by James Kubal-Komoto, Intern Minister

December 27, 1998

First Unitarian Church of Portland

Opening Words

"...teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart..."

Psalm 90

When I was a freshman in college, I lived in the same dormitory as another freshman named Mike, who was deeply infatuated with a woman who also lived in the same dormitory. She was very attractive, but Mike was more taken than most. He knew when she ate lunch so he would eat lunch in the cafeteria at the same time. He had figured out when she did her laundry so he could do his laundry at the same time. Of course, Mike didn’t want her to be disgusted by his dirty laundry, so every week he took clean but slightly rumpled clothing down to the laundry room to wash in the washer next to hers, hoping they could talk while their clothes made it through the final spin cycle. But she never said anything to Mike, and he was too nervous to say anything to her.

One day Mike finally summoned the courage to talk to her and even ask her out. He walked up to her as she moved her tray along the salad bar in the cafeteria as about a dozen of us looked on from afar. Mike said something, she said something, Mike said something, and then he came to sit down with us.

"What happened?" we asked. "I asked her out," he said. "What did she say?" "When hell freezes over." "Oh, what did you say to that?" "I said, ‘Great, we’ll go ice skating."

If the world does end on January 1, 2000, as many are predicting, I know one guy who’s going to be happy, because he has a date.

Millennial fever is running high. The Christian Science Monitor reports that 35 percent of Americans believe it’s possible that a battle of Armageddon is coming. One scholar estimates there are at least 1,200 groups making millennial predictions about the end of the world as we know it with the coming millennium. Of course, they all tell different stories about how this is going to happen. Some are Christian fundamentalist groups that believe the year 2000 will mark the Second Coming of Christ, never mind that most scholars think Jesus was born in 4 B.C. and his 2000^th birthday occurred in 1996 or 1997. Some Hindus expect the coming of the Kalki Avatar. There are messianic Jews who are making predictions about the coming of the Messiah for the first time. There are Islamic fundamentalists who are talking about the Intifada. There are paramilitary militias with apocalyptic agendas. There are a surprising number of people who believe that UFOs will soon swoop down from space, either to destroy the world or to bring humanity technology that will keep us from destroying ourselves. There’s even a small, very fanatical group in Chicago which believes the Cubs have a chance at the pennant, surely a sign of the end if there ever was one.

News of so many of these groups might merely be amusing if some of theme weren’t so extreme. Think of those that have already made headlines, such as the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan that released deadly sarin gas onto the Tokyo subways, the Branch Davidians, the Freemen in Montana, the Solar Temple members who committed suicide in Switzerland, the more than 30 Heaven’s Gate cult members who committed suicide.

What’s going here? Why is there so much angst surrounding the coming of the year 2000, and why are so many groups predicting the end of the world?

One answer is that this is nothing new. People have been predicting the end of the world since the beginning of the world. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the first apocalyptic predictions are made in the Book of Daniel. This book was most likely written shortly before 164 B.C. to give strength to Jews suffering for their faith under the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes. The author of the text predicts a battle that will end history, saying, "There shall be a time of anguish, such as had never occurred since nations first came into existence. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book."

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, "Verily, I say unto you, there shall be some standing here, which shall not taste death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom." Scholars participating in the Jesus Seminar have questioned most of the apocalyptic sayings of Jesus, thinking that many were attributed to him later to give strength to early Christians suffering under the persecution of Roman authorities. In similar fashion, The Book of Revelation, from which our reading came this morning, was most likely written sometime after 70 C.E., during such a time of Roman persecution of early Christians.

In 156 C.E., a man named Montanus began to preach in what is now Central Turkey.

He fell into trances and announced the imminent second coming of Christ, as the heavenly city of Jerusalem would descend to earth and establish itself on a plain between two local villages. On December 31^st, 999, people gathered for midnight Mass at the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome. Believing that the world would end with the coming of the year 1000, many lay prostrate and trembling on the floor waiting for the end as Pope Sylvester said what was to be the final mass. It’s interesting to imagine what they said to each other at coffee hour. A belief in the coming end of the world inspired the most radical participants in the Protestant Reformation. The Anabaptist Thomas Muntzer led peasants in a revolt in 1525. The revolt failed, the world did not end, and Muntzer was racked and decapitated.

In American history, apocalyptic, millennial and utopian beliefs have often been present, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly. Puritans described the New World using phrases from Isaiah, talking about the lion and the lamb laying down together. Leaders of the American Revolution spoke of it using apocalyptic language as well. In the Civil War song "Battle Hymn of the Republic," written by the Unitarian Julia Ward Howe, we can hear apocalyptic undertones when she speaks of the "fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword."

