Did you know that the word ‘Pandemic’ means ‘all demons?’ It seems that demons, when they come, come en masse. They are collaborative. The writer of Revelation speaks of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the coming of the final revelation at the end of time. The four demons, according to Revelation, are pestilence… check… violence… check… hunger… check… and death… check. The writer is drawing on imagery taken from the apocalyptic genre of literature that emerged during the second century B.C.E. At that time Israel was occupied by the Seleucids, the kingdom of Assyria, under the despotic and brutal rule of Antiochus Epiphanes. During this occupation images of the gods of Assyria were erected in the Jerusalem Temple, thereby desecrating the sanctity of the religious, civic, and social life of the people of Israel. In both the second century B.C.E., under Assyrian occupation, and in the first century of the Common Era, under the occupation of Rome, the end, the apocalypse, seemed so very near.
But we remember the pattern that informs the vast sweep of biblical history; that in our end is a new beginning. Death precedes resurrection. In God’s improvisational imagination there is always a creative and viable way ahead. Now is the time to pay close attention to our common life. The four horsemen are on the move in our world, and their power derives from the ever-present structures of empire. If the powers that be opted for the good of the whole, then hunger, violence, plague, and death would be decidedly mitigated; the demons of self-interest and greed and racism would be vanquished.
Our role as people of faith is to look at this apocalyptic time as a beginning, not an end. Ironically (and God seems to thrive in irony!), the marauding demons have revealed a way ahead… they have, perhaps unwittingly, given us clarity. We now know that universal healthcare is an imperative, way past its time in our society; we now know that racism is a destructive reality that tears at the viscera of our mutual well-being; we now know that warehousing people in our for-profit prisons is dehumanizing and shameful; we now know that sexual exploitation at the whims of patriarchy is pervasive in our culture; our immigration policy that harbors untold abuse cries out for humane reform; we now know that the widening disparity of wealth in this, the wealthiest country in the world, is creating a new-found intractable poverty, while the so-called one percent bask in opulence.
The Apocalypse is now, good people. That means we are called to collaborate against the collaboration of the demons that beset our world. Saddle up your steeds of justice, kindness, and compassion, and ride nobly into the pandemonium. A new and gracious world shimmers with possibility. May we have the will and the courage to make it so.
