Old Testament Message
Then I, Daniel, looked, and two others appeared, one standing on this bank of the stream, and one on the other. One of them said to the man clothed in linen, who was upstream, "How long shall it be until the end of these wonders?" — Daniel 12:5,6
New Testament Message
"See, I am coming soon; my reward is with me, to repay according to everyone's work. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." — Revelation 22:12,13
Gospel Message
"But about the day and the hour, no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man." — Matthew 24:36,37
In just a few days, we are going to flip the digit to the 2000th year of the Common Era. I would say the 2000th year of our Lord, but historical evidence points to 4 B.C. as the latest possible year for the birth of Jesus, since that was the last year in the life of Herod, under whose reign Jesus was born. In other words, the 2000th year since the birth of Christ has come and gone. The next available Christian millennial dates will be, respectively, the 2000th year since Jesus' Bar Mitzvah, baptism by John, and crucifixion/resurrection. But those who are looking for communal relief from this vale of tears, don't get your hopes up. As it says in the Gospel Lesson, "about the day and the hour, no one knows." In other words, if you try to predict a date for the apocalypse, you are guaranteed to be wrong.
In the meantime, good people will do good and evil people will do evil, as all three lessons imply further along in their respective texts. For this millennial marker, what (probably minor) instabilities we experience in the delivery of telecommunications and electric power, the mailing of our checks and bills, etc., may be amplified by apocalyptic terrorists who try to bomb the targets of their choice. They are unlikely to have any major world impact, but they can cause isolated trouble spots.
So, buy a few extra jugs of bottled water, stock up on a few days worth of ready-to-eat foodstuffs, make sure you can keep warm, keep some extra cash on hand, and don't worry about anything major. According to the calendar Jesus used, this is the year 5760, and it's going to stay 5760 until next Rosh Hashanah. The Muslims count this as 1420. And there are plenty of other calendars. It's no big deal.
And let us pray:
Lord, in your mercy,
Keep us in the millennium to come from repeating the sins of the millennium just past. Keep genocide far from our hearts and our doors. Guide us to use in good faith and to good purpose the technologies we invent, and to see ourselves and our world through the power of your creation rather than our own. Teach us to wield our increasing power with love, and give us constantly the power to be in awe of you. Be with us always, wherever we go in your cosmos. In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.