The Meaning of Jesus – Will there be a second coming? Sunday, March 25, 2007 – Rev. David Tinney Text: Matthew 24:29-35 Theme: We should spend less time trying to use the scriptures about Jesus’ future coming predicting dates and times and more time living our lives the ways God has called us so when God does call us we can live eternally in God’s presence. I would like for you to imagine a fully loaded 747 on its way across the Atlantic from the United States to Heathrow Airport in London. It is still a couple hours before the sun breaks the horizon and most of the passengers on board are either asleep or reading. The pilot, who we will call Rayford Steele, is not concentrating on the flight over the mid-Atlantic but on a midlife crisis he is about to have. His wife Irene has just started attending a new church that is different from other churches she has attended. They talk a lot about the “rapture” and whether everyone is ready for the second coming of Christ. All of this talk and righteous passion has alienated him and for the first time in their marriage Rayford is thinking of straying. The object of his interest is Hattie Durham, the drop dead gorgeous flight attendant who just happens to be on board and just happens to be sending signals that Rayford interprets as being emotionally available. The pilot grows restless in the cockpit and decides to journey back into the passenger section in hopes of bumping into Hattie. His hopes are immediately fulfilled but Hattie is in a frantic state. “People are missing!” she whispers. At first he laughs and makes some comment about everyone visiting the lavs at the same time. But she is not laughing. “Ray, their shoes, their socks, their clothing, everything was left behind. These people are gone.”1 So begins a book that launched a craze that changed for many the way we think about Jesus’ second coming. The book was written by Tim LeHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins and was called “Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days” and was the first of twelve volumes that have since sold more than 60,000,000 copies. The books are great reading. I read the first and found it very compelling, but it presents a very distorted view of Christian theology. Too many believe that LeHaye’s words are what the Bible teaches and it simply is not true. I wish he had a warning label on the front of each book with the words, “This may be harmful to your faith.” Instead he does just the opposite. He celebrates how many have been converted because they are so fearful of the consequences of being “left behind.” How many here came from religious traditions where you heard preaching about Jesus’ second coming? How many ever heard the concept of the “rapture” taught in a classroom or preached from a pulpit? I first learned about the rapture when someone was telling a joke about being left behind and others in the room being yanked out of their clothes and I didn’t get the joke. In some ways I felt cheated that I missed out learning about this fascinating concept but in other ways I am very glad no preacher stood in front of me demanding an answer to the question, “Are you ready for Christ’s trumpet call? If the rapture was to come this day are you going to be one of the ones swept up?” Some of you have come from religious traditions where you dwelt on texts like 1 Thessalonians 4 and the trumpet call. Some of you could probably tell me the twelve steps of the seven years of Tribulation and could even give a date for when the 1,000 year reign of Christ is supposed to begin. We Methodists can’t. Perhaps you have seen those bumper stickers that read, “In case of the rapture, this car will be unmanned.” I have often thought that I should have a corresponding sticker that would read, “If the rapture comes I will gladly take your car.” The problem with mainline Protestant preachers and theologians is that we made a beeline away from end-time prophesies. I can only remember one portion of one class in three years of seminary on end-time theology. But there is a reason for this which I will get to later. I am reminded of the story of two NASA astronauts who had been training for years for their trip to Mars. They went through days upon days of training in weightless conditions, learning about the ship, understanding the dangers of space travel, and learning how to navigate and communicate. When they were finally on their journey one astronaut turned to the other and asked, “What is Mars like?” The other responded, “I don’t know.” We in the mainline Protestant church have spent a lot of time training people for the journey and very little time describing what our destination is going to look like. As a result much of the end time theory is sketchy at best. Did you know that the word “rapture” never appears in the Bible? It was a concept that originated by a disaffected former Anglican priest named John Nelson Darby in the 1800s who developed what is known today as the theory of premillennial dispensation. I am not about to describe the details of this theory but Darby believed all of history is broken into eras or dispensations and we are currently in the sixth dispensation. This is the second to the last and the crucial one where we need to make a decision about our relationship with Jesus because at any moment the trumpet will sound and the faithful will be swept up. Those of us left behind will have to endure seven years of war, pestilence, plague, famine, and all sorts of other delightful things. Finally Christ will intervene and rule for 1,000 years and then a new Kingdom, the New Jerusalem will descend and the faithful will live with God throughout eternity. This theory relies heavily upon texts from Matthew and Mark about the “coming of the Son of Man” and from a couple visions by Paul and most heavily on the vision by John the Seer in Revelation. The problem I have with this theological projecting is that it distorts the Book of Revelation and turns what I believe was intended to be a book of hope and encouragement for first century Christians who were being persecuted into a theological road map for our future. This may sound like heresy if you have come from another denomination, but I do not take Revelation literally and I do not put much weight into theologies and books that use the violence, cosmic battles, and fear-based dualism to win