Waterloo United Free Church, Advent Sunday 1/12/2013
36 ‘But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son,* but only the Father. 37For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, 39and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. 42Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day* your Lord is coming. 43But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
Play: Larry Norman, I Wish We’d All Been Ready
Life was filled with guns and war,
And everyone got trampled on the floor,
I wish we'd all been ready
Children died, the days grew cold,
A piece of bread could buy a bag of gold,
I wish we'd all been ready,
There's no time to change your mind,
The Son has come and you've been left behind.
A man and wife asleep in bed,
She hears a noise and turns her head, he's gone,
I wish we'd all be ready,
Two men walking up a hill,
One disappears and one's left standing still,
I wish we'd all been ready,
There's no time to change your mind,
The Son has come and you've been left behind. [Pause]
Do you recognise that song? Around the time when I was a regular attender here, in my late teens and early twenties, Larry Norman’s songs filled my head - and my bedroom, to my Mum and Dad’s annoyance I’m sure. Filled my heart too, with some of the values which became most deeply rooted in me. And what a powerful song it is - ‘’I Wish We’d All Been Ready,’ [deeply moving], with its wash of strings and a backing choir adding to the drama of Larry’s topic: which is The Rapture, when all Christians, living or dead, are prophesied to be reunited with Christ before the end of the world.’ [1]
Larry’s view of The Rapture is based on Paul’s words in 1 Thessalonians 4.17, when all Christians will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and the lost unbelievers will be left behind on earth, awaiting a Tribulation to come. It’s a powerful image and the doctrine behind it has been, and is, a great inspiration and comfort to many Christians, particularly those for whom this world is a world of suffering and pain, who cannot wait for Jesus to return to lift them up and take them away from here. Jesus appears to be teaching this doctrine himself in the passage we heard today, from Matthew 24, when he says, ‘... two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. ... two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left’. [2]
The image this conjures has caught the popular imagination in recent times, particularly in the Christ-haunted nation of America, from where come countless post-Apocalyptic movies [3], in which a world ravaged by some final catastrophe is peopled by the lost, the undead, humans in zombified state, and anarchy reigns; and from where comes the popular Left Behind series of novels, which set the story of the end times in our time, in which true believers in Christ have been ‘raptured’, taken instantly to heaven, leaving a shattered and chaotic world behind. As people scramble for answers, a struggle breaks out between a group of born-again Christians known as the Tribulation Force, and the Antichrist, who appears in the shape of the Romanian secretary-general of the United Nations. [4]
In familiar Hollywood fashion, the Tribulation Force repeatedly save the world through a series of acts of terrifying brutality, and many Christians and non-Christians have shown concern about the way the Left Behind books glorify violence. Harvey Cox, a professor of divinity at Harvard, says part of the appeal of the books lies in the ‘lip-licking anticipation of all the blood,’ and other Christian commentators take issue with the way that all this violence is attributed to God. In the book ‘Glorious Appearing’ at the mere sound of Jesus’ voice the bodies of his enemies are ripped open, forcing the Christians to drive carefully to avoid ‘hitting splayed and filleted bodies of men and women and horses’.
The pastor Paul Nuechterlein wrote that ‘we human beings are the ones who put our faith in superior firepower. But in the Left Behind novels the darkness of that human, satanic violence is once again attributed to God.’ [5]
Now I should point out that this is not the Jesus we hear about in Larry Norman’s ‘I Wish We’d All Been Ready’. Larry expresses the Left Behind doctrine of The Rapture far more gently and more compassionately that that, but the underlying meaning is the same: this view of salvation plays on people’s fears of being left behind. Generations of children have suffered through this fear of the Rapture, people have testified to being terrified to come home from school to an empty house in case that meant that the rest of their family had been ‘Raptured’ without them. Raised on a daily diet of fear, these children see God just like in the song Santa Claus is coming to town: ‘You’d better watch out, you’d better not cry.’ Only it is Jesus, not Santa, who is ‘coming to town’ at an unexpected hour: ‘He knows when you’ve been sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.’ [6]
And so this doctrine of The Rapture, Left Behind theology, can both bring hope and comfort to believers suffering in this life, and strike fear into the hearts of others. It can portray Jesus either as a gentle saviour embracing his loved ones in the clouds or as a bloodthirsty avenger of those who don’t accept his Lordship. It’s a complicated doctrine, as all our End Times doctrines are, and we need to keep asking questions of it and keep searching the scriptures to uncover to us the truest revelation of the nature of Jesus and how he expresses his power.
