Living as though the Sun Will Rise Again

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
November 16, 2025
Proper 28, C
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Psalm 98
Luke 21:5-19

Do y’all remember when the world was going to end on New Year’s Day, 2000? Then again in 2012? There have been several comets that were supposed to bring about the end of the world. I remember two or three pastors with mathematical predictions that didn’t pan out. The Branch Davidians in Waco. There was the Left Behind fervor with the book series. That’s around nine or ten end of the world predictions, just in the last 30 years, just that I can remember.

All of them have been wrong, and all of them have led to people living as though the world was about to be no more, usually in some not great ways. I heard of folks buying the pollutingist big SUVs they could because the end was coming and polluting the world more would help bring it about. People have made end-time bunkers, spending untold amounts of time and money, isolating, staying away from others, because they believed the end was nigh. Some even had suicide cults where folks killed themselves at just the right moment as the world didn’t actually end.

God didn’t make this world for us to end it, and God didn’t make this world for us to suffer an apocalypse. God made us and made this world for us to live in it. “Be fruitful and multiply,” God said. Live in this world. Be blessed by this world. Give blessings into the world. That is God’s desire for our lives. Living is the point, living as though the sun will rise again.

So, as Paul pointed out in 2 Thessalonians, you can’t live if you don’t eat. See, there were folks in the church in Thessalonica who not only believe that the end was coming very soon, but they believed that the end had already happened. Some had stopped working because they misunderstood Paul’s message to them and thought that the end of the world and God’s full reign on earth had already happened. So, they stopped working.

Therefore, Paul wrote, “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” That was his advice to a church where some folks were living in a kind of end-time cult. Thinking that the world had already ended, they thought they didn’t need to work. Great! Paul was saying. Have them not eat as well as not work, and see which happens first: the end of the world, or hungry bellies and malnutrition.  

As much as folks in the early church were expecting the end of days, they had to keep living as though the world was going to keep on turning. 

You can understand, why some had this misunderstanding about the end of days. Paul himself thought that the end of days was coming in his lifetime, months, and then maybe years after Jesus’ resurrection. Paul even wrote in 1 Corinthians 7 that ideally, folks should stop making babies. Best way to be, Paul wrote, don’t have sex, just devote yourselves to prayer. That was Paul’s advice. No sex. Don’t make babies. Just devote yourselves to prayer. 

He did make allowances. If you can’t not have sex, then at least only do it with your husband or wife, but best just not to have sex at all. He thought it was the end of days. Personally, I don’t know what not having sex has to do with the end of days, but for Paul it was a thing. 

So, Paul went on, for those who were unmarried, it would be best to stay unmarried, so you could devote yourself to prayer. If you couldn’t keep yourself from having sex, though, then at least get married and have sex with just the one person. 

Paul thought the end was coming very soon, and so his preference for the church was that everyone would stop having sex, just devote themselves to prayer, and of course, that would mean no more babies. Well, if that had happened worldwide, ain’t none of us would be here. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world, just the end of humanity.

Paul was wrong in his belief about when the end of the world would come. Paul’s advice about how to live an end of days life was actually not all that helpful because it wasn’t actually the end of days. The church in Thessalonica was wrong about their belief in the end of days, and since then, every end-time cult in the history of the world has been wrong. So far, the accuracy rate of all end-time predictions has been hovering really close to zero. Actually, it is zero. Even Jesus, to the extent that he thought the end was coming within his disciples’ lifetime was wrong, and Jesus admitted that he didn’t know when the end was going to be, that only God the Father knew. 

The point is that end-time cults, as well as the early churches that Paul started were living as though the world was about to end. They were all living as though some terrible apocalypse was about to happen, but that’s not how and why God made the world.

God didn’t make this world and place us in it just for the world to end or for us to suffer a great apocalypse. God made this world for us to live in this world in joy and peace, to live in this world loving one another and loving this beautiful creation. 

