When Will the Lord Come Back?

     I always feel sorry for people who predict the end of the world.   It happens once every couple of years.  Somebody has a prophesy that the Lord is coming back, and we are all in trouble.  The specific predictions always seem to fail, and the prophet looks silly for a little while, until we all get on to something else.

     Generally the comments of Paul in Thessalonians is mentioned in these predictions, about how we who are alive will rise to meet the Lord in the air.  This has come to be called the "rapture", and it is taken at face value by a number of fundamentalist Christians.  Here is another example of how a fragment of scripture can be taken out of context and a whole doctrine built around it.

     Paul's intent in that Thessalonian letter is to provide hope for those people.  He begins the passage with those wonderful words:  We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters about those who have died, so that you do not grieve as others who have no hope.  That is the point that Paul wants to make in all that follows; how at the trumpet call of God, the dead will rise first, and then we who are left will rise to meet the Lord in the air.  Paul was not attempting to create absolute doctrine here, he was offering hope to those who worried about the people who had died and were grieving for them.

     Grief is something that we all have experienced from time to time.  A few years ago when our little dog died, the veterinarian who put her down sent us a lovely poem about "the rainbow bridge", where she is waiting for us.  You have probably all read it, it is a fantasy about how our pets go on after death.  Our vet's sending us that poem was an attempt to console us at the loss of our dog, to somehow mitigate our grief.  It was a thoughtful thing to do, and it helped.  That is also the intent of the funeral services that we have for our loved ones who have died, that we can be consoled by knowing that God receives and loves those whom we have lost, and that many others in our community share our grief; also that the time will come when we will join them in eternity.  Comfort is what we all need in the middle of our grief.

     Loss is never easy.  One of the main reasons that we have community is to have people present for us in our losses and in our joys because loss is inevitable and joy is always to be yearned for and needs to be shared.  What an incredible help community is in providing comfort to us in the middle of these times.

     On All Saint's Sunday, we sang that powerful hymn "For all the Saints, who from their labors rest".  I have come to know all eight verses of that hymn by heart because of the large number of clergy funerals that I have attended.  It is usually sung as the processional at those events and I have always been comforted by the hymn's images, which are all about community; how we are all together in life's struggle and how we will continue in community even after our death.  The last verse is a magnificent tribute to inclusion:  From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast, through gates of pearl, stream in the countless host, singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Alleluia!  What more could we ask for in the loving inclusiveness of God for all of us?  In life and in death, that is what our relationship with God is all about.

     In his book "The Great Divorce", which is a kind of answer to William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", C. S. Lewis talks about how the people in the "Grey City", which is essentially Hell, get on a bus to go to Heaven.  When they get there, they often see people whom they don't think ought to be there and so they get back on the bus to go back to the Grey City, where nobody has a relationship with anybody and it rains all the time.  It is a good book and it makes a powerful point.  None of us really understands what Heaven is all about, even though we yearn for it and want above all things for our loved ones who have died to be there.

     At the beginning of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus tells the story of the ten bridesmaids and their lamps. Five had lamps as well as oil for them, and five had only the lamps.  When the shout of the coming of the bridegroom was heard, all of them trimmed their lamps.  The ones without oil asked the others to share their oil with them.  The others said that there wouldn't be enough for all of them if they did that, and to go and buy some.  While they were away buying oil, the bridegroom came and the wedding banquet started.  When the foolish bridesmaids came back the doors were locked and the banquet had started and they couldn't get in.  The story ends with the admonishment to "keep awake, for no one knows the day or the hour".

     Now, I can argue with the story.  Why would the bridesmaids not share their oil, and why not let all of them into the banquet?  That seems to me to be more in line with Jesus' teaching that the Love of God extends to all of us; but that destroys the point of the story, which is to remind us all to keep awake and to keep looking for the return of the Lord to this earth.  That is what I think is at the heart of the message of those "predictors" of the rapture.  They, like all of us, want the Lord to come back so that Justice and Mercy will rule in this world where there is so much misery and hardship.

     At the end of the Book of Revelation, when finally the story is told and is at an end, comes that very special word Marenatha, come Lord Jesus, come quickly.  That, in the end is what we all really want, for God's will to finally be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

Humbling and Exalting

     In 1983, when we visited the Holy Land, we landed in Amman, Jordan and entered the West Bank by way of the Allenby bridge over the Jordan River.  Israeli soldiers entered our bus halfway across the bridge, looked us over carefully and directed us to continue to the entry building.  There, we were frisked, our luggage was opened and checked, much more than in our airports today and we continued our journey to Jericho.

     It was an eye-opening experience for us in terms of the animosity that then existed, and still exists in the Middle East.  When we were in Israel, our passports weren't stamped.  Instead, the Israeli stamp was on a slip of paper inserted into them, which was removed when we left the country by way of Rafah at the extreme southern end of Gaza, when we entered Egypt.

     When we were crossing the Allenby bridge, I thought of Joshua and the horde of Hebrews, led by the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant crossing the Jordan river on dry ground by the will of God just as Moses had led the people out of Egypt on the dry ground of the Red Sea.  Here we were, crossing the river at another time of conflict, trying to comprehend what all sides were feeling in this seemingly endless dispute.

     What we found in 1983 was turmoil.  While we were in that country, terrorists bombed the United States Embassy in Beirut and it wasn't long before our marines were pulled out of there.  Palestinians and Israelis were at loggerheads over their territories, and they still are.  The Jordan river still flows under that bridge to the Dead Sea and the two sides (or are there three?) are still fighting over the same territory.  Will there ever be an end to this struggle?  Will the United Nations recognize Palestine as a member country and will Israel end its entanglement with these people?  It certainly isn't likely.

