyptic last book of our Bible, Christians who desired to find in Revelation a scenario of the end times picked up on Armageddon as the scene of the cosmic battle of good and evil.  Dispensationalists particularly emphasized the battle at Har Megiddo as the end-time battle to end all battles, and, incidentally, the battle to end time.  Much of what people think about “the end times” comes from that minority niche of Christianity, but it was so vivid that even people whose theology doesn’t include apocalyptic scenarios refer to it.  It was a short step for people to call anything cataclysmic “Armageddon,” much like we have added the suffix –gate to any scandal since 1972.

      The irony of adding the name of a hot, desert city to a snowstorm is entertaining enough for me.

      Having skewered the misuse of words, let me end with the true sense of apocalyptic.  The truest takeaway from the big snows is that, just as it was for the first readers of Revelation, God remains in control of human experience, and that even serious snowfalls can reveal important theological truths.  Above all, God our Creator is sovereign over creation, and mere mortals cannot control the weather.  God’s rule over weather reminds us of our smallness beside God’s greatness.  Yet that not withstanding, God surely provides for us even in extremes— both moments of grace and safety and through other people.  The ways humans show our better sides during stressful times is an important revelation, too.  God’s grace and help is uncovered in the neighbor who shovels the elderly person’s walk, the cup of hot chocolate or coffee shared in the cold, the snowplow drivers who spend hours working for the community’s good, the way a shared experience helps us share our humanity.  Beauty glistens in the sunlight after the clouds depart.  Those have all been revealed in, despite, and through the weather.

      So maybe not in the scary sort of armageddon shouting from headlines, but in the still small voices of care, it was a revealing snow apocalypse.

                                                                                            In Christ,
                                                                                                          
                                                                                            David
                                                  
Texts For Sunday Worship:
       From the Hebrew Bible        Deuteronomy 18:15-20
       From the Epistles                 I Corinthians 8:1-13
      From the Gospels                 Mark 1:21-28

Outreach

      I once heard someone in a discussion about a church budget, when the suggestion was made to decrease some of the contributions to denominational missions and locally determined mission project, blurt out, “but our missions are our only product; everything else is just overhead!”

      I have discovered the depth of congregation members’ devotion to others in the community and world through the acts of compassion and concern, and, yes, justice which are grouped loosely under the heading of FCCI’s “outreach.”  As I was learning about the congregation when I arrived, things members do for other people came up time and time again.  It is a distinctive feature of this congregation to reach out.  If it stopped happening, it just wouldn’t “be First Congregational.”

      There are a decent number of outreach programs that the congregation participates in through its structure (connected through the Outreach Committee, mostly) such as the Protestant Cooperative Ministry on campus, Area Congregations Together, Boy Scout Troop 2, Kitchen Cupboard, Feed My Starving Children, and others.  We contribute quite generously to the national denominational offerings like One Great Hour of Sharing, Neighbors in Need, and Our Church’s Wider Mission, and major mission partners like Church World Service and Heifer International.  A rather distinctive form of outreach and mission here is how the Endowment Income Committee directs a significant portion of our investment income toward several projects, typically international programs and recently focused on water projects (for example Agua Clara).  Not many churches have such a sophisticated way of reaching out to help others.

       But the most significant form of outreach here, to me, is the widespread individual participation in works of compassion and hope and help.  The breadth of this involvement is nearly as broad as our membership!  So many people are engaged in serving others, in reaching out, through a whole host of community organizations, many taking leadership roles in addition to the hands-on sharing of time and help.  We have folks involved in educational programs like the reading partnership or volunteering in schools, in medical services to the underserved in the community, in Hospicare, in hunger alleviation programs, in support for families dealing with mental health concerns or aging, in family and children’s services, in alleviating homelessness, and in truthfully a dozen other organizations making a difference.  Our annual report will describe much of the outreach which happens beyond our doors.

      Members here really hear Jesus’ call to help the least of our neighbors have better lives, not just spiritually (although we surely do that, too!) but practically and personally.  We share our resources and money, but just as importantly, we share our time and our presence in so many, many ways.  Outreach is an outgrowth, a natural product of our faith.  It is really, really impressive!

       What we do outside our church building is not an afterthought… it is the thought that counts.

                                                                                                In Christ,
                                                                                            
                                                                                                 David


There is a rumor that for the annual meeting Sunday there will be one “golden ticket,” a meeting agenda on gold paper for one blessed soul… be sure to attend!
                                       

Texts For Sunday Worship:
      From the Hebrew Bible         Jonah 3:1-5, 10
      From the Epistles                  I Corinthians 7:29-31
      From the Gospels                 Mark 1:14-20