The preacher man says it’s the end of time
And the Mississippi River she’s a-goin’ dry
The interest is up and the Stock Market’s down
And you only get mugged if you go downtown
Hank Williams, Jr. sang those words to me for the first time while I was in college. Although I belted out the refrain “a country boy can survive,” I was not and am not a country boy. Still, Hank Junior’s story of a self-reliant man living in the woods with just what he needs—his dogs, “a shotgun, a rifle, and a 4-wheel drive”—growing his own food, and catching his own fish, strikes a chord with me and with many Americans. The story tugs at part of our American tradition. Thomas Jefferson, with his ideal of a nation of farmers, would have approved.
Hank’s country boy, however, proclaims a darker vision of America than one President Jefferson would have shared. The singer recalls the murder of his New York City friend and the singer’s desire for revenge:
I’d love to spit some Beech-Nut in that dude’s eyes
And shoot him with my old .45
‘Cause a country boy can survive
The vision is one of regression, of moving away from modernity and its evils.
‘Cause you can’t starve us out and you can’t make us run
‘Cause we’re them old boys raised on shotgun
And we say “grace” and we say “Ma’am”
And if you ain’t into that we don’t give a damn
You don’t need Hank Junior to tell you that the world is falling apart, and only the tough will survive. We share that angst.
“A Country Boy Can Survive” peaked on the charts in 1982, but, for many, forty-two years later, its dark vision remains true. Nuclear weapons abound, wars unravel whole regions of the world, weather-related disasters occur daily, and murders plague our schools, cities, and countryside. We worry not only about the current economy, but about future opportunities. How will artificial intelligence rock our worlds? Change is accelerating, and we instinctively see it as bad.
How much better and more optimistic life in America seems to have been two hundred or one hundred years ago, or even in the 1980’s. What happened to that American confidence of manifest destiny, of America as the city on the hill, of America as the leader of the world?
If you can share this feeling, even for a moment, that life will only get worse, that our best days are over, then you can understand the mindset of people in ancient times in the Mediterranean. These peoples referred to golden ages far in the past, back close to the time the world was created, times when God or gods interacted with people and when heroes were super human. As time progressed, the world and its peoples wore down. As time progressed, the world became worse and the people degenerated to become like us and then to be us.
For Jews, their sacred writings documented this deterioration. All starts well enough. God walks in the garden with Adam and Eve, makes a covenant with Abraham, wrestles with Jacob, and speaks one-on-one with Moses. The Hebrews best Pharoah, defeat the Canaanites, and found an empire. But already there are signs of decline. The ancestors and patriarchs live hundreds of years, but their lifespans steadily decrease until they live only as long as we might. The great empire splits in two, torn apart by rebellion, and then each kingdom is conquered. Less than a hundred years before Jesus’ baptism, the Romans seize Jerusalem and its surrounding area, later setting up puppet rulers of some of the nearby lands and incorporating other Jewish territories as a province of their empire. The Romans show no signs of leaving. Moreover, until John the Baptist, no prophet has come to Judea in hundreds of years.
Just as it is now, one then could believe things are so bad that something big must happen soon. That something big could be the end to the decline, the start of something new, a rebirth. That something new could usher in a new golden age. It is the hope that keeps people going.
With John’s arrest, Jesus begins his public ministry, affirming that the end of the decline is indeed at hand. His proclamation is a revolutionary one: a declaration that God is establishing his kingdom and that all should prepare for that rule. We see the response from Simon and Andrew and from James and John. Each abandons his nets, his livelihood as a fisherman, to take up an uncertain life as a disciple.
So that’s it, right? History went from a golden age to silver to bronze to iron to clay, but, with Jesus, that all ends? With Jesus, time started anew, and all became right in the world? If not with Jesus, then with Jesus’ second coming, which is coming soon, right?
St. Paul seems to say yes. St. Paul believes that what a community of believers decides to do should be shaped by the imminent arrival of the kingdom of God. Our New Testament lesson comes from St. Paul’s extensive response to the questions the community in Corinth had about marriage and childbirth. The usual rules no longer applied because “the appointed time has grown short.” A different approach to social relations—a different approach to life—is called for because the big day, the return of Christ, the inauguration of the kingdom of God, is coming. On that day, the concerns of normal existence will not matter.
But here we are, almost two thousand years later, and Hank Williams, Jr. is singing about the preacher man saying it’s the end of time and there are plenty of preachers and non-preachers who are saying the same thing. What happened to the restart? Are we like Jonah, camped outside Ninevah, indignant that the end of world (at least for the hated Ninevites) failed to take place? Don’t promise me the end of time if it’s not going to happen.
Or are we instead more accepting of how things are, not worried about this issue at all. Are we more like the line from the song by R.E.M.: “It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine”? But if none of this matters, then why did we read the lessons today? What was their importance?
It is at this point in the sermon that I should tell you God’s plan, the reason for everything. I wish I could. I know the mistake of taking parts of the Bible literally. We could talk about what the kingdom of God could be and whether Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection brought in that kingdom of God then and there, but that alone does not explain it for me since Paul still expected Christ’s return and the coming of the kingdom of God. If St. Paul couldn’t figure it out, I don’t feel so bad.
I can tell you what I think. I start first with today’s collect: “Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works.” “To answer readily the call.” To “proclaim to all people the Good News.” We prayed today to be like Simon, Andrew, James, and John. To be like St. Paul. We prayed that all Jesus has to do is say the word (which he has) and we will surrender what we are doing to follow him.
On a personal level, it is no secret that I can be a procrastinator. (That understatement borders on being a lie.) It is deadlines that motivate me. The kingdom of God coming near is a deadline, one that motivates me. The kingdom of God may not be coming near for everyone at the same time, but it is coming near for me. Whether the world and time come to an end in some dramatic fashion or whether it is simply my inevitable demise, whichever comes first, the result is the same for me. I got a limited amount of time that God is giving me to answer my Savior’s call and to tell people the good news of his salvation. I can’t put off this task like I do so many other things. Most other things won’t matter when I am gone. My response to God will matter most.
The world is often a scary, depressing place. It has always been that way. There has never been a golden age. Each generation makes light of the horrors of the past in comparison to the horrors of the present. Every generation dreads the horrors of the future.
We have choices to make. In face of these fears, do we pull away like Hank Williams, Jr.’s country boy? Do we disengage, cautiously hold up in our cabin in the woods, and dare others to interact with us? Or do we embrace the risk and answer God’s call? Because I submit to you that saying grace and saying “ma’am,” while pleasing to God, are not as pleasing as creating and maintaining relationships with your fellow men and women, with believers, non-believers, family, friends, and strangers. Love is a risk, but as with any gamble: no risk, no reward.
Above all, I submit to you that nothing pleases God as much as our love for those most in need. It is when we care for these that we glimpse the kingdom of God. Maybe it is when we care for those least able to pay us back, least able to help us in return, that we see how the time is fulfilled and how near the kingdom of God has been all along.
[Recording unavailable]