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
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