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For
many followers of Jesus this seemed like the sign of the end.
Surely Jesus was
coming any day now. In fact, when Mark records the message of
the "angel" to the
women at the tomb I believe that Mark has in mind the second
coming: "Go tell the
disciples to hurry up to
Galilee
. There you will see him." And again it did not happen.
By
the time we get to the gospels of Matthew and Luke there is
some degree of
puzzlement about the failure of Jesus to reappear. Matthew
puts into Jesus' mouth the
command to the disciples to "go to make disciples of all
the gentiles, baptizing them and
teaching them to observe all things." As though the
reappearance of Jesus cannot happen
until the gentiles become disciples.
Luke
deals with the problem by dividing all of history into three
epochs: The long period
before Jesus, the period of Jesus, and the period of the
Church after Jesus. The followers
of Jesus are adjusting to a much longer wait than first
anticipated.
The
Gospel of John, remember, was produced in two editions. The
original version has a
really surprising solution to the problem. John's Gospel
originally said that the second
coming of Jesus had already occurred—Jesus had returned in
the form of the Holy Spirit.
That was such a novel idea that John's Gospel had a problem
being accepted into the
biblical canon, so in the second edition Jesus promises a
second coming.
Curiosity
about the coming of Jesus did not end with the biblical
period. A late first
century or early second century writing, the Epistle of
Barnabas, says that the end of the
world will occur on the day when the earth is 6000 years old.
But when the calendar
starts is not certain. Hippolytus came along in 235 CE with
the opinion that Jesus was
bom in the year 5500, meaning that the end would come in 500
CE. Hippolytus, by the
way, is one of the few that does not predict that the end will
come in his lifetime. St.
Cyprian[258 CE] agreed with Hippolytus but insisted that 6000
years had already passed
since Adam and Eve, so the end was coming very soon.
Others
picked the year 1000. And surely you all remember that many
were sure it would
be in the year 2000. It didn't happen, of course.
In the
United States
two fairly famous people did some calculating and made a
prediction
about the second coming. One was William Miller [1782-1849]
who predicted that the
second coming would take place between
March 21,1843
and
March 21, 1844
. When
that did not happen he revised his calculations and said it
would be on
October 22, 1844
.
When that did not happen his followers gave up on predicting
and focused their faith
elsewhere. They became the folks we now know as the Seventh
Day Adventists.
The
next famous American to predict the end was Cyrus Scofield
[1843-1921]. He was a
disciple of a Britisher by the name of John Darby. Darby took
a clue from Luke and
divided the history of the world in periods that he called
"dispensations." He also
introduced the notion of the "rapture," which has
always seemed like a dangerous notion
to me. I see a bumper sticker that tells me if I see a car
rolling down the street without a
driver I can assume the driver was a believer who has been
transported suddenly to the
rapture. Makes you hope the pilot of the airplane you are
riding in is not a believer.
Scofield, whose version of the Bible is still for sale at
Bames and Noble, managed to
found the Dallas Theological Seminary to continue the teaching
of his ideas. One of the
famous graduates of that Seminary was Hal Lindsey, author of
The Late Great Planet
Earth.
Lindsey,
and other fundamentalists, believe that the constitution of
Israel
as a State in
1948 started the time clock. Many of these folks are
contributing large sums of money to
Israel
in the hope that
Israel
will occupy all of the
Holy Land
because when they do the
second coming will occur.
On
television today I occasionally listen for a while to Jack Van
Impe or Pat Robertson,
two who also believe that the second coming of Jesus will
occur in their lifetimes. I
believe that these folks would have a lot more credibility if
they were tearing up their
wills or cashing in their 401K's.
Here
it is the first Sunday in Advent. Our Advent clock, the Advent
Wreath, has the first
candle lit. Advent is that season of the Church Year when we
consider all the comings of
Jesus: at his birth, at this coming Christmas-time, and at the
end of time. What sort of
attitude should we have?
Personally,
I sort of favor the Gospel of John's solution. Jesus' second
coming is the gift
of the Holy Spirit. Through the work of the Spirit Jesus is
present with us "to the end of
the age." Whenever that is. Even fifteen billion years
from now.
Paul
gives us another notion in his metaphor of the Church as the
Body of Christ. You
and I, the people of God, are the second coming of Jesus. A
very biblical concept.
Clearly, it is not a good idea to become so focused on a
second coming of Jesus that we
neglect our calling in this world, in this life. I like very
much the advice of the old Rabbi,
Yohannon, ben Zakkai: "If you are on your way to plant
potatoes and someone says,
"Come, the Messiah is here," first go and plant your
potatoes. Then go to greet the
Messiah." Good advice.
We
have commitments in this world and in this life here and now
which ought not to be
neglected because we are "waiting for Jesus." We
have a mission to the world. We have
lots of potatoes to plant. There are so many hungry to be fed,
so many sick to be healed
and comforted, so many naked that need to be clothed, so many
lonely that need to be
visited, so much poverty that needs to be overcome, so many
widows and orphans that
need our assistance, so many languishing in oppressive
cultures that need to be set free.
Our mission, our obedience, our calling as the people of God
is in this world and this life.
The future is up to God. Amen. |
