Some of us may have enjoyed or endured long car rides during Thanksgiving week; if your passengers included small children, you may have heard these words, in less than dulcet tones: “When are we going to get there?” or their variant, “Are we there yet?”
Jesus’ followers had a similar question for him. If he was indeed the promised Messiah, shouldn't he be ringing down the curtain on the bad old days soon? Things weren’t so good – the Romans on their backs, their own tax collectors squeezing them for every penny, not to mention the temple taxes. Life was hard and often cruel. When was Jesus going to deliver them from all this suffering?
These questions did not go away after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. His followers were all the more convinced he was indeed the Messiah – so how long did the world have to wait? When would he return to usher in the New Age? But as to the “when,” not even Jesus knew: "But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
Jesus did draw an analogy to the natural world: “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates.”
“These things” were the crises in the political and natural realms he’d discussed just previous to this conversation (Mark 13:1-23), earthquakes, famines, wars.
It is tempting to read apocalyptic interpretations into world events. One day perhaps those will come to pass. But I am more interested in is the other signs that “he is near, at the very gates,” signs that appear because we invoke His name, His love, His power. As followers of Christ, we are called to be like those fig trees when summer approaches, to let our branches become tender – both vulnerable, and conductive of new life. Every time we feed the hungry, console the desolate, confront the powers, heal the broken, we put forth leaves that tell the world that God is on the move, death has been conquered, everything is about to change.
What “leaves” are appearing on your branches these days? Give thanks for God’s life coming through you today. And what buds are about to leaf out? Pray those into fullness.
As much as we are called to be branches in full leaf, we are also called to point out leaves on other branches, to proclaim the inbreaking reign of God every single time we see evidence of grace. That’s how the world will know what signs to look for. Let’s be God’s fig trees, in season, and in out, so everyone will know that Christ is near. O come, O come Emmanuel!
11-29-17 - Election or Selection?
It’s been a challenging few weeks in Gospel-lectionary Land for people who believe in universal salvation, the doctrine that all are saved by Christ’s redeeming work, regardless of what they believe or whether they want to be included. Last Sunday it was Jesus’ vision of the final judgment, with the righteous sorted from the damned. This week we hear about the end times, and this troubling verse:
“Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.”
Just what, or who, is meant by “his elect?” Can anyone join that party, or do you have to be invited or, worse, elected? For us the word “election” implies a democratic process, but theologians of old used that word to connote God’s choosing us for salvation. It’s more selection than election, and in some passages Jesus suggests it is not automatic, giving rise to the idea of predestination, the belief that some are chosen for salvation - or not.
There is some comfort in the notion that there is nothing we can do to secure eternal salvation – that is grace, which is pure gift. But most folks like to be able to control their destinies, to earn their way. And what if some get the gift and some do not? What if “winning the lottery” on earth, by where we are born, and in what color skin, and with what accompanying resources and privileges, means we are shut out of the heavenly courts? What about faith and belief? Some passages imply this is the key, the one response required from us to what God freely offers.
It is human nature to look at a phrase like “his elect” and immediately wonder about the opposite – who loses. But nothing in that word implies a limit – everyone might be God’s “elect.” If the love of God is as merciful and all-encompassing as Jesus implies in some of his teaching, then we might imagine that those being gathered from the four winds includes most if not all of humanity. It's one reason we are to make the love and power of Jesus known in our lives.
It is not given to us to know who is or is not “elect.” Christians who presume to judge that for others are usurping a role reserved strictly for God. Jesus told us only to love one another as God has loved us – with mercy and compassion and truthfulness and healing. That should keep us busy enough not to have time to worry about who’s “in” and who’s “out,” even ourselves.
At church this week, a woman told of her 4-year-old grand-niece, who spoke about her recent baptism at Show & Tell. Asked by a teacher what baptism meant, the girl said, “It means that even when you’re not perfect, God forgives you.”
Instead of worrying about whether or not we’re included, let’s set about being the kind of Christian community in which that girl, and all her peers, grow into adulthood holding that perfect knowledge. A church that knows that in its guts can transform the world in Amazing Grace.
“Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.”
Just what, or who, is meant by “his elect?” Can anyone join that party, or do you have to be invited or, worse, elected? For us the word “election” implies a democratic process, but theologians of old used that word to connote God’s choosing us for salvation. It’s more selection than election, and in some passages Jesus suggests it is not automatic, giving rise to the idea of predestination, the belief that some are chosen for salvation - or not.
There is some comfort in the notion that there is nothing we can do to secure eternal salvation – that is grace, which is pure gift. But most folks like to be able to control their destinies, to earn their way. And what if some get the gift and some do not? What if “winning the lottery” on earth, by where we are born, and in what color skin, and with what accompanying resources and privileges, means we are shut out of the heavenly courts? What about faith and belief? Some passages imply this is the key, the one response required from us to what God freely offers.
