I want to start today by saying Alleluia. It is sort of a mysterious word, particularly the way Jesus would have said it in his native Aramaic… Alleluia. Say it with me – Alleluia!
It comes from the gut, up through the lungs, the Alleluia wraps around our breath to meet together out here in the air: that thing we all share… air.
Kate preached about the collective reality of the air in her fabulous All Souls sermon last Sunday night.
The theology of the air opens up at the very beginning of the Bible, The Book of Genesis, chapter 2. It is here God forms the first human from dirt and then breathes into the creature. God’s breath, the breath of life, the soul of God, in Hebrew – nefesh. And we are divine dirt designed to help out in God’s world.
And so, we not only meet one another here, in the air, we meet God as well. We, you and me, divine dirt beings, meet in this air, with each breath, every time, together with God.
This is the air through which our Alleluias ring.
So, with that in mind, I want to carry the air theme forward within the context of the apocalypse. You know the apocalypse. It is very popular right now. End times are on the lips and in the minds of many internet trolls ripping breathlessly through the algorithms of the online world.
The apocalypse, end times, is associated with the rapture, where the good guys get whisked away to the good place, and everyone else is left behind in a hellhole of fire and brimstone.
Now I bring up the apocalypse because we are in chapter 4 of Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. This is a section in the New Testament that is often cited by Christians as a call to prepare for the rapture.
Rapture, it turns out, seems to come up when things are tough as they were for the communities that Paul was speaking to; particularly those who weren’t Roman citizens. When things get complicated, and feel intractable, it is natural, I suppose, for people to look for a way out, an exit strategy. Apocalyptic musing, and more so, preparation, feels easier, and more empowering, than trying to fix whatever complicated cultural or political inferno is burning round about. And I get that. You get that. We know how hard it is to work through issues in a relationship, or at work, let alone the broader community or the culture at large. Sometimes we just want to run away, escape, be raptured.
Escape fantasies are compelling. Maybe you’ve seen The Martian; about colonizing Mars as an escape from a world beyond redemption. Maybe you’ve seen Snowpiercer about a post-apocalyptic community on a train carrying the last of humanity through a frozen wasteland, the wealthy in the front and the poor in the back. Maybe you’ve seen Don’t Look Up; where billionaires escape a dying planet in a spaceship.
That’s a movie, not your news feed.
And these movies do make me wonder: why is it easier to imagine apocalyptic scenarios, why is it easier to invest in escape plans, than to imagine a better world, here, in the air, where we all live?
Why aren’t there movies about everybody being fed? Why aren’t there movies about everyone being educated, or having a safe place to work and play. Why aren’t there movies about everyone having a home to live in, or a doctor to see when they’re not feeling well.
Why is that so hard to imagine?
I think it has something to do with the fact that the rapture is just about me, and what I need to do, or who I am in relationship to whatever Archangel is going to whisk me away to paradise. It’s easier to think about the me, than the we, who share this air together.
People, community, makes it complicated. An algorithm would be easier.
Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI, said in a conversation with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian: “In my little group chat with my tech CEO friends, there’s this betting pool around when there will be a one-person billion-dollar company, which would have been unimaginable without AI… and now will happen,” according to Altman. (Robinhood & JP Morgan Investors Conference Feb.2024)
Altman, it turns out, also has a plan with his buddy Peter Thiel to fly to Thiel’s New Zealand property in the event of the apocalypse. (The New Yorker, Oct. 2016)
I imagine others in that tech CEO group chat have plans as well… outfitting private islands, building walled compounds, stockpiling bunkers, or maybe, if you own a rocket company, flying to Mars.
But here is the irony. Altman himself has suggested that if there’s an AI apocalypse, bunkers won’t really matter anyway, which means he is simultaneously building the escape hatch and acknowledging it won’t work, and, I might add, still racing to build a product that he and many others in his industry, probably even in his group chat, think would bring about the end times, the apocalypse. (WSJ Tech Live, Oct. 2023)
And while this AI doomsday scenario is new humanity has encountered seismic cultural shifts before that have spurred apocalyptic thinking.
Some of you may remember the 1950s, when the US government recommended that American families build backyard bunkers in preparation for nuclear war.
And people took them up on it… but not many, only about 1%. (End Times Fascism, Klein & Taylor) Because the rest took a minute to think it through. They thought about what it meant to stock a bunker with guns and medicine and food. And then they thought about what would happen next, when the neighbor came knocking on their bunker door.
And they realized pretty quickly that they would not shoot them, they would not turn them away… they would help them.
But even if they did keep that door locked, even if they found themselves the last man standing. So what? Who cares? So what if you are the last generation now bound to a bunker, all alone, underground… So what? Who cares?
And pretty quickly investing in a bunker seemed sort of silly, particularly since it reduced one’s capacity to invest in things that rendered the whole idea of apocalypse moot. Because even if it is complicated, even if it is difficult to work through seismic cultural shifts, it still makes way more sense to invest in our neighbors and how they feel, and how they live, and how they learn, and how they eat, than to invest in some place we go with air tanks strapped to our backs. Because it is belief in the capacity to survive an apocalypse that may well bring it into being.
Which is why we should give us pause, when the people building bunkers, and stocking private islands, and planning to escape to Mars are telling us the end times are near… because of the things they are creating.
I actually think they’re the very last people we should be listening to. To do so is to be tricked by the fallacy of the Halo Effect, which is to attribute competency for one thing to competency in all things. That’s not how it works.
You know what does work? People helping people. You know what does work? Showing up and asking: What can I do for you?
Which is why helpfulness is the second attribute of the Epiphany Rule of Life. The second attribute is the action… helpfulness. It works.
I’ve seen this over and over again. When I was a kid, probably 12 years old, the Zumbro River in Rochester, Minnesota flooded, and water ravaged the city.
I don’t know who organized it, or exactly how I ended up there, but I spent a good part of that summer working alongside a bunch of people, cleaning muck out of basements. It stunk, literally, and yet, I would breathe in and I would breathe out, and I would show up the next day, until everyone’s basement was cleaned.
I was being helpful. It is what normal people do.
I saw this over and over again when I worked for the international relief organization, AmeriCares. I would parachute into a place that was a complete mess, torn open by natural disaster or war or famine.
And you know what I would find every time? People helping people. It is what normal, divine dirt beings do. They show up. They breathe in and they breathe out, and ask: What can I do for you? How can I be helpful?
And that matters, not just because it’s helpful, but, more so, because it honors how we are designed as divine dirt beings. It is why I still have such a vivid memory of those flooded basements in Rochester so many decades ago.
It is why nobody lies on their deathbed and says: I wish I had been less generous. I am glad I spent so much money on my bunker. I am happy that I avoided, neglected, hurt, ghosted those people. It is why alleluia doesn’t show up on the group chat of those knowingly pushing the world closer toward the apocalypse.
None of this is normal. What is normal is to breathe in and to breathe out. What is normal is to realize that your neighbor is a divine dirt being just like you. What is normal is helpfulness… and 99% of the world knows this.
So breathe in and breathe out. Helpfulness is what diminishes the power of the apocalypse.
When we are helpful to the neighbor we meet, in whatever situation we find them, when our generosity overflows from whatever capacity and resource we happen to have, then the selfish mind that spins towards end times is liberated into the air where we meet each other and our God.
And every act of helpfulness becomes a breath, becomes a song we sing together when we say – alleluia.