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Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's November 28, 2004 Sunday Morning worship service. In Case of Rapture . . . . Isaiah 2:1-5; Matthew 24:36-44 Bethel 11/28/04 The Reverend Marc Sherrod, ThD Maybe you have seen the bumper sticker: “In case of rapture, this car will be empty.” Or perhaps another bumper sticker: “In case of rapture, can I have your car?” The rapture refers to a kind of instantaneous translation of the born-again believer into heaven before the reign of terror associated with the thousand year reign of the antichrist on earth. Those who stake their lives on reading all the warning signs that the end is near, probably think of the rapture as something like the ascent of Elijah into heaven on the fiery chariot or the ascension of Jesus up into the clouds of glory. I don’t mean to be irreverent, but when I try to imagine what the rapture might be like, I end up thinking about the science fiction of star trek and the ubiquitous phrase, “beam me up, Scotty.” It’s funny, but despite the prevalence of the word “rapture” among some Christians, especially at the turn of the millennium several years ago, it is a word that never occurs in the Bible. The attempt to decode the cryptic events associated with the rapture and the end times have, however, become a massive obsession for Christians who see a world infected with evil and ultimately beyond redemption. In terms of Christian doctrine, those who believe that there will be a rapture one day are preoccupied with matters of eschatology, that is, a study of the end times, from the Greek word for the end, eschaton. The people who talk about the end in terms of a rapture, to be followed by a cataclysmic and violent closing act before the curtain comes down on the world as we know it, actually owe most of their eschatology to a renegade Anglican priest from Ireland named John Nelson Darby, who spent a large part of the 19th century preaching something called “premillennial dispensationalism.” According to Darby, human history is divided up into seven ages, or seven “dispensations,” all leading up to the end of time. It is a view of history popularized in the Scofield Reference Bible, and has been especially prevalent among groups like 7th Day Adventists, the various permutations of the Church of God, and some Baptist groups. This version of eschatology holds that the Bible, when all the clues are correctly read, contains a hidden schedule for the final events that will precede the end of history. John Nelson Darby believed that God deals with the world differently in each of the seven “dispensations.” We are now in the 6th dispensation or era of world history, the season of grace when everyone will have a chance to know Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, but this age is soon to be followed by the 7th dispensation – the end times. It is in this imminent, 7th dispensation when things will really get interesting – and when they will get ugly if you’re not a born-again believer. There is going to be a Great Tribulation, but those whom Jesus recognizes as his own will not have to endure the time of Tribulation, since God will remove the faithful remnant from the earth in the rapture. Thus, the first event in the chain of dominoes that will lead to the end is the rapture – the secret return of Jesus to transport all true believers to heaven. Cars, trains, and planes will fly into one another as believers are suddenly taken heavenward, leaving their clothes, personal effects, and vehicles behind (hence that bumper sticker, “In case of rapture, this car will be empty’). Those left behind on earth will endure seven years of tribulation, mostly inflicted on the world by the antichrist, disguised as the leader of a one-world government. Some of those shocked by the sudden disappearance of their loved ones will become Bible-believing Christians who will then band together to resist the wiles of the antichrist and conduct secret evangelism campaigns. Meanwhile, Israel will be restored and the Jews will convert to Christianity – all in preparation for the final battle of Armeggeddon, which is an ancient battlefield in Israel, when Jesus will return and defeat the antichrist and all the forces of evil before the world finally ends. Probably, the scenario I have just described is familiar to any of you who have followed the plot of the best selling Left Behind series of novels now spanning 12 volumes, written by Tim LaHaye, one of the founders of the moral majority back in the 1980s, and Jerry B. Jenkins, of which millions of copies have been sold. The Left Behind books are firmly grounded in a view of the end which insists that the Bible, specifically the books of Daniel and Revelation, offer a literal road map to coming events, complete with a darkened sun, falling stars, beasts from the sea, rivers of blood, Gog’s invasion of Israel, the drying up of the Euphrates River, and the Beast’s world dictatorship under the sinister number, 666. The people who read these books as less fiction and more truth seem to know who will be saved and who will be lost; they seem to know who the antichrist is and where the Messiah will appear. Well, what are we to do with the rapture and all that other violent stuff when it comes to our own approach to the end times? . . . we who believe that God does