Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Advent I, the Gospel of St Mark 13.24-37
Rev. Harold Camping was that Radio preacher who last spring had predicted that Christ would return on May 21; Christ did not, in fact, return on that Saturday, and a lot of us had quite a bit of fun at Pastor Camping’s expense. Fr Everret of Christ Church Tulsa advertised on the Facebook that they would be holding a “post-rapture Eucharist” on Sunday morning. Fr Charles Blizzard suggested I set out full sets of empty clothing around our parish on that Sunday morning to suggest to some of you that you had not been raptured. Church-nerd humor, I suppose. A joke I fear that would have been lost on most Episcopalians.
But Harold Camping said he had miscalculated and that Christ’s return would be October 21, five months down the road. Well, that day also came and went, with much less fanfare. Camping recently apologized to his church members and to his radio audience. He said the whole thing was embarrassing, but that God was in charge of everything, and that we have to be very careful that we don’t dictate to God what he should do.” You think?
Jesus told his disciples that he was leaving and he also told them he would return. Both of those things were as hard for them to hear and understand then as they are for us now. But we say it in our liturgy every Sunday: He will return in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. It is an extra-ordinary thing to say, Christ will return. But I do wonder, what do all of you really think about it?
Not only does Christ tells his disciples that he is going to return, he says he will return within their generation. Our theological tradition has a word for this event, it is called the Parousia. And in many ways, the parousia is treated as a problem, primarily because it seems from both the words of Christ and those of the early Church leaders, they believed that his return was imminent. For instance, the apostle Paul encouraged people not to get married or to start families because of this impending return. Lord knows the things you can get done if you don’t have a family to hold you back, right?
And yet generation after generation has passed, thousands of years, predictions have been made repeatedly, and like Harold Camping we have been left a bit befuddled, and for those who truly get emotionally invested in it, we fight off disillusionment. The article quoting Camping, that I mentioned earlier, says that as he apologized his voice was unsteady, quivering.
To truly believe in the physical, imminent return of Christ is a risky thing. It leaves you vulnerable not just to the ridicule of others, but to a poignant kind of sadness generated from a place in us that hopes for a better world that stubbornly refuses to be fully realized. We want to believe that God will show up and make the world right--to fulfill the deeper promises of Judaism, the deeper promises of Christianity. When will our Messiah come and make things right? He promised he would, but when?
The writer of 2 Peter says it this way: The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some thing of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed. Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you be, leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? But in accordance with his promise, we wait for a new heaven and a new earth, where right-living is at home.
Beautiful, frightening. And even though this hasn’t yet happened in the way described, the collective consciousness of humanity has always accepted this to be part of the fabric of existence. We believe there was a beginning, we believe there will be an end. We seem to not be able to make change come to our world, our best efforts at fairness and mercy seem always to be thwarted by the lesser angels of our nature, and so we long for the day when that from which we were created intervenes and sets things right.
The writer of 2nd Peter has jumped on the only band-wagon we seem to have until that day comes, and I don’t say that flippantly. Christ has yet to appear in the east, but the spirit of Christ, the mind of Christ, the imagination of Christ can manifest within you, can inhabit your Spirit. The values and enterprise of Jesus can be woven into the values and enterprise of your life. He shapes the way we relate to friends, to family, the way we spend our money, the speed and manner in which we forgive and show mercy. These words from 2 Peter have it right, “Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be.”
Until that day when Christ comes with such forcefulness in the world, the real work that you must do, is hope that Christ comes with forcefulness into your life.
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