In the cycle of the Church’s year we are now in the ‘Kingdom Season’. It lasts until Advent Sunday and features a lot of readings from apocalyptic Bible passages, with an emphasis on judgement and the end of the world. The season concludes next week with the last Sunday in the Church’s year – a celebration of Christ the King.

Sitting in Morning Prayer at York Minster during these days matches the appointed readings to the panels of the Great East Window. It is an experience that spans time. The Book of Revelations probably dates from the final years of the first century AD. The window was constructed between 1405 and 1408, and I ma sitting listening to one, and looking at the other, in the year 2022.

In some respects the window feels like a cartoon strip telling the story of the Book of Revelation. A way for people with limited reading ability to follow the Biblical account of the end times. The colours and depictions are vivid, with suitably grim and menacing monsters and angels variously inflicting several plagues. Each frame gives life to a passage from scripture, which can easily be followed with the excellent navigator website. Given the content of apocalyptic literature in the Bible, it is hardly surprising that it has enjoyed a very mixed reception. For George Bernard Shaw Revelation is “a curious record of the visions of a drug addict”. DH Lawrence hated it so much that he wrote his own commentary.

It is certainly true that outside the context in which it was written, the text is often puzzling and perplexing. When I did a course on the Book of Revelation in the 1980s, I recall being told that the text was meant to be heard – to be read aloud. Maybe it sits uncomfortably on the page because the visions and drive of the apocalypse is designed to be a crashing and pulsating narrative. The various sequences and repetitions suggest that this may be right.

In March 2020 many may have felt that apocalyptic events were unfolding in our own time. Perhaps there was an expectation that, however difficult, this was a trial humanity had to undergo before sunnier days would commence. Writing in the final weeks of 2022 it now appears that crises of major proportions are fact of life. Maybe there is something in the Book of Revelation that suggests an initial calamity precipitates subsequent disruptions? In choosing ‘permacrisis‘ for its 2022 ‘word of the year’, Collins Dictionaries is reflecting the challenge people are experiencing in attempting to return to turbulence of more familiar proportions. Along with the continuing lack of inter-governmental action on climate change, evidenced by the debates at Cop27, there is growing awareness of the plummeting diversity of species on the planet. It is certain that climate change and loss of biodiversity are connected issues. More and more of our planet bears the fingerprints of human involvement and, consequently, there is a vanishing number of true wildernesses in our world. On top of which, this year is likely to be the warmest on record for the UK.

Perhaps in the last 50 years we have become accustomed to a significant level of control in our economic and social order in the West. This is an exceptional experience for any human society, but there is plenty of compelling evidence to speculate that some fundamental issues may overpower us. In this respect at least, we have something in common with those who first heard the revelation of St John the Divine. Individually there is only a small amount we can do to meet the permacrises of the present. It requires a bigger and more international solution.

The apocalypse literature of this season encourages us to consider the shape of the future if we don’t change. The books of Daniel and Revelation suggest that we cannot predict the future as confidently as we should like. The dizzying imagery of these visions remind us that we sow today what we shall reap tomorrow. Both in personal faith and actions of collective responsibility, we cannot ignore the consequences of our actions. Apocalyptic literature should focus our minds and stir our spirits to work for a future where there is hope for our world.

In the suburbs of London it was odd to read a report where the cost of civic responsibility was described as the price of avoiding revolution. The article was in a local Barnet newspaper in 1910, and the revolt referred to which it referred was the French Revolution of 1789. The reference shows the very long shadow cast by that event across European popular thought. The comment arose in a discussion about the cost of poor relief in the borough. Business and property owners were moaning about the expense of looking after the poor, and it took a female member of the group to remind them that ‘charity’ was the price they paid to retain a system from which they benefitted considerably. Today, with the rapid rise of the ‘Enough is Enough’ campaign – uniting all kinds of people under the banner of unacceptable price increases – it appears that the prospect of popular agitation will force the hand of the next Prime Minister. However, rather than alter the operation of an economic system that favours the wealthy, just enough money will be dispersed to appease the masses. It remains to be seen whether we can continue as we are when an ever greater number of people fall into, or hover just above, poverty.

With what seems like a void at the heart of Government, there has been plenty of space for experts to voice their concerns about this unfolding energy crisis. Martin Lewis was clearly very angry when he spoke on Radio 4 on Friday. With appealing directness he defended ‘catastrophising’ for the very simple reason that, in the absence of Government aid, the energy price rise is a catastrophe. As someone who normally advises the less well-off about ideas to manage their funds more effectively, he had reached the point where he had nothing left to give. With a reputation built on creative solutions, the prospect of a financial dead-end for countless people had pushed Lewis to the edge.

It seems unlikely that the incoming Government will be able to replace the entire cost of rising energy prices across the economy. The suggestion so far is that low and middle income household will be supported – but it’s unclear what aid there will be for industry. This matters because without support industries will have little option other than to pass on price rises to consumers. It follows that inflation will remain high and, with below-inflation pay rises, people will be poorer. For this reason, even if there are funds to offset energy price rises, everyday life will in any event become more costly. People will have less cash, and even if gas and electricity bills remained the same, households would have to achieve savings in order to make ends meet. Heating or eating will remain a pressing question, because it is unlikely that government action will wholly mitigate the price rises that will touch every part of our economic system. The cost would be astronomical.

Macron said France and the French felt they were living through a series of crises, “each worse than the last”.

Quoted in The Guardian, 24 August 2022

Last week President Macron (according to Truss, a former ally of the UK), gave a very sombre speech. While criticised in some quarters for appearing to ignore those already suffering in France, Macron heralded the ‘end of abundance’. For the middle classes upwards this is perhaps an accurate description of recent decades and a warning that these days are over. To be fair to Macron, he described recent years as those which ‘could have seemed an era of abundance’. Perhaps, as we progress through the 2020s, there will be a growing appreciation that any sense of abundance belongs to an ever-shrinking group of people.

I have written previously that, by many measures, we are living in unprecedented times. The rise of food banks will now be augmented by the opening of ‘heat banks’. Public places where people can leave cold homes and gain some warmth and company. Quite what it will be like for people unable to leave their homes, or too far from heat banks, is yet to be seen. There are a host of medical conditions that will be aggravated by the cold, and in some cases it will lead to deterioration requiring hospital care. Once again we will have exceptional winter pressures in the NHS, whether or not COVID re-emerges as a significant issue.

One of the most worrying elements of the current crisis is the way it is impacting on households where two people are in work. When once this would have achieved enough income without support, people are facing in-work poverty. Even hospitals are contemplating hosting food banks to support their staff. A major achievement of the welfare state is that it moved support away from charity and promoted it as the organised actions of a just society. People didn’t need to feel ashamed or grateful. It was what ‘society’ meant, and offering support as a basic requirement was what people should expect. When Liz Truss, who is very likely to be our next Prime Minister, spoke about not wanting to give people ‘handouts’ it flies in the face of the post-war conception of society (but is very Thatcherite). A society which perpetuates a system excluding more and more people from a basic quality of life cannot go on indefinitely. I’m not advocating revolution – but it is something that becomes ever more likely as more and more people reach the point where ‘enough is enough’.