my soul. But what about those texts that predict Jesus’ second coming? How do we deal with the texts like the one that was read from Matthew today that says, “This generation will not pass away until all these things (meaning the second coming of Jesus) will have taken place?” Did Jesus misspeak? Was God’s clock off? Was there some mistake about the word generation or what it means to pass away? I agree with many theologians who try hard not to distort the text or come up with strange theories on how Jesus’ words are actually true. This statement about the second coming was probably more of a projection by the Early Church that saw the death and resurrection of Jesus as the first step in the coming of God’s Kingdom. They were probably not Jesus’ exact words. The key to the whole passage really comes in the message that no one will know when Jesus will come – not the angels in heaven, not the Son, only God. So stop trying to calculate and live faithful, stop trying to speculate and be alert, stop trying to conjecture and start serving as Christ would serve in our families and communities. Every time I start wondering if there will be a second coming of Christ and when that might be I end up with the same conclusion – it is the wrong question and the wrong focus. Christ is breaking into our lives every day. We should be living our lives every day as if the Kingdom were here and not some far off event. We should be living now as God has called us to live so that when God does call us we are ready to live eternally with God. Is that the way you are living your life? Would knowing the date of your departure from this world or the timeline on the trumpet blast change the way you live your life right now? How do you stay alert? How do you stay faithful? How do you being the Christ in your world and feeding the hungry, healing the sick, visiting the prisoners, and reaching out to the marginalized? As I pondered these questions this week I realized that I need to hear from time to time a reminder that there will be a day when the trumpet calls and when life as I know it will come to an end. I need to be reminded of that because quite frankly it is hard to stay alert. It is hard to stay on point and not get distracted by all of the wonderful things that pull me away from serving God and others. I don’t know about you but I am guilty of having what Barbara Johnson calls a “closet of good intentions.” Do you know what I am talking about? It is the place we stuff all of our noble dreams. One day I am going to take time to visit the elderly couple down the street. One day I am going to slow down and listen to my children or my grandchildren and really listen and not talk. One day when I have time I am going to volunteer for the food bank, or for the homeless shelter, or for the battered women’s shelter. One day I will rearrange my priorities and pray more, take that retreat that might be good for my soul, and read the Bible. One day I am going to seek forgiveness from the person I have hurt in the past. One day I am going to reconcile a broken relationship that still haunts me. One day I am going to be the person God has called me to be. My closet of good intentions is bursting with “one day visions” and there are some days if I were being honest I can hardly shut the door. It is when I am pushing that door shut that I hear Christ’s words – stay alert, stay faithful, be the servant. I say to myself from time to time what would happen if the trumpet called right now? What would happen if my life ended this very minute and I stood before my Lord and confessed, “I intended to do better – one day.” We don’t need to worry about whether or not Jesus is coming back for a second, third, or fourth time. We don’t need to consume our thoughts with cosmic calculations about when this might happen. We don’t need to stress about timelines from Revelation or theories about future tribulation. We need to dig into our closets of good intentions and start living the way God has called us to live. I remember back nearly five years ago when I was attacked and in the hospital being operated on. I remember a vision I had when I was coming out of one of my surgeries and was fighting the effects of the anesthesia. I felt like I was clawing my way back to life - fighting to get back to my wife and family so that I could be with them again. I promised that if I came back I would hold every moment sacred, that I would be a better father and husband, and that I would be a better person. When you come close to death you see life more clearly. You do a quick reexamination of your priorities and you run out of excuses for the way you have lived your life. But slowly we forget those promises. Slowly we start making excuses again. Slowly the closet of good intentions fills to overflowing. Our Lord said, “We must be ready for he is coming at an hour we will not expect.” My advice is to live every day as if it were your last. Live each relationship as if it was going to be the last time you talked with the person. Forgive those who need to be forgiven. Love those you have put off loving. Reach out to those who are in need of care now. Stop reliving the yesterdays of our lives over and over again. Resist the temptation to fill the closet with good intentions and to save our best for some future moment. Stop living a put off live and put on the mantle of Christ and live as we have been instructed to live. None of us in this room knows when Jesus will come again. It is my belief that he has never left us and that he is present in all that we do. None of us knows when the end will come and probably none of us really wants to know. Perhaps it will come as the scripture says and Christ will descend in a cloud and gather his faithful. Or perhaps one by one you and I will simply close our eyes for the last time and individually encounter our Lord. We simply don’t know. What we do know is that we have been told to stay alert, to live faithfully, and to be servants in Christ’s name. We need to live NOW as God has called us to live, so that when God does call we will be prepared to live eternally with our Creator. 1 Tim LeHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, “Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days” Tyndale House Publishing, Wheaton, IL 1995, p16. --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ Second coming Page 1