Maybe he is already here?
Based on Matthew 25:31-46
When I was in my early
teens, I went to a Youth for Christ film evening and watched A Thief in the
Night and A Distant Thunder. These were the first two instalments in
a series of ‘end times’ films that dealt with the second coming of the Christ,
the rapture, and the great tribulation.
I am sure you all be
familiar with these concepts. They are primarily taught by American style
evangelical denominations but they are also found in some churches here that
follow their teachings. The fundamental tenets are that the return of the
Christ will take the form of a rapture, in which believers will be taken up to
heaven by Jesus, and this will be followed by a great tribulation, albeit with
some dispute over the precise order in which everything is believed to be going
to happen.
A
Thief in the Night tells the story of Patty, who
is presented as being a nominal Christian. But she is not a true believer, so
therefore not a genuine one. One day, her husband and millions of other people
suddenly disappear, and Patty realises, not only was this the rapture she had
heard about, but as someone who was not a real Christian, she had been left
behind. A totalitarian regime is set up, and everyone is required to receive
the ‘mark of the beast’ on the back of their hand or their forehead. Those who
resist are arrested and rounded up. Patty tries to avoid the authorities but is
eventually captured. She escapes but is cornered and falls, seemingly to her
death, but then she wakes up. It was all a nightmare. She turns on the radio,
and to her horror, she listens to a report of the rapture. Her nightmare has really only just begun.
A
Distant Thunder continues the story and sees Patty having
to choose between accepting the mark – and with it, eternal damnation – and a
gruesome death.
A few years ago, I
found some of the more memorable scenes on YouTube, and I found them so cheesy
they were almost laughable. But that was not how I found them some 45 years
ago. I was terrified by those films. I could not sleep properly for weeks
afterwards. I would lie awake at night, worrying that the rapture would come
any day now, and that like Patty, I might not be a ‘proper’ Christian would be
left behind.
Those films were a representative
snapshot of the toxic fundamentalism that led me to completely reject
Christianity a few years later. I could not subscribe to a religion that kept
its followers in line through the strategic use of terror.
Twenty years later, I
found my way back to the Church. And I learned that the idea of a rapture to be
followed by a great tribulation was not at all believed in by the early Church, but is in fact a relatively modern construct. It
originated among American Puritans in the 17th Century, was
emphasised by the Plymouth Brethren about a couple of hundred years later, but
did not really gain widespread support until the 1970s. And films like A
Thief in the Night and A Distant Thunder helped popularise it.
Now it may well be that
the rapture is a deeply held belief of yours. If this is the case, it is not my
intention today to tell you that you are wrong or try to convince you to change
your beliefs. But I would like to invite you to consider a different scenario
altogether.
The second coming of
the Christ is arguably the hardest doctrine of the Church to understand, and it
does not help when different passages of scripture with very different contexts
are jumbled together. Rapture theology takes in part of St Paul’s First Letter
to the Thessalonians, throws in a few selected sound bites from of the gospels,
mixes in the apocalyptic second half of the book of Daniel, but draws most
heavily on the Book of Revelation. But we should not just mix up random texts
like a mad fusion chef and see what we come up with.
While scriptural
references to the second coming do indeed tell of Jesus meeting with his
people, trying to amalgamate it with a great tribulation is just wrong. Yes, there
is a great tribulation described in Revelation. But this refers to the
persecution suffered by the early Church at the hands of the Romans, and not to
any future events. The ‘mark of the beast’ was the use of Roman currency
bearing the image of the emperor, and the ‘beast’ was almost certainly Nero.
So while members of the
early Church may not have believed in the rapture as it is generally understood
today, they did believe in a coming revelation of the resurrected Christ. And
they believed this was imminent. Indeed, Jesus had clearly told his followers
their generation would not pass away until all these things have taken place.1
But their generation has long since passed away. And we are still waiting.
So does this mean Jesus got it completely wrong? No, it does not. The texts I have just referred to can be described as being apocalyptic. While ‘apocalyptic’ and ‘apocalypse’ are now popularly taken to refer to the end of the world as we know it, the original meaning is closer to uncovering, or revelation. In the words of American Baptist minister Chuck Queen, “…apocalyptic language points to some kind of ultimate vindication and redemption that means life beyond this life.”2
The second coming of
the Christ is anticipated by the season of Advent, which commences next Sunday.
And Advent is in turn anticipated by today, which is Christ the King Sunday.
This is a relatively recent addition to the Church’s liturgical calendar. It
was first instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI, with the grandiose title of ‘The
Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe’. And while it was
initially only a Catholic feast, it was soon adopted by other denominations of
the Church.
Christ the King Sunday
observes the coming reign of Christ. It is the complete antithesis of Jesus
being mocked as the ‘King of the Jews’ prior to his crucifixion. And its
occurrence on the last Sunday before Advent points toward the incarnation of
God in human form at Christmas. So today is an appropriate day on which to
prayerfully reflect what on what it means to say the Christ will come again. In
the words of the Memorial Acclamation, Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ
will come in glory.
But if the Christ is
not going manifest himself in the form of a rapture, then we need to consider just
how he will appear to the world.
Well I would like you
to consider that maybe he already has and that he now walks among us.
And that maybe those
wonderful words from the Gospel according to St John, “And the Word became
flesh and lived among us,”3 are just as relevant as they were at the first
Christmas more than two thousand years ago.
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus teaches that whenever we give food to the hungry or a drink to the thirsty, welcome a stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, or visit those in prison, we do this for him.4
If we are all created in God’s image, we do not need to look very far to see Jesus. As St. John Chrysostom is purported to have said, “If you do not find Christ in the beggar at the church door, neither will you find him in the chalice.”5
While history was
changed forever by the birth, death and resurrection
of Jesus two thousand years ago, when we consider the state of the world today,
it is clear that we still have a way to go.
I believe it is our
calling to work towards the realisation of God’s reign of justice and peace
here on earth. God is transforming the world but is doing so through us.
Whenever we pray the
Lord’s Prayer, like we will be doing together shortly, we pray for the coming
of God’s kingdom, on earth as in heaven. And the realisation of God’s reign of
justice and peace makes far more sense to me as an end times scenario than any
notion of a rapture to be followed by a great tribulation does.
Today, we celebrate that the Christ the
King is indeed coming in glory, and God’s reign of justice and peace will finally
come to fruition.
But maybe - just maybe -
he is already here.
Darryl Ward
26 November 2023
1 Matthew
24:34. Mark 13:30
5 St
John Chrysostom (attributed)
All Bible references are from the New Revised Standard Version unless stated otherwise.