I have a friend whose town where he grew up no longer exists.
The bridge is down, the road is overgrown.
If you drive to the end of the road, and push your way through the brambles and the brush, working your way into the forgotten woods, the old buildings can still be found, abandoned, swallowed up in the vines with trees growing through the rooves.
All those memories of a town, of a people, of a place that is gone, home now to possums and raccoons, squirrels and mice, and worms and decay.
Slowly melting back into the earth. The story of a town turns the page and it is blank, empty.
If you have ever had the chance to travel to Europe or the middle east and tour around you ultimately end up looking at many piles of rocks that used to be something substantial.
Like in that poem by Shelley that we all read in high school, Ozymandias, where a traveler finds the ancient collapsed statute of a once mighty King, surrounded by sand stretching into the distance. On the wreckage of the pedestal are found the words, “Look on my Works, ye mighty, and despair!”, with nothing to look upon, a pile of rocks with sand rolling into the distance.
At first the words mean to despair at how mighty he is, then the words end up meaning despair at the futility of even the mighty.
What endures? Is there a point or purpose to things other than to fall apart and be forgotten?
We begin a short apocalyptic season today that spans the end of the Christian year and joins us to the beginning of the new year.
We hear readings about judgment, and endings, and beginnings.
The ultimate point of Christian apocalyptic scriptures is that even though all things end there is still a point and direction to life, to creation, to history.
Even though life falls apart often to never get better, even then there is hope, and purpose, and divine intention and direction. Especially then.
As ominous as we try to make out the Apocalypse, for the people of faith, it is about the hope that gets us through, it is about what helps us endure, “gaining our souls”, as Luke tells us.
The word apocalypse means to unroll the scroll, to turn the page, it means what comes next, it means that there is more, especially when there is nothing left, there is more.
Towns disappear, mighty kings are forgotten, lives fall apart, our minds and bodies fall apart.
What endures?
At the cross of Jesus God falls apart with us and for us, sharing our fate and our doom, our forgotten-ness, our forsakenness.
At the resurrection of Jesus creation starts again, a new creation where things come together rather than fall apart.
That is what turning the page means.
That is the message that our blood and bones carry into the dust.
What endures? The body of Jesus, and that enduring body breaks the hold of futility and entropy, turning them inside out.
And so, we are those who keep the vigil of love when lives fall apart.
And so, we are those who do the work of love, rebuilding lives and restoring the broken world, when bodies break, and ecosystems collapse.
Because Jesus has risen, making all things new.
When things fall apart, faith becomes something deep and love becomes something that abides.
Everything is coming together, everything has purpose and direction, we are going somewhere.
We are creatures of that new beginning.
And so, we begin. Always we begin.
The vigil of love. The work of love. The page is turning. Write something wonderful.