During the 1840s in New York and Massachusetts, as many as 100,000 people became followers of William Miller, a former army officer and self-proclaimed preacher who announced, based on his reading of Daniel and Revelation, that Christ would return and engulf the world in fiery conflagration sometime between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. When this prophecy failed to occur, Miller set a later date of October 22, 1844. When the world did not end, to the disappointment of many, Miller lost a great many of his followers, but not all of them. The modern Seventh Day Adventists trace their origins to Miller’s movement, and Jehovah’s witnesses were also influenced by Adventist doctrines.

During the 20^th century there have been many millennial movements and apocalyptic predictions as well, especially concerning World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Many of these movements have been taken more seriously since humankind has gained the ability to destroy itself either through nuclear weapons or ecological destruction. As recently as 1987, people gathered around the world expecting something to happen as a result of the celestial "Harmonic Convergence," dubbed the "moronic convergence" by The New Republic. Nothing spectacular happened.

There are some commonalities between those who make apocalyptic predictions and join millennial movement. The first and most obvious commonality is that, so far, they’ve all been wrong. The second commonality is that people who are adherents of apocalyptic and millennial ideas are usually always on the margins of society. They are often people who are persecuted. One interesting exception to this was James Watt, who served as Secretary of the Interior during the Reagan Administration. A member of the Pentecostal Assembly of God, Watt said that he didn’t believe it was necessary to do anything about environmental degradation because he believed that the world would end before too much damage could be done.

But for the most part, as biblical scholars Dennis Duling and Norman Perrin tell us, "Apocalyptic movements embrace apocalyptic eschatology because it helps to resolve the contradictory experience of despair about the terrible course of present human history and hope in the invincible power of God and his purpose for his chosen people." Folklorist Ted Daniels says, "Millennalists generally perceive themselves to be the victims of immensely powerful forces, which would swallow them instantly, if God did not defend them. Consequently, it is hard to imagine the defeat of these titanic opponents without a global cataclysm. The message is one of ultimate hope. God and/or the returned culture hero will shelter the believers through the ruin, and they alone will live forever in paradise, God’s chosen." If this is so, millennial fever can be seen as a report card on our society, and not a positive one at that. During the next twelve months, if we see millennial groups continuing to gain adherents, we can see that as an indication that there are a great number of people who feel out of control of their own lives and who feel that their lives that can only be improved by some cataclysmic event.

Given all of this, how should we feel about the story being told to us now by computer experts and others about the potentially very troubling consequences of the Year 2000 problem, or the Y2K problem as its called, as it affects computers? Is this a real problem or just another example of millennial fever?

Some of you may know about this problem already, but I suspect some of you don’t, so let me tell you the story that the Y2K storytellers are telling. This story starts about 40 years ago. It starts when people were first starting to program mainframe computers. For a long time, programmers used only a two digit number to write a date. For example, they used "85" instead of "1985." They did this to save storage space and just because it was easier. Many microchips - - the tiny microprocessors inside of electronic devices - - were also made to only handle a two digit date until about three years ago.

The big problem, according to the Y2K storytellers, is that with the arrival of at when the year 2000 finally arrives, many of these computers and microchips will think it’s 1900, not 2000. So what’s the big deal about this? The number of people in this sanctuary who have their VCR’s clock time set correctly could probably squeeze into the front two rows - - and I wouldn’t be among them - - so what’s the problem if computers all over the world think it’s 1900?

Well, a department store in London recently destroyed tons of food by mistake because the food had a shelf-expiration date of 2002. But instead of thinking the food had four more years of shelf-life, the computer calculated the food was 96 years past its expiration date and ordered it to be thrown away. Many more problems like this are expected to occur. Even worse, many of these computer programs and microchips may simply not know what to do and shut down.

How many of these are there computers and computer chips are there, where are they, and, what are they responsible for doing? The answers are a lot, almost everywhere, and these days, almost everything. There are at least 100,000 of mainframe computers still being used in the world, which are probably not Y2K compliant without being fixed, and 300 million PCs, and the PCs may or may not be Y2K compliant. In addition to all of these computer systems, there are between 25 and 50 billion of the smaller microchips being used around the world.

