Apocalyptic Hope: A Reflection for the First Week of Advent 2025

Earlier this Fall, there was about a two-day period when the media was obsessed over a ‘rapture’ prediction by some Christian Fundamentalists that had gone viral on social media. Naturally, these predictions came to nothing. I say ‘naturally’, not only because is the idea of the rapture a pretty new idea with a very weak basis in Scripture and tradition, but also because Jesus himself told us explicitly that the dates and times of end-times events are none of our business (Acts 1.7). In today’s Gospel reading, he goes so far as to say that he doesn’t even know the whens and hows of it all (Matthew 24:36). When it comes to ‘the Apocalypse’, there is simply no code to crack or puzzle to solve. Things will happen when they happen.

And yet, as we start into the season of Advent today, I find myself convinced that while we absolutely need a lot less idle (and idolatrous) speculation about the End Times, we need Apocalyptic itself more than ever.

To remind ourselves, our word ‘apocalypse’ is derived from a Greek word meaning ‘the revelation of something hidden’. As a genre of literature, Apocalyptic was a form of storytelling developed in Second Temple Judaism that used dramatic and often violent symbolism to proclaim that, despite all appearances, God is in control and will establish justice on earth.

While not ‘Apocalyptic’ as classically defined, we see this kind of vision at play in today’s Old Testament reading. In the midst of a geopolitical crisis that saw Judah being invaded by Israel (yes you read that right) and Syria, and a greater threat in Assyria looming behind them, the prophet Isaiah reported the following vision for Jerusalem’s future:

In days to come the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD! (Isaiah 2:1-5)

This is what an apocalyptic hope looks like. When the world is crumbling around you, to insist there is a future; when attacked by those with skewed priorities and values, to insist right priorities and divine values will carry the day; in the midst of injustice, to insist that there will be justice; in a war-torn world, to insist that peace will reign.

These are messages we need today. We live, after all, in apocalyptic times. Over the past fifteen years we in the global West have seen the long-hidden-to-us consequences of previous generations’ actions, in the form of disturbing truths about our countries’ bad-faith dealings with Indigenous peoples and people of colour, the extreme consolidation of wealth into the hands of the few, and an impending ecological disaster we seem to lack the political will to address. And in response to these revelations, those with the most invested in the current system have in turn revealed the lengths they are willing to go to to preserve those investments. Old certainties are being smashed, inviolable norms are being violated, those with the most are getting more, and even the Earth itself is fighting back against our abuses. All around us, the West’s Shadow is being revealed in terrifying ways. Apocalyptic times indeed.

Even just reading the news is enough to make anyone who believes in goodness, truth, and beauty to lose hope. But that’s where we need Apocalyptic more than ever. We need to dig down and find ways of rewriting the ending that seems to be coming. We need to stretch our minds and language to their breaking points to speak the truths that need to be spoken and take the actions that need to be taken, to find and live out a new and better way of being with each other and the world. It would be easy to say here that we need a new Isaiah, but as Christians, the wonderful and terrifying truth is that we are already empowered by the same Holy Spirit Isaiah was. We need to become the Isaiah times like these demand.

And Advent is the perfect time to do this. Because for the writers of the New Testament, the coming of Jesus was the Apocalypse, the great revelation of God’s hidden plan, the snatching of life from the clutches of death, victory from defeat, in the most unexpected ways: In the form of a baby born in scandal. In the form of a man rejected, abused, and murdered as an enemy of the state. In the form of a Divine Judge who judges with compassion and mercy on behalf of the world’s ‘losers’. In the form of one who sends the Holy Spirit upon a motley crew of fishermen, tax-collectors, and (perhaps most shocking of all at the time) women to continue what he started. And, brothers and sisters, that motlew crew is *us*.

The truth is there is hope in and for the world today. But just as our true Kingdom is not of this world, so too is our true hope not of this world. It is an apocalyptic — tenacious, unrelenting, surprising, unexpected — hope in the one who is coming.

The time is ripe for an apocalyptic hope, and as we’ll explore in the coming weeks, together with it apocalyptic peace, apocalyptic joy, and apocalyptic love.

I’ll leave you today with the words of the Collect of the day, and the final words of the Gospel of the day:

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility, that on the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

“Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour” (Matthew 24.44).

Amen. Amen. AMEN.