Millennial weirdness options intersect with El Ni–o
Jesus has come, and he will come again, but he is also here now.
With barely a year to go till the calendar flips to that magic date, you had better start planning now. What are you going to do to prepare for–or celebrate–the new millennium?
There are several possibilities:
You could follow Jerry Falwell’s lead, store up food and ammunition and hunker down in your home, waiting for the judgment day. In an Associated Press story, the American broadcaster suggests the "Y2K bug" expected to infect computers just might be a warning from God. Falwell says the ensuing catastrophe could start a worldwide revival leading to Christ’s return.
You could shell out some bucks on the special products being advertised, such as The Countdown to Chaos Protection Kit selling for $95 US (plus shipping and handling), or Canadian Grant Jeffrey’s new book The Millennium Meltdown, in which he shows how computer malfunctions "will set the stage for the rise of the world government of the Antichrist."
If you’re a Catholic who is a regular drinker or smoker, you can look forward to earning indulgences in 2000, simply by giving up your habit, even for a day. The Vatican recently announced this special offer, available for a limited time only.
Or maybe you’d like to throw millennial caution to the wind and just enjoy a good party. According to a sign posted for tourists in Sel¨uk, Turkey, there will be a big one there on August 15, 2000, because Jesus will be 2,000 years old. (Never mind that Jesus was likely born more than 2,000 years ago.) The location is important because it is at the stone house where Jesus’ mother Mary purportedly lived her last days. It’s just up the hill from the ruins of Ephesus. You can’t miss it.
But perhaps it’s wise to put things into perspective. This won’t, after all, be the first time the world has reached a millennial marker since the birth of Christ. Historical reports of the first millennial milestone include accounts of the "terrors of the year 1000" as well as decades of calm that followed. In a January 1997 article in First Things, John J. Reilly points out that the 11th century "saw the great cathedrals begun and the crusades launched." Christians behaved both as if the world was going to disappear soon, and as if it would hang around for a long time to come. (Architects of that era planned cathedrals so magnificent and ornate that they knew they wouldn’t be completed in their lifetime.)
In the article, called "The Coming Age of Cathedrals," Reilly, a member of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, suggests that "if the turn of the second millennium is significantly similar to the turn of the first, then we should look for a dynamic century of hope and progress on many levels."
Reilly also notes that the fifth century’s St. Augustine "was very wary of attempts to discern eschatological significance in the events of secular history." Late 20th century Christians might do well to pay attention to that earlier voice, and not attach too much significance to the calendar.
Celebrating what is now
Nevertheless, in this season we call Advent, we look forward to Christ’s coming. We prepare to celebrate his birth, to welcome him, to think anew about the significance of his coming to Earth. And if we follow a liturgical calendar, we also contemplate his second coming at this time. Advent is a time to look forward to both the first and the second coming.
It is also a time to celebrate what is now. To realize that Christ not only was here, and will come again, but he is here now. He came, and in a way, he never left. Eugene Peterson expresses it beautifully in The Message: "He moved into our neighborhood" (John 1:14). Brian Stiller, president of Tyndale College and Seminary, picks up that expression in a recent reflection. For Stiller, that means Jesus came to the blue-collar Saskatoon neighborhood where he played outdoor hockey and delivered papers as a boy.
For each one of us, the image is different. Our neighborhood might be urban or isolated, our houses mansions or tenements, our environments joyful or lonely. Jesus moved there. He camped with us 2,000 years ago, he’s still in our neighborhood, and he longs to live within us.
How will you remember 1998? As we near the end of the year, Canadian weather statisticians are telling us that 1998 has been the warmest year on record. It seems El Nino, the southward current in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, moved into our neighborhood.
Literally, "El Ni–o" means "the boy." It refers to the boy Christ, because the weather pattern usually appears around Christmas. El Ni–o brings the unexpected, unplanned, just like Jesus, who came in peace and power, and changed the world. El Ni–o is still here.
Debra
Fieguth
Associate Editor
