Some
years ago, a large poster outside St. Paul's Cathedral in London proclaimed,
"Christ Is Coming!" Right below that poster another sign requested,
"Please do not obstruct these gates."
Whether
it's listening to an Advent sermon, responding during the Eucharist prayer that
Christ will come again! or snickering
at naïve fundamentalist Left Behind
aficionados, the theme of Jesus' second coming is woven through much Christian
theology, liturgy, and practice, especially during Advent. Yet most of us give
little thought to what we believe about Jesus' returning, perhaps beyond
harboring a suspicion that snickering at other Christians, no matter how
misguided they may be, is probably unkind.
Generally,
thinking about eschatology (the study of end times) divides into four camps.
First, there are the alleged literalists. These Christians claim to accept
Biblical teachings about the end of history at face value. God's word describes
how, perhaps even when, God will bring history to its appointed destiny. Although
this approach dominates popular thinking (as evidenced by Left Behind series' bestselling status), a literal reading is
anything but simple or straightforward. For almost two millennia, predictions
of when Jesus will return have formed a cottage industry among Christians.
Literalists also vehemently debate how to understand the Bible's eschatological
teachings among themselves – perhaps because few other people are interested!
Second,
some Christians argue for a realized eschatology, i.e., Christians experience
the future return of Christ (aka his second coming) in the sacraments and
sacramentals. This view's popularity perhaps peaked in the first half of the
twentieth century. Post-Holocaust theologians have challenged Christians who
advocate a realized eschatology to explain how this interpretation provides
justice for the victims of radical evil.
The
third camp is the most common among Episcopalians. These Christians rarely
think about Jesus' returning, mindlessly participate in the liturgy week after
week without considering the words that they are saying, and view Advent as the
inescapable annual prelude to the all-important, heavily secularized holy day
of Christmas. This approach simply ignores the uncomfortable if perhaps
incomprehensible Bible passages that may (or not, depending upon one's views)
reference the culmination of time and Jesus' return.
The
fourth camp consists of Christians who want to remain firmly grounded in
science while taking the Biblical witness seriously and acknowledging the
critical role of hope for energizing human endeavors. Creation – contrary to
what many of us might wish – is dynamic, not static. Change is endemic,
pervasive, and inescapable. If you share my belief that God created the cosmos,
then we reasonably believe that creation's constant change is indeed evolution,
not an unguided series of random events, of which there are certainly a great many,
but also evolution, albeit slowly and unevenly, toward a new and better future.
Unfortunately, we humans lack both the wisdom and knowledge to discern the
specifics of that future, or the process by which it is coming into being.
Believing that God is bringing (or luring, in the language of process theology)
creation into the future of God's choosing honors the essence of the Biblical
witness while recognizing that the Bible's human authors wrote from a very time
and culturally bound point of view, using concepts, language, and symbolism
appropriate to that context.
Teilhard
de Chardin wrote:
Although
we too often forget this, what we call evolution develops only in virtue of a
certain internal preference for survival (or, if you prefer to put it so,
self-survival) which in man takes on a markedly psychic appearance, in the form
of a zest for life. Ultimately, it is
that and that alone which underlies and supports the whole complex of
biophysical energies whose operation, acting experimentally, conditions
anthropogenesis.
In
view of that fact, what would happen if one day we should see that the universe
is so hermetically closed in upon itself that there is no possible way of our
emerging from it – either because we are forced indefinitely to go round and
round inside it, or (which comes to the same thing) because we are doomed to a
total death? Immediately and without further ado, I believe – just like miners
who find that the gallery is blocked ahead of them – we would lose the heart to
act, and man's impetus would be radically checked and 'deflated' for ever, by
this fundamental discouragement and loss
of zest. (Teilhard de Chardin, Science
and Christ, tr. by René Hague (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), pp.
212-213 cited in John B. Cobb, Jr., and David Ray Griffin, Process Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), p. 111)
Advent
invites us to affirm and celebrate our zest
for life.
The link
between Advent and Christmas reminds us that God, working in and through the
cosmos, acts in ways consistent with God's revelation in Jesus.
Apocalypticists, millenarians, eschatologists, and all of the other Christians
who assert that the Bible (as if it were a deck of Tarot cards!) reveals the
details of God's impending acts err grievously when they portray Jesus
returning to live by the sword that he had previously rejected:
Revelation
is not portraying Jesus returning to earth in the future, having repented of
his naive gospel ways and having converted to Caesar’s “realistic” Greco-Roman
methods instead. He hasn’t gotten discouraged about Caesar seeming to get the
upper hand after his resurrection and on that basis concluded that it’s best to
live by the sword after all (Matt. 26:52). Jesus hasn’t abandoned the way of
peace (Luke 19:42) and concluded the way of Pilate is better, mandating that
his disciples should fight after all (John 18:36). He hasn’t had second
thoughts about all that talk about forgiveness (Matt. 18:21–22) and concluded
that on the 78th offense (or 491st, depending on interpretation), you should
pull out your sword and hack off your offender’s head rather than turn the
other cheek (Matt. 5:39). (Brian D. McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the
Faith (New York: Harper Collins, 2010), p. 125)
So, in
good faith I unabashedly affirm, in Advent and during the rest of the year, Christ will come again! I also hope that
well-meaning but profoundly misguided Christians will stop blocking the gates,
i.e., that they will discard their biblical ignorance, their naïve thinking
that Jesus has already returned, and their liturgical and theological
inattentiveness. The real hope of Advent is that God, in God's way and God's
time, is bringing to completion what God began in Jesus, a hope that animates
and empowers God's people with a genuine zest
for life. So this Advent, please do not obstruct these gates; instead,
let's proclaim the one who is life itself.
1 comment:
This makes no sense.
But then it's religion, so no surprises there, right?
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