The doctrine of The Rapture has other shapes and forms too. Another, older use of the term ‘Rapture’ is not connected to a belief that a group of people is left behind on earth for a time of Tribulation. Some types of Christianity simply use the word ‘rapture’ in describing what happens during the final resurrection. [7]
And as we return to today’s passage and look closely at it we see Jesus teaching another sort of Left Behind theology than we might have first thought. For in Matthew 24.37-39 he tells his listeners that the coming of the Son of Man will be like the days of Noah:
For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. [8]
This turns our Left Behind theology on its head. For in this story of the flood, an apocalyptic cleansing of the earth, a new beginning for God’s faithful people, it is the wicked and evil-hearted members of humankind who are swept away, who disappear [9], and it is the faithful ones, Noah and his family, who are left behind to live, with God, on a restored earth. In the story of Noah, being left behind is the best outcome, for those left behind are able to spend their lives in the freedom of the promise of God that he would never bring destruction of that kind to the earth again; those left behind are blessed by God, who told him that, ‘In [my] own image [I] made humankind. And you, be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it.’
So let us be clear what we find in Matthew 24:
- That Jesus’ Left Behind theology does not separate his faithful people from the earth. It enables them to live here, in lives full of God’s blessing.
- That Jesus’ Left Behind theology does not consist of threats of coming violence to the people of the earth. It recalls God’s everlasting covenant of peace and an explicit promise that he will not destroy the earth again.
Now, if we have grown up believing that this world is an inherently wicked place, from which we can’t wait to escape, then we might be a little troubled by Jesus’ Left Behind theology. Our urge for him to take us away from a life filled with guns and war, is strong, our passion for him to save us from a world which takes our hopes and dreams and tramples them on the floor, is potent.
But yet, surely our Lord longs for us that we need not fear. For one thing that Jesus is clear about in this and every gospel passage on the subject is that ‘the Son of Man is coming’. He is coming to rescue, save, redeem us.
The only question which remains is when the Son of Man will come. Both Paul, at the end of 1 Thessalonians 4, and Jesus here in Matthew 24, refuse to answer that factually. The way they put it, is to encourage us to put that question aside and instead, to ‘be ready’. And that means to accept God’s invitation to live today in the presence of Christ, to walk in his way in the here-and-now, so when that time comes it will be just like continuing on that journey with him. It will be just another stage along the way.
Larry Norman has another song called ‘Only Visiting This Planet’, in which he sings, ‘This world is not my home, I'm just passing through’. He’s not going to invest much time or interest in it. He’s not going to be left behind in it. Yet Jesus appears to want us to make this world our home, for this world is where he has been, this is where he will return, and by his Holy Spirit this is where he lives, in relationship with we his followers, today.
We should not abandon our search for God’s truth about the End Times as revealed in the scriptures, but we should not make it the most important thing about our faith. If we weigh the gospels then we find that there is very little about The Rapture in there, compared with what we find about the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God is the central theme of Jesus’ life and teachings. And it tells us what it means to be left behind in this world, with Jesus as our Lord here and now and in the time to come.
Jesus modelled the Kingdom of God in his life. The low-born, peaceable healer was as different as you could imagine from a ruler of the kingdoms of the world, with all their status and voracity for power, possessions and military might. And to those left behind by the world, the lost and the unloved, he brought healing and hope.