continue to act in history, that Jesus Christ is the divine sign that God has a plan for all of creation, we who do trust that everything, indeed, is moving towards some kind of denoument, a grand conclusion in the inscrutable purposes of the almighty One? I confess that I am no expert on premillennial dispensational eschatology. But it does strike me as rather an escapist view of reality and, more critically, a view that hinges on God’s abandonment of the world to a reign of terror, and it does seem to be a bit at odds with that incarnational theology we celebrate at Advent, a theology which privileges both God’s fleshly entrance into the standing world order as well as a hopeful anticipation for the redemption of all things and all people. At the same time, I know that the ideas associated with the rapture offer a very attractive world view for folks who feel like religious outsiders or who see the world in terms of absolute good versus absolute evil or who want to see a conspiracy under every rock. It’s not surprising that the apocalyptic fear of being “left behind” holds traction in our society where some polls estimate that half of Americans believe in UFOs and when not so long ago a U.S. President’s schedule was being planned by an astrologer. Nowadays, it seems that nearly every prognosticator or prophet has a book or web site hawking particular predictions for the end. But the reading from Matthew 24 says as plain as the nose on your face: no one knows the hour – not you, not me, not even the angels in heaven nor the Son of Man – only the Father. That’s what it says. You can read it for yourself. Now, the whole of chapter 24 also talks about some pretty scary stuff about the end, but the bottom line is, you must stay awake and be alert, for there is no way to predict when or where the end will come. On the First Sunday of Advent each year, the church’s lectionary texts always draw us to passages that lean hard upon the warnings, texts that speak of the return of Christ and the final consummation of human history. This reading from Matthew’s Gospel is a case in point, our annual warning shot across the bow of the ship of the Church, warning us to be alert, to watch, to prepare ourselves. “You must be ready,” Jesus says, “For the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” I was raised to tremble a bit any time I thought about those words: two will be left in the field, one will be taken and one left; two will be grinding at the mill, one taken and one left behind. I have no doubt that Matthew and the other gospel writers all expected the return of Jesus in their lifetime. Nonetheless, Matthew was not concerned with reading signs or keeping timetables. He knew that before long, people could get so preoccupied with those things that they cared more about their calculations than they did about their neighbors. Once they had figured out, a la the book of Revelation, who God’s 144,000 elect were, they did not see any reason to waste any time or courtesy on the damned, except perhaps to remind them of just how hot hellfire was going to be. Matthew’s decisive declaration against the folly of heading off to the mountain top to wait for the end comes in his very next chapter, chapter 25, in what are probably the most oft cited verses for many of you: Lord, when did I see you hungry, naked, or in prison? When you did it unto the least of these, you did it unto me.” If you think the end is just around the corner, if you’re expecting to hear “Beam me up, Scotty” at any moment, why bother to worry about the uninsured poor, the guilty prisoner, or the homeless sleeping on the sidewalk? I got a chance to catch Fresh Air Wednesday and hear John Dominic Crossan, who is one of our foremost scholars on New Testament Christianity, talk a little bit about eschatology. Terry Gross asked him about the “end of days” and those who believed that the rapture and the second coming would be soon and how this affected current political discourse. Crossan responded with what I thought was a simple, but quite profound statement: does our assertion about the violence of the second coming really say something about our refusal to accept the first one? That is, because we have such a hard time accepting a non-violent Jesus, do we have to imagine him coming back violently in order to do it right? (NPR 11/24/04) In the Palestine of Matthew’s day, things couldn’t have gotten much worse. The chosen people were scattered. The temple was destroyed. The promised land was a province of Rome. There was no relief in sight. It was a good time, if ever there was a good time, for Jesus to come back. Yet, he didn’t. There was no violence from the hand of Jesus. Yet, still, he says, “You must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” How do you deal with a piece of advice like that? It’s like saying, pray all the time; always do good to others; think only about the things that make for peace. How hard is that? Well, it sure isn’t easy. “You must be ready,” Jesus says. Well, why not be ready all the time, not only for the end, but for whatever the present moment brings? Every morning when you wake up, decide to live the life God has given you to live right now. Refuse to live yesterday over and over again. Resist the temptation to save your best self for tomorrow. Do not put off living the kind of life you are meant to live. There is no