It is hard to imagine any aspect of our lives that is not affected or controlled by these computer systems. The infrastructure of the world we live in depends on these. Computer systems control power generation, water purification and pumping. They control telecommunication. They are used extensively by the banking and finance industries. They manage government programs such as social security, medicaid, and medicare. They manage air transportation and rail transportation. Computer systems are used to store our medical records and medicare and defense. Manufacturers and retailers depend on computer systems to keep track of their inventory and to order more goods through just-in-time delivery systems. Computer microchips are everywhere too. They are everywhere too. They are in our wristwatches, our hearing aids, our cameras, our VCRS, and our telephones. The average American comes into contact with 70 microprocessors before noon everyday. They also exist in traffic lights, elevators, and fire alarms. They are inside medical equipment and jet fighters.

One question that people ask is how many of these computers and microchips are date sensitive. The Y2K storytellers say it’s estimated that one out of every 20 lines of program code is date sensitive. The Gartner Group, which has testified before congress, reports that 180 billion lines of software code will have to be screened. As far as the microchips, experts estimate that up to 3% of the microchips will fail. Now that may sound like a small number, but remember than an offshore oil rig may have 10,000 of these chips, some underwater and some incased in concrete. And computer programs and systems are rather like strings of Christmas lights. One bad light can cause the whole string to fail. In 1990, ATT’s long distance system experienced repeated failures, reportedly because of only bad three lines out of 2 million lines of computer code.

It’s surprising what might be affected. For example, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, it’s been determined that the ladders on some fire trucks won’t work without Y2K repairs. The reason for this, I have been told, is that many products contain generic date-sensitive chips which may malfunction even if the product itself doesn’t depend on the date function.

At this point in the Y2K story, people usually ask, "Well, why don’t we just fix the problem by fixing the computer systems and replacing the computer microchips." The Y2K storytellers say this would have worked if we had started when we first found out about the problem. The existence of the problem and proposed solutions were brought to the attention of Richard Nixon during his presidency and Nixon decided not to do anything about it. It is interesting to ponder that a generation from now that Nixon could be more remembered for his failure to deal with the Y2K problem than for the Watergate scandal. But that was nearly 30 years ago, the storytellers say, and there are now just 12 months left, and many have only recently started to take the problem seriously, and there’s now just not enough time left to fix it. In a recent survey of American corporate chief information officers, 70 percent of them expressed the belief that their companies would not be completely prepared. Recently, the Chevron Oil Company announced that it will not be completely ready.

So what is going to happen on Saturday, January 1, 2000? Here the Y2K storytellers begin to say there is little certainty. Some say that the most critical systems will be fixed in time and that there will be only minor inconveniences for most people. Others predict far worse scenarios that includes social and economic chaos. I’ll tell you one of the very scariest of the stories they tell. According to this story, on January 1, in many cities all across the world people, when people wake up there will be no electricity because the computer systems that are used generate and distribute power will fail. In places where power isn’t lost, anything else that depends on a computer system or computer microchip that hasn’t yet been fixed or tested might not work. Home electronic devices. Some phones. Some cars. Stop lights. Elevators. Fire alarms. Electronic locks. Satellites. Oil rigs. Airplanes. Medical equipment. Cash machines. Banks. The list is nearly endless.

Chrysler and General Motors did some experiments last year to see what would happen at their plants. At chosen plants, all the clocks were set to 12/31/99. At the G.M. plant, many of the robotic machinery froze and stopped operating. At the Chrysler plant, they had similar machine problems, and furthermore, the time clock systems didn’t work and nobody could get out of the plant because the security system shut down. These corporations will probably fix these specific problems in time, but other corporations, who got a later start, will have similar problems.

The national economy, the Y2K storytellers say, will come to a grinding halt. Retailers will not be able to order from suppliers. Grocery stores could run out of food within three to six days. Manufacturers, if their computerized equipment works, would not be able to order from their suppliers. The effects of this could last for a few days, a few weeks, a few months or a few years.

Now, as I said, that is the scariest version of the story. Let me add some balance. Because of some good luck and some good planning, some of the worst of these things probably will not happen in Portland. I spent about an hour last week talking to Dick Hofland, who is the City of Portland’s Y2K specialist. Portland is lucky to have a gravity-fed water pumping system, and Mr. Hofland has spent the past two years directing the effort to get the city’s computer systems ready for the year 2000. This includes everything from the computers on city workers’ desks to the 911 system. In this way, Portland is ahead of many other cities in the U.S. and in the world. Furthermore, Mr. Hofland told me that representatives from the region’s electrical companies and phone companies have testified in front of the public utility commissions that the region’s electrical and telecommunication systems will be ready for the year 2000. Portland-area businesses are getting ready, too. Susan De La Vergne, who attends this church and is the Year 2000 Project Director for Fred Meyer, says the company is spending more than $15 million to get its systems ready for the year 2000.