Jesus demonstrated the Kingdom of God in his death. The last week of his life was a series of confrontations with the rulers of the kingdoms of the world, in which he directly challenged their status and the way that their voracity for power, possessions and military might left the mass of people behind. It was inevitable that the powers-that-be would send Jesus to his death, crucify him to satisfy their demands, that this subversive should be silenced so that the kingdoms of their world could be maintained. The high priest Caiaphas spoke for the powers-that-be when he said, ‘It is better that one man should die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed.’ (John 11.50) and so they found a way for Jesus to be accused, condemned and crucified.
And Jesus revealed to us the ultimate triumph of the Kingdom of God by his resurrection. Not the End Time, but this one-off event in the life of the world is the most important one for all who put their faith and hope in him. At the resurrection the power of loving forgiveness broke through into the world, and the power of God’s absolute generosity overcame all that the kingdoms of the world could throw at it. For we Christians, this is the point on which history turns. The resurrection is the focus of our hope and our salvation. This is not The Rapture, but The Rupture.
The New Testament is far less interested in describing a coming rapture as it is in describing an already come rupture in time and history. The endless cycles of rising tides of human violence have been interrupted with an incarnate, nonviolent word from God in Jesus Christ, a word that is unconditionally one of loving forgiveness. It is a rupture that begins creation again with a power of life from God that reveals itself as more powerful than our powers of violence and death. We who are already baptized into that promise of life need not hope in some future rapture. Our hope is in the coming fulfillment of what was already begun in the cross and resurrection. [10]
The message to those Christians for whom this world is a world of suffering and pain, is that the resurrection has made it possible for Jesus to lift us up and build us up and help us live in hope - today. This is what it means to ‘be ready’. Every morning as you wake - being ready to receive Jesus afresh into your heart. Every midday, as you make your way through your daily routine, being ready to remember that you are walking in The Way, and that he walks there beside you. Every evening being ready to look back and recall those moments when God has been with you, and give thanks. Being ready is not about passively waiting for something to happen in the future. Being ready is about embracing Jesus in the here and now.
At the end of Matthew’s gospel is a reminder that when the resurrected Jesus ascended into heaven, he left his followers behind - but he did not leave them alone.
And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ [11]
As for those first disciples, so for us - Jesus has left us behind, but has not left us alone. We have his presence and the power of the Holy Spirit with us, to the end of the age.
Larry Norman longed to be away with his Lord, and he died of heart failure on February 24, 2008 — he was 60 years old. I do not want to take anything away from his wonderful song, but in the light of what I’ve shared with you this morning I wonder if there is another way to listen to what it says. In the closing line, which we will hear in a moment, Larry sings, ‘The Son has come and you've been left behind’. Can we take this to our hearts as something to celebrate - we are left behind with him, on this earth which he lovingly created, in this world whose kingdoms he challenged and by whose resurrection he has overcome, we are left behind with Jesus to enjoy God’s promises, to fulfil God’s purposes for our lives, today.
Last verse: Larry Norman, I Wish We’d All Been Ready
Life was filled with guns and war,
And everyone got trampled on the floor,
I wish we'd all been ready,
Children died, the days grew cold,
A piece of bread could buy a bag of gold,
I wish we'd all been ready,
There's no time to change your mind,
How could you have been so blind,
The Father spoke, the demons dined,
The Son has come and you've been left behind. [12]
Notes
[1] Album Review, Only Visiting this Planet by Larry Norman, iTunes Preview
[2] Matthew 24.40-41
[3] Wikipedia: List of apocalyptic films
[4] Wikipedia: Left Behind
[5] Wikipedia: Left Behind: Violence
[6] Tom Truby, I Would Rather Be Left Behind [doc], referenced in Paul Neuchterlein’s Girardian Lectionary, Advent 1A
[7] Wikipedia: Rapture
[8] Matthew 24.37-39
[9] Genesis 6.5
[10] Paul Neuchterlein, Introductory Comments on Being Left Behind, Girardian Lectionary, Advent 1A
[11] Matthew 28.18-20
[12] Larry Norman - I Wish We'd All Been Ready lyrics from www.onlyvisiting.com
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