time for that, no matter how much time is left. Go ahead: make the decisions; write the letter; get the help you need; find someone to love; give yourself away. Why waste your time making preparations for an end time you cannot predict? Live prepared. Live a caught-up life, not a put-off life, so that wherever you are -- standing in a field or grinding at a mill, or just going about the everyday business of our life – you are ready for God, for whatever happens next, not afraid but wide awake, watching for the Lord who never tires of coming again and again to the world. That to me is the essential message of the incarnation and of advent: that Jesus keeps coming to this sin-weary world again and again and again – not just at the end when some would say its already mostly over for most people. Who knows? In our lifetime, maybe even today or tomorrow, we may finally see him ride in on the clouds, or we may find ourselves walking alongside of him on our road to Emmaus, or we may see him when we close our eyes for the very last time. Either way, our lives are in God’s hands. Either way, God leaves the living of them to us. And so, at the very least, we should light a candle, an advent candle. For in the darkness of the Church, the candle burning, burning, burning, holds the darkness back, if only just barely. I spent most of the days of my December childhoods, like many of you, I suspect, anxious for Christmas to hurry up and get here. But I did so with at least some fear and trembling. I think what caused the anxiety for me were the annual refrains of the old children’s song, “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.” You know the song: “Oh, you better watch out / you better not cry/ you better not pout, I’m telling you why: Santa Claus is comin’ to town!” There was promise in that song, but there was also warning: “He sees you when you’re sleepin’, / he knows when you’re awake, / He knows if you’ve been bad or good, / so be good for goodness sake.” The message of the song, obviously written by a parent skilled in the art of motivation by fear, was very clear to me: Get excited! But also . . . shape up! Something of the same dynamic is at work in the season of Advent. It is a season of wonderful promise and soft lights, yet a season augmented with a healthy dose of warning about the One who is coming. It is a time of joy and anticipation, but it is also a season of repentance and self-examination. On the First Sunday of Advent each year, the church’s lectionary texts always draw us to passages that lean hard upon the warnings, texts that speak of the return of Christ and the final consummation of human history. This reading from Matthew’s Gospel is a case in point, our annual warning shot across the bow of the ship of the Church, warning us to be alert, to watch, to prepare ourselves. “You must be ready,” Jesus says, “For the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” In other words, “you better watch out.” Matthew’s accent is on the unexpected time and surprising circumstances of Christ’s return. Jesus uses images of a flood, a thief, images that are pointed, intrusive, disturbing, images intended to strike a bit of anxiety and fear in us, not popular in this of all seasons, but helpful images that call us to be alert, to watch, to make ready. No one knows the day or the hour, Matthew tells his community, but that lack of specific knowledge relieves no Christian of the responsibility to live as if the end were coming just as swiftly as the coming of the night. Although the centuries have now intervened between the writing of Mathew’s Gospel and our own time, the message is essentially the same for us. A Presbyterian minister from Delaware puts it this way:
Content with candles and carols and good food, we bask in the warmth of familiar traditions, in reciprocated acts of kindness, and in feelings of general goodwill. But how many of us really ponder the harsh realities of Christ’s first coming: the dank stable, the cold night, the closed door of the inn? How many of us share the longing of the ancient prophets, who awaited the Messiah with such aching intensity that they foresaw his arrival thousands of years before he was born? Mother Teresa once noted that the first person to welcome Christ was John the Baptist, who leaped for joy on recognizing him, though both of them were still within their mothers’ wombs. We, in stark contrast, are often so dulled by superficial distractions that we are incapable of hearing any voice within, let alone listening to it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that German martyr for the Christian faith during the years of Hitler and the Holocaust, links Advent with the great day of judgment in one of his Advent devotionals. He writes that “even though this thought [of judgment] may appear to us to be so unlike Christmas, it is original Christianity and is to be taken extremely seriously. When we hear Jesus knocking, our conscience first of all pricks us: Are we rightly prepared? Is our heart capable of becoming God’s dwelling place? . . . . We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience” (Watch for the Light, introduction and meditation for Dec. 21). Advent danger. Lest we forget, the Herods of the world are sending their armies to slay innocent children under the age of two; angels are descending to earth and their message isn’t