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November 23, 2009
First Sunday of Advent [November 29, 2009]
I have not read any of Tim LeHaye and Jerry B. Jenkin’s Left Behind series of books but a quick check on Google Search indicates that lots of folks, like millions, read them as quickly as they appear in print. Google also indicates that the series falls into the category of entertainment, all of which struck me a bit odd because the central idea in each succeeding volume concerns the end days, the final chapter in the life of humankind and the universe itself. More specifically, the authors ask this question: At time’s end who will rise to the heavens in the rapture and who will be left behind to wail and gnash teeth? Nothing very entertaining about that, do you think?
I hate to disappoint the messers LeHaye and Jenkins, but they are not the first to ask to ask the “end times” question. I would dare say that most of us on occasion have thought about life after death. It is always a fascinating question. Indeed, in one of the earliest Christian writings we possess, the Second Letter of Paul to the Thessalonian Christians, (around the year 50 A.D.) we find the author attempting to settle fears in the community that those who died before Jesus’ Second Coming would forfeit their right to accompany the Lord Jesus to heaven. Paul calms them by saying that “we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the lord, will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep. The dead will rise first.” I’m not sure where Paul got that assurance, but it only seems right and just that all people, whether living or dead, should have equal access to God’s kingdom.
This question regarding the end of all things earthly appears annually in the scriptures assigned for the last Sunday of the liturgical year and the first Sunday of the season of Advent. Most Christians, I should imagine, must occasionally say to themselves: “Well, another year gone by and a new year appearing on the calendar; I’m still here, thank God. Grandmother passed away, baby Anne was born. Time passes, history is behind us and the future is still the great mystery. What will this new year of grace bring us? How will I respond to the challenges that appear in time and place by the grace of God?
In a sense, the question about end times and who gets left and who is “assumed” is not a terribly important question. We don’t know, it’s simple as that.
But what is more relevant and exciting is the question of the “now”, what am I doing here and now, what are all of earth’s creatures doing at this precious moment in history, in the middle of God’s story to bring holiness to the present condition in the world? Now, that is a more relevant question, and indeed far more interesting than the question the authors LeHaye and Jenkins pursue in their Left Behind books. Life is not a matter of sitting about wondering what God will do next, who will be lifted up and who will remain here
Indeed, it is my sense in pursuing the words and works of Jesus, that, for the most part, he was more concerned about the troubling issues of the moment: justice, peace, compassion, love of neighbor, feeding the hungry, aiding the thirsty doing the just deed, et cetera. The present moment, of course, can usually be controlled while the future lies in the hands of God.
Yes, it is true, we love to imagine what the future holds. That is part of our nature, namely, to plumb the unexplored nature of things. And, now that I think of it, perhaps the works of LeHaye and Jenkins are, indeed, entertainment because life itself is such a God-invented mystery, and we love mystery. Given that assumption, life on earth becomes a little less complicated and the rapture is something our imagination can play with year after year’s end and all the new beginnings until eternity finally looms on the horizon.
The scriptures: Jeremiah 33: 14-16; 1 Thessalonians 3: 12-4:2;
Luke 21 25-28: 34-36
Posted by Cindy Lentine on November 23, 2009 03:07 PM.