Now, I’ll admit, the end of the world is a lot of fun in fiction. Armageddon, Deep Impact, Independence Day, 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, Moonfall, Greenland, The Core: all of these end-time movies and more are hugely fun and wildly entertaining. There’s the big rush to try to save the world or for some few people to live through the end of the world. It’s exciting, and pulse-pounding, and a great escape from the daily grind and actual worries about actual life. 

Folks in these movies aren’t worried about where their next rent check is coming from, how farmers are going to grow food, what grocery prices are going to be, and if there will be enough to eat. For a few hours, watching these movies, we don’t have to worry about these things either. It’s the end of the world. We get to escape reality and imagine some apocalyptic future in which we just don’t have to worry daily life.

End of time predictions, end of time cults all have that same appeal. If it’s the end of the world, you don’t have to worry about much. You don’t need to work if it’s the end of the world. You don’t need to worry about food or anything else if it’s the end of the world. 

End of time predictions, even those of faithful religious people are misguided from the start because they are all about escape. We may often want to escape, and who can blame us? There are terrible things going on in the world. So, we try to escape through lots of things. We try to escape through alcohol and drug use. We try to escape through sex. We try to escape through violence. Some try to escape through end-time cults, and some try escape through end of days religious movements. If we have enough money, we try to escape by building rockets to go to Mars and things like that.

God didn’t make this world for us to escape it. Whatever way we choose to try to escape, God made the world not for our escape, but for our living. The thing with the whole end-time, apocalypse deal is, we know that eventually all will be well. We are told in many places through scripture that eventually, God will put all things right, and so we can rest some of our hope that eventually, all will be well.

In the meantime, our hope is not in escape. Our hope is in God’s great love for humanity that we get to be a part of making things well. God has given us strength, courage, wisdom, hope, love, so that we can be a part of making things well in this world. 

That was God’s gift to us in Genesis, to be a part of governing and caring for creation. God made us in God’s image and found us to be utterly delightful, and so God gave us power to help make things well. Then, God continued to give us even more gifts to help make things well. God gave the covenant and the Torah to the people of Israel. God gave us Jesus to teach us God’s ways and to join with us in every part of our lives. God called us beloved and gave to us over and over again so that we might be a part of making things well in this world, not to prepare for the end, but to prepare for the next turning of the earth. We get to work to make things well because the sun will rise tomorrow. God made us to live in this world in joy and peace, loving one another, healing one another, and loving and healing this beautiful creation. 

Letting Go of the Rules and Raising the Kid We Actually Have: (a jaunty little sermon about the apocalypse)

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
November 17, 2024
Proper 28
Daniel 12:1-3
Psalm 16
Mark 13:1-8

So, having kids is kind of a crazy thing. We had our first over 16 years ago, and as much preparation as we put into having that little guy, it was still the absolute end of one age and the beginning of another once he was born. On the one hand, the instant I held him for the first time, I felt this burst of love suddenly happen inside of me. I loved him and found him more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen. At the same time, when the nurses said it was time for us to leave the hospital and go home with our baby boy, I thought they must be joking and that they might should be held liable for gross negligence for leaving us with this baby, when they obviously knew what they were doing, and we obviously didn’t.

Being at home with our infant son, we quickly found that freedom and time to rest without responsibility was gone. There were times I’d look on with nostalgic jealousy at our non-babied friends, thinking, “whatever happened to that life?”, while still loving our son more than anything.

Yes, having a child was the end of an age for my wife and me and the beginning of another age. We prepared, we read books, we got lots of unasked-for advice from lots of well-meaning people, and I remembered how my parents raised me, so I had some idea of what to do. We tried out all of the parenting techniques we knew and had learned. Some of it worked. Some of it really, really didn’t, and I found that raising this kid was a lot different than my parents raising me. The stuff they did with me, it didn’t work with him. 

That gave me a lot of anxiety because raising my son wasn’t going according to the rules I knew. So eventually, I had to let get go of some of those child-rearing rules and learn to raise this particular child. I had to trust him to be who he was, even if who he was didn’t fit into parenting rules that I knew. 