I asked Mr. Hofland what he thinks will happen on January 1, 2000, in Portland itself. His best prediction, he said, is nothing. He added that if the city had not spent the last two years getting ready, it would have had some very serious problems, but he thinks things will be ready. Nevertheless, Mr. Hofland, is not making any 100-percent promises. This is to his credit, I think, and makes me more likely to believe him on other issues. The city, he says, currently has a contingency plan for dealing with the loss of power for 72-hours, but is now in the process of creating a contingency plan for dealing with the loss of power for longer periods of time as well as other scenarios.

This makes sense to me. The systems that might be affected are very complex systems, and it is easy to imagine that one small part of the system could easily be overlooked and have troubling consequences for the rest of the system. I remember in the aftermath of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion that it was determined that it was mostly likely one small o-ring that was at fault.

But Mr. Hofland, and again to his credit I think, would make no predictions about how the City of Portland might be affected by what happens in other parts of the country or other parts of the world. As we affirm in our Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes, truly do live in an interdependent world. Fred Meyer will most likely be ready, but its stores depend on suppliers from all around the country and the world. For this reason, Susan De La Vergne says, the company is also making contingency plans.

Even if every computer system and every computer chip in Portland worked on January 1, this city could be extremely affected by events in other parts of this country, and even if every computer system and every computer chip in the United States worked on January 1, 2000, this country could be extremely affected by events in other parts of the world. We should think about this very seriously, the Y2K storytellers say, because the United States is about six to nine months ahead of other countries in dealing with the Y2K problem. Many Asian countries are too pre-occupied with their current economic woes to worry about what might happen a year from now, and most European countries are focused on the transition to the Euro-dollar and other problems. Imagine, the Y2K storytellers say, what would happen if Germany or Japan was suddenly not a part of the world economy.

This is the Y2K story.

So is this just another apocalyptic story connected to the angst that many people feel about the coming of the new millennium? Apocalyptic stories gain currency when people are living in despair and without hope and believe their salvation is only some cataclysmic event that will bring about a new world. Some people are talking about this story this way. A few environmentalists are saying that a meltdown of the world economy is the only way that humanity can be saved from the damage it is doing to itself and to the earth. Perhaps this story is just a result of our uneasiness with the rapid changes that are taking place in modern life because of computerization.

This was my reaction when I first hear the Y2K story.

Yet I think an important question to ask is, "Who believes this story?" The New York Times, a publication not usually known for its sensationalism, wrote in an August 1998 editorial, "It makes sense to prepare for the worst." In October, a Harris Poll of Silicon Valley computer programmers and engineers found that over 60 percent of them anticipate "serious impacts" as a result of Y2K. Also in October, The New York Times reported that "10 percent of the nation’s top executives are stockpiling canned goods, buying generators and even purchasing hand guns." Senator Robert Bennett, chairman of the Senate’s Special Committee on the Year 2000 Problem, has said, "I cannot be optimistic, and I am generally concerned." The House Panel Y2K report states that "More than one-third of the most important [government] systems won’t be fixed in time." The General Accounting Office of the U.S. Congress has said, "The public faces a high risk that critical services provided by the government and the private sector could be severely disrupted." Jeffrey Garten, Dean of the Yale School of Management, has said. "A few months ago people were talking about the light at the end of the tunnel. Now the only hope is keeping the world economy from total deterioration."

So should we believe this story? My thinking about it goes like this. I find most apocalyptic stories about the end of the world as we know it to be incredulous. I would encourage even people of Christian faith to pay less attention to Revelation and more attention to the words attributed to Jesus in Luke 17:20-21. "Our father’s kingdom is not going to come with people watching for it. No one is going to be able to say, ‘Look, here!’ or ‘Over there!’ For the kingdom is inside you, waiting for you to find it." These words have meaning for non-Christians, too, I think, for they encourage us to look within ourselves rather than to some external event for solutions to our problems.

Yet I also know that in both our personal lives and in the course of human history, there are periodic crises. I know that many times, our reaction to these crises, either in anticipation of them or even after the fact, is denial. No one believed that the Titanic would sink. Many doubted the atrocities committed during the Holocaust could be true. Before the earthquake in Kobe, Japan, a few years ago, no one believed that such destruction and loss of life would occur.