just one of peace, joy, and goodwill; tired and weary shepherds are startled by a blinding light; an unsuspecting Jewish maiden, just a young peasant girl, has been designated the vessel of God’s descent to the earth. And there is no room in the inn. Advent is a dangerous time. A time to ponder: how, exactly, does God look upon this sin-weary world with its shameless self-promotion and crass consumerism, our half-hearted attempts to put the Christ in Christmas, as the old saying goes. Well, maybe we do put Christ in Christmas, and maybe we don’t, and maybe even this year we will try just a little bit harder. But, for most of us, December, with its call to getting and spending, will put its hand upon our shoulders and lay claim to our time and our lives and our energy as no other month of the year can do. I think the hard part is being able to tune the ear just enough, so that the sound of the distant thunder of God’s approach can be heard, just enough so that the alarm and danger of Advent are allowed to seep into our souls, so that the soul of each soul here is sought after and begins to seek the divine as we have never done so before. Advent is a dangerous time. God’s future is coming. And we know not the day or the hour. It is the supreme act of faith, therefore, to come to this, the table of our Lord, today, on this the First Sunday of Advent. Of all the signs that we have to point us along our way through life’s journey, this is the one sign that declares that the future is not really our future, but that the future belongs to God. The earliest Christians were accused of being cannibals because they said and they believed that in their common meal, that they ate the body of Jesus and that they drank his blood. They believed that they took the very corporeal reality of Jesus into themselves. And the ingesting of Jesus brought about the daily miracle of salvation, everyday. While our theology of the Lord’s Supper is now different, we are to take, bless, eat, and remember, we are to watch, to be alert, to pray, for this is not the world’s food and drink, but this is the bread of angels and the cup of salvation. For here, as we dare to come to this table, God’s future breaks in upon us. Are we ready? Let us pray. As these days move toward Christmas, as the gifts pile up and the excitement grows stronger, do not let us lose sight of the coming one who comes to purify our hearts, to renew our minds, to convert our souls to the living reality of your grace and truth. Help us to watch, to be alert, to pray. For Christ’s sake. Amen. We think of Advent as a time of preparation, and so it is, but maybe we also should think of it as a time to turn inward, a time for self-examination, a time to count the cost, not of what’s on our shopping list, but to count the cost of what it means to follow the Lord and to live in the paradox of simultaneously waiting and preparing for his return one day. Advent danger. Just ask Zechariah, he’ll tell you that this is a dangerous time that we stepped into a few days ago just as he stepped into the temple in Jerusalem on that day recorded by Luke. He, like us who are here, was simply trying to perform his religious obligations by attending to the worship of God. Both Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth are of the family of Aaron, a priestly lineage dating far back into Israel’s history. At he time of Luke’s Gospel, Aaronic priests had been divided into 24 divisions named for Aaron’s 24 sons (I Chronicles 24:1-19) , and these priests took turns serving at the altar of the temple in Jerusalem. In our passage, Zechariah’s division is on duty, and within the division Zechariah is chosen by lot to burn incense on the altar in the holy place. The people wait outside as Zechariah enters the temple alone. Sometimes, it is when we are alone, that we are most aware of dangerous possibilities. One wonders if the hair on the back of Zechariah’s neck felt strangely different, or if a kind of shiver passed over him as he passed from the profane space outside to the sacred space within the temple. In the passing from one to the other, from the outside to the inside, that is when the danger begins. For there, as he approaches the altar, the angel Gabriel appears. An angel, a messenger from God, so unearthly, I imagine, and so unlike the Hallmark greeting card angels and the hollywood angels with which we are perhaps most familiar. An appearance that must have been awesome and terrifying at the same time. And a message that simply could not be believed – an announcement of birth to Zechariah and Elizabeth , even in their old age. He is incredulous, even as his ancestors who gave birth in old age were equally incredulous. Only this time, unlike Sarah and Abraham before him, there is no laughter, for Zechariah has been struck speechless because he doubts the veracity of that which the angel has told him. And then, when he leaves the temple following his encounter with this heavenly messenger, the waiting crowd outside knows that something unusual has happened. And as Luke records it, Whether you are Zechariah or Elizabeth or one of the crowd, it can be a dangerous thing to enter the sacred space of worship during Advent, because, who knows what message might be delivered? What sense might be closed so that others can be opened up?
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