Brief synopsis of the readings: Our first reading comes from the apocalyptic book of Daniel. Here Daniel prophesied that Michael will arise as the “guardian of your people.” It will be a time “unsurpassed in distress” but “[a]t that time your people shall escape.” Furthermore “the wise shall shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament, and those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever.” In Mark’s Gospel Jesus warns of a day “after the tribulation [where] the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.” The Son of Man will come and gather the elect from all the earth. He tells his disciples to learn a lesson from the fig tree. We can know the seasons by watching the leaves of the fig tree. Finally he warns that “of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

I know the end of the liturgical year is coming to an end when two things happen: Halloween is over and the readings frighten most Christians. Yes, they begin with these readings.

The world has existed for all of our lives, and the lives of everyone we know. But when did the world begin? As a young child I was given a set of encyclopedias that charted the history of the United States: I knew that President Washington was born in 1732 and that world history predated him but a few years but I had no concept of a world before the 1600s. Eventually I was able to put together the stories I heard from CCD (Sunday School) about Jesus to figure out that Jesus predated President Washington by 1700 years. By Junior High School I learned that the world was several billion years old but was still fuzzy over how long we had been here. It was only as an adult that I learned that there were those who read the Bible literally and insisted that the world was created 6,000 years ago.

I found their belief fascinating and somehow naive. I never thought of Genesis as a science book and felt vindicated by Pope John Paul II’s statement that Genesis answers the “why” of creation but not the “how.”

Given that belief I also found the belief that apocalyptic literature predicts the world’s end equally curious. Daniel’s reading gives us the image of the angel we know as “Michael the Archangel,” the angel who drove Satan out of Heaven into Hell. OK, so does this popular image really drive this reading? I don’t think so.

Daniel writes at a painful time in our salvation history. This passage was written when the Israelites were persecuted by the Greeks. As happened several times in their history, they feared their story was coming to an end. They feared they would be assimilated by their conquerers and their identity as Jews would become either forgotten or little more than a footnote in history.

They feared they would cease to exist even though God promised them they would live forever as a people. The fear of being forgotten in history is powerful.

But a people whose beginning roots itself in an eternal God can feel confident that their story will never end. They can know that no matter what happens, they will exist forever, just as their Creator does.

So here’s the problem: those who point to a specific beginning of our story also point to a specific end. Any story that has a beginning also need to have an end. But how can we end? For much of our history there have those who believed that at some set point in time God will “declare it over.” They claim that God will end the world.

This view of our story has a long history. In the 1500s the Anglican Archbishop James Ussher used several sources to determine that the world began on Sunday, October 23, 4004 BCE and even today many hold to that. Here lies the heart of the “creationism vs. evolution” debate. Those who hold to the belief that our world and salvation history began in 4004 BCE also believe in something called the “rapture.” That at some point in time God will decide it’s over and take the “worthy” into Heaven. I spoke about this a few weeks ago in regard to the 144,000 in Revelation. But is it true?

I don’t think so. If we believe in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, that the Word is eternal, we can believe we are eternal. Unfortunately today’s Gospel reading makes the rapture belief easy. Jesus, in the last days of his public ministry, warns his disciples to be watchful. Perhaps he was speaking of the next few days where he will be arrested, tried, and crucified.

In any case this reading and a few others have created a cottage industry in looking at the “signs of the times” to predict the end of the world even though the final verse warns that no one knows the time or the hour.

So if these readings don’t predict the end of the world, what do they do? Perhaps our story has no end, but our lives do. We all know when our lives began, the day we were born. And as much as we don’t like to think about it, there will be a day when our lives will end.

The idea that our lives are finite can both scare us and embolden us. If we look at our lives through the lens of fear it can paralyze us, and in many ways it does. Think about how often we hear stories about people who “want it all.” Think about people who want the perfect education, the perfect career, and (in their 40s) the perfect family. Think about how unfair it seems that fertility decreases at some point. Think about couples in their 50s and 60s who still want to have children and go to expensive and incredible lengths to achieve it.

Perhaps Jesus was looking at the end of his earthly life and called his disciples to do the same. In his time the interval between “you’re fine” and “you’re dying” was pretty quick. People died in accidents or fast acting infections. Today it’s different. While accidents still exist, most infections are curable. People now live long enough suffer from long standing heart disease or cancer. We can now make decisions on whether or not to treat illnesses knowing that we can predict our mortality.

Given that I believe we need to read these readings through modern eyes. We read this in the second decade of the twenty first century. In Mark’s Gospel Jesus tells his disciples “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” Clearly this isn’t factually true as everyone of that generation has passed and none of those things have taken place.

So at the end of the day I think that these readings call us to think of our lives as finite. We are placed here and most of us will be here for several decades, a select few for an entire century. So what do we do? Most of us will grow up, marry, have children, meet our grandchildren (and perhaps great grandchildren), work, retire, get sick, and die.

So what do we do with the time we have? I believe that these readings call us to live well with each other. We are called to live well and to use this time to make our lives and others better. We are called to make this world a better place, not because it’s brief, but because it matters. Those who focus too heavily on the next world often care too little on this one.

And so as we approach the end of this liturgical year let us look for the signs. Not the signs that this world is coming to an end, but the signs that we have an opportunity to use our time here to make our lives, others’ lives, and the world a better place.