This all makes me think that we should start to pay more serious attention to the Y2K storytellers than most of us, myself included, have been, and determine for ourselves how seriously we take the story.

If you do believe the story might be true, the first step in preparation would be to start gathering some more information about how problems might affect your life. I’ve only been able to give a very brief description of some of the problems. For example, if your home heating system is one that be programmed electronically, you might want to find out from the manufacturer if it will be affected. Think about any other way that your life is personally affected by computers or computer microchips.

The second step would be to prepare materially. Most public safety officials, whether they believe the Y2K story or not, recommend that it is a good idea to be able to survive inside your home for at least three days without electricity, gas or water and without having to leave. This means having enough food, bottled water, medicine, and warm blankets, among other things.

Many residents of Montreal, Canada, had to survive this way longer than three days when ice storms hit that city last year. It might also be a good idea to have hard copies of bank and medical records that might be lost if computer systems crash.

. The third step would be to prepare socially. Some people are already preparing for the year 2000 by buying shotguns and making plans to head for the wilderness. I don’t think this is the best idea. I don’t think having thousands of people wandering around Mt. Hood with shotguns and a their individual month-long supplies of Campbell’s chicken soup is the best idea. If the Y2K problem has taught us anything, it is that we truly are interdependent on one another, whether we like it or not. If the Y2K story is true, those who work together with one another will surely do better than those who try to survive alone. If there is a problem, there is a proverb among the Xhosa people of southern Africa that we should remember. "I am because we are." Preparing socially would mean building relationships with neighbors and others in our communities before problems occur.

Elizabeth Dole, president of the American Red Cross, has said, "The midst of a disaster is the poorest possible time to establish new relationships." People in other places are already doing this. In Medford, Oregon, 700 people recently gathered over a two-day period to learn how to protect their families and communities in anticipation of Y2K problems.

The fourth step would be to prepare emotionally and spiritually. After the ice storms in Montreal earlier this year, some people commented that a big problem was that people were not prepared in this way. One Unitarian Universalist minister recently said that spirituality is the ability to stay centered no matter what is going on around us. It is a groundedness in ultimacy that allows us to weather storms in our lives. It is a depth that allows us to maintain perspective, putting the events of the moment into the larger picture. It is faith. Hebrews 11:1 tells us, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen." I do not interpret this scripture as encouraging irrational leaps of faith, but as encouraging us to look simply beyond the present moment to the memory of times past and the hopes of times not yet come. These are abilities and qualities that certainly will be needed if Y2K causes the chaos that some predict.

Spiritual groundedness, however, is not something that is acquired instantaneously. You can’t download it from www.spirituality.com. You can’t buy it at a store. You can’t find it in a box or in a book, though some books can point you in the right direction, which will always be within your own experiences and within yourself. It’s like a computer system, in a way. It takes time to develop it, test it, work out the bugs, and occasionally update it so it won’t crash.

As for myself, my faith is really a simple faith. It is a faith in humanity. It is a faith in myself, a faith in you, a faith in all of us. It is not a faith in our ability to be perfect, for we surely aren’t and never will be. It’s not a faith in our ability to find a "silver bullet," a technological answer for every problem, whether it be for AIDS or for the environment or for Y2K, because I don’t believe we always will. It is a faith that, despite the fact that we human beings are sometimes bumbling, inept, foolish, short-sighted, greedy, selfish, and many other terrible things, we are ultimately, though not always apparently, good. It is a faith that each one us, if allowed, has abilities and gifts that we can use to help one another. It is a faith that we are ultimately more giving than selfish. It is a faith that even in the most terrible of circumstances, we can find meaning and love. Such is my faith.

Now, on January 1, 2000, I’m not sure what will happen. I do not know whether this will be a hiccup or a hemorrhage in human history. I do know almost certainly, though, that sometime within our lifetimes, we all will face some crises, either ones that affect only our own lives or ones that affect all of our lives. It’s my faith that I pray will sustain me through these difficult times, whatever or whenever they might be, as well as sustaining me through the only sometimes simpler task of facing each new day.

Will you pray with me?

Spirit of Life,

Deep within each of us,

Amidst us all,

As we face the thousand uncertainties that make our days,

May we be guided by wisdom, courage, justice and compassion,

And may we have faith so that we might know within ourselves the goodness that is our lives.

Amen

 Let us leave this place of worship knowing that it is together that we may best face the challenges that life presents to us.

Copyright © 2000, James Kubal-Komoto. All rights reserved.