It is human nature to look at a phrase like “his elect” and immediately wonder about the opposite – who loses. But nothing in that word implies a limit – everyone might be God’s “elect.” If the love of God is as merciful and all-encompassing as Jesus implies in some of his teaching, then we might imagine that those being gathered from the four winds includes most if not all of humanity. It's one reason we are to make the love and power of Jesus known in our lives.
It is not given to us to know who is or is not “elect.” Christians who presume to judge that for others are usurping a role reserved strictly for God. Jesus told us only to love one another as God has loved us – with mercy and compassion and truthfulness and healing. That should keep us busy enough not to have time to worry about who’s “in” and who’s “out,” even ourselves.
At church this week, a woman told of her 4-year-old grand-niece, who spoke about her recent baptism at Show & Tell. Asked by a teacher what baptism meant, the girl said, “It means that even when you’re not perfect, God forgives you.”
Instead of worrying about whether or not we’re included, let’s set about being the kind of Christian community in which that girl, and all her peers, grow into adulthood holding that perfect knowledge. A church that knows that in its guts can transform the world in Amazing Grace.
11-28-17 - On the Clouds
Rolling dark clouds are a staple of sci-fi movies, and they don’t generally presage a good time. When clouds start moving rapidly in a glowering sky, you know Someone or Something is coming, with or without benign intentions.
This is what I envision when I read the words attributed to Jesus in the gospel passage with which we begin the season of Advent: “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.”
Jesus does not say when this event will take place, but he pictures a cataclysmic End that launches the great Beginning that will have no end. And anyone paying attention should have noticed that a return implies a departure; they thought he was going to finish his business then and there, but he sets up a later and much, much bigger event.
One of the few science fiction movies I’ve seen in recent years was Christopher Nolan’s film Interstellar, in which intrepid scientists travel through space seeking a hospitable planet to colonize, since human behavior has rendered our own earth toxic to human life. In Nolan’s vision, salvation comes from humankind cracking the cosmic secrets of space-time-gravity to access a new habitat. Our Christian vision of salvation has a similar theme – but its movement is from the cosmic to earthly. For us it is God, the author of the mysteries of the universe, who transcended them to come into our dying world, to plant a seed of healing among us. Christ’s redemption includes the restoration of the universe – and what we might call a re-colonization, as the “elect” are gathered from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
These apocalyptic images remind us where our Christ-story ultimately ends – not in the manger, not on the cross, not even with the empty tomb, but with the New Heavens and a New Earth. When we pray, “Thy Kingdom come,” that is what we are inviting into being, that eternal reality that we can occupy here and now, in glimpses and bursts.
Today pray very slowly through the Lord’s Prayer, and pause to reflect on that phrase when you come to it. How does that petition open up the other phrases in the prayer Jesus taught his followers to pray? What does it open up in you?
The great Advent hymn Lo, he comes with clouds descending captures the cosmic grandeur of what lies before us. God’s future is both now and yet to come. We live in it, and we live into it.
This is what I envision when I read the words attributed to Jesus in the gospel passage with which we begin the season of Advent: “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.”
Jesus does not say when this event will take place, but he pictures a cataclysmic End that launches the great Beginning that will have no end. And anyone paying attention should have noticed that a return implies a departure; they thought he was going to finish his business then and there, but he sets up a later and much, much bigger event.
One of the few science fiction movies I’ve seen in recent years was Christopher Nolan’s film Interstellar, in which intrepid scientists travel through space seeking a hospitable planet to colonize, since human behavior has rendered our own earth toxic to human life. In Nolan’s vision, salvation comes from humankind cracking the cosmic secrets of space-time-gravity to access a new habitat. Our Christian vision of salvation has a similar theme – but its movement is from the cosmic to earthly. For us it is God, the author of the mysteries of the universe, who transcended them to come into our dying world, to plant a seed of healing among us. Christ’s redemption includes the restoration of the universe – and what we might call a re-colonization, as the “elect” are gathered from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
These apocalyptic images remind us where our Christ-story ultimately ends – not in the manger, not on the cross, not even with the empty tomb, but with the New Heavens and a New Earth. When we pray, “Thy Kingdom come,” that is what we are inviting into being, that eternal reality that we can occupy here and now, in glimpses and bursts.
Today pray very slowly through the Lord’s Prayer, and pause to reflect on that phrase when you come to it. How does that petition open up the other phrases in the prayer Jesus taught his followers to pray? What does it open up in you?
The great Advent hymn Lo, he comes with clouds descending captures the cosmic grandeur of what lies before us. God’s future is both now and yet to come. We live in it, and we live into it.
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