     Radical Orthodox Israelis keep the pot boiling over what they believe to be God's great gift to the Hebrew people through Moses.  It is almost impossible to talk to anyone about the political situation with the religious overlay that infuses itself, sometimes only subtly into any discussion.  People on both sides want to talk about freedom, justice and mercy, but quickly all of that is submerged in the religious expectations that are never quite laid on the table.

     It is dangerous for us to take sides in this dispute.  Jewish lobbies in this country heavily influence how congress thinks, and one crosses them at one's peril.  All of us know this, but we put it aside as the dispute rages on.

     In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus is talking to his followers about the extreme religious leaders in his time.  He talks about how they prance up and down with their broad phylacteries and their long fringes to show how religious they are.  "Listen to them", says Jesus, "but do not do as they do, because they don't practice what they preach"  We all know the truth of that.  Over the years, I have had some extreme religious people in my congregations.  They were always harsh judges of other people and didn't always practice the religion that they preached.

      Certainty is a terrible affliction.  It blinds us to our own failings and makes us sure of the failings of those around us.  It is the reason that we are afraid to love one another.  First, they have to change, then we will love them.  But change is not what God is asking us to require of our neighbors.  God says simply, "Love one another, as I have loved you."  That love comes from God without requirement.  It is the love that makes us change.  It is our love for one another that will produce change in our society.

     We have countless examples of this.  Martin Luther King took his crusade for human rights all over this country.  Who can forget his great speech at the Lincoln Memorial when he spoke of his great dream.    How all of us, white and black, will walk together hand in hand and this nation will be knit together in harmony.  He spoke like Moses, looking over the promised land from the top of Mt. Nebo, and like Moses, he died before reaching that exalted place, which we are still striving to reach.  But King's example is ever before us.  Because of what he did and what he made us look at in ourselves, African-Americans, women, gays and many others have the benefit of possibilities that he created with his life and his mission.

      This church continues to move forward in mission today because of the work and leadership of those who are not afraid of God's call to us to be inclusive.  Jesus told his disciples that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.  That will always be true, especially for those who listen to the Gospel and follow where Jesus leads us.  May God continue to bless us on this journey.

Loving One Another Isn't Always Easy

     There is a lot of discussion in the media about the Occupy Wall Street protests, mostly agonizing about what it is that they want.   It seems to me that the media is mostly blind to what is going on.  But let's look for a moment a what these protesters want.  The answers to this are varied, but add up to the same thing:  they want the top one percent of those in power to stop controlling the rest of the country.

     That isn't hard to understand.  Certainly there are some strange people involved in the protests, enough to provide some humor for us all; but the essence of it all is economic:  how to get the homeless off the street, and find ways to provide jobs for the many, many unemployed people who are trying to find a way to provide for their families.  The fact that the media and the politicians don't quite get it is more of a symptom than a problem.  Actually, it is somewhat amusing to see the well fed pundits and politicians criticizing the occupiers, because what they really want is for things to stay the same as they are and for all of the troublemakers to disappear.  Their own welfare is tied to an economy that has shut out many people and allowed the profit to rise for the one percent who control the money.

      At the Republican debate this week, Herman Cain lambasted the protesters.  He said, "Don't blame Wall Street.  If you don't have a job and if you aren't rich, blame yourself!"  There is the problem in a nutshell.  The powerful don't understand, and they don't want to understand.

     In Matthew's Gospel, the Pharisees confronted Jesus after he had silenced the Sadducees.  The Pharisees were the ones who kept the law perfectly and looked down their noses at everyone who didn't, according to their own judgment.  They asked Jesus, "Which commandment in the law is the greatest?"  Jesus answered them with a sentence that has become what we call The Summary of the Law:

     "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, your soul and your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as a person like yourself.  On these two commandments, hang all the law and the prophets."


     There, again in a nutshell, Jesus gives us the law and teaches us to love one another as ourselves.  The gospel says that the Pharisees eventually shut up and didn't ask him any more questions.  That seems to be wise of them, but they were simply biding their time, waiting to bring Jesus up on charges, which they certainly did before Herod and Pilate before crucifying him on Good Friday.  Their charges were that Jesus didn't keep the law, preached heresy and rebellion among the people.  Certainly he did some of these things, but his teaching is so wonderful about God's attempt to get creation back to the way that it was intended from the beginning.

     If we would simply pay attention to what Jesus told us about the law we would be almost there.  He asked us to "love one another as we love ourselves"  That is simple enough, isn't it?  Certainly we do a lot for the poor, we contribute to food banks and other charities that take care of human need, but that isn't all that we are being asked to do.  Loving our neighbor as ourselves means not only the person afar by also the person near.  The one who lives beside you on your street, or who sits in the pew next to you or behind you.  Jesus would like us to make this loving as personal as possible.  That we have failed in this is demonstrably obvious.  But every once in a while we are reminded about our obligation to love one another.

     At Trinity Cathedral a number of years ago, we had a funeral for a man who was then our suffragan bishop.  All of the clergy were there, the pews were filled from front to back.  When the time came for communion, the family left their pews to go to the altar to receive.   Down the center aisle came a bedraggled person dressed essentially in rags, a Pittsburgh street person.  He settled into the pew that had been vacated by the family.  Quickly, ushers in tails and cravats moved him out of there.  He then went into one of the pews that were vacated by the clergy who had then gone to the altar to receive the sacrament.  Again, the ushers moved him out of there and he walked unsteadily down the aisle.

     There was an empty pew between the clergy and the lay people.  Here he settled, but the problem wasn't over.  Two priests came down to give communion to a woman in the first row of the laity.  Again the ushers moved the man out, and he worked his way farther down