I bring this up because when Jesus talked about the end of one age and the coming of a new age, he talked about violent upheaval and he called all of that violent upheaval, “birthpangs.” “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.” He paints a pretty frightening picture talking about wars and rumors of wars, but he likens the whole thing to giving birth. 

The whole giving birth process kinda sucks. Painful, body stretching in ways it just doesn’t fully snap back from, the baby kinda violently thrust out of its comfortable, safe home into this crazy world of ours…and then there’s new life. One age has ended, and a new age begins with new life. 

Daniel spoke of new life at the end of the ages in his prophecy which we heard today. “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Again, part of that sounds awesome, part of it, kind of less awesome. Daniel writes of the end of the life that we know and the beginning of some new kind of life. 

What will that be like? What exactly does Daniel mean? Well, the most honest answer is, “we don’t exactly know,” but that hasn’t stopped people from trying to figure it all out. Looking at the passages from Daniel and looking at other parts of scripture which describe life after this life, the church and various groups within the church have come up with all sorts of explanations and rules. Explanations of what life after death will be like, and rules about how to end up with everlasting life, not everlasting contempt. 

You’ve got to believe in Jesus in just the right way or be baptized in just the right way. You’ve got to be among God’s elect, or you’ve got to choose Jesus. You’ve got to make sure you don’t backslide, or if you do, you’ve got to make sure to repent before you die. Many churches have gotten pretty exact in describing exactly how the eternal life rules work so folks can be assured that they have eternal life because they believe in Jesus and have done all these things. 

The problem with all of these explanations and rules is that they are based in fear and anxiety. The idea of being raised to everlasting contempt sounds awful, and we should take that judgment seriously. We should take seriously the cruelty and injustice, the selfishness and violence that lead to everlasting contempt. We should take seriously God’s call to turn from cruelty and injustice. We should take seriously God’s call to turn from selfishness and violence. 

What we might shouldn’t do is make absolute doctrine and rules about how precisely to avoid being raised to shame and everlasting contempt. The rules and doctrine may help alleviate our fear of God’s judgment, but what happens is, we end up with our faith in rules and doctrine, rather than faith in God. Having some notion of doctrine around the end times is fine, but eventually we’ve got to just put our trust in God. Let our anxieties go, give our anxieties to God, not to doctrine and rules, and trust God with any new age to come.

The same is true for what Jesus taught. Countless ages have come and gone since Jesus said these words about the end of the age, and every time, folks have said that the end of their age was the one Jesus was talking about. Folks have looked to many descriptions of the end times in the Bible, and they’ve picked them apart and analyzed them, and they’ve said quite confidently, “See! It’s all happening now. This is the end Jesus was talking about!” Well, so far, everyone who has said that has been wrong. There have been many ages of humanity that have come and gone in the last 2000 years, and none of them have been the end that Jesus was talking about. 

We’ve got lots of images and texts to analyze to try to figure out which end of an age will be the end Jesus was talking about, and the only thing we know for certain is that we’re never going to know, and we’re going to be wrong every time. Jesus said that he didn’t even know when that end was going to be, and we think we’re going to figure it out? 

That not knowing can leave us with a bit of anxiety…so we naturally try to figure it out, get right with God before the end, etc. Again, that ends up placing our faith in rules and doctrine before our faith in God. 

Like rules and advice for parenting, it’s helpful, but eventually you’ve got to learn to parent the kid you’ve got. 

Having some notion of doctrine around the end times is fine, but eventually we’ve got to just put our trust in God. Let our anxieties go, give our anxieties to God, not to doctrine and rules, and trust God with any new age to come, trusting that whatever else the new age of God’s ultimate kingdom will be, it will be an age of new life. Like a baby being born, the new age of life fully lived in God’s kingdom will be the end of the life we know, and this new life will more beautiful and more beloved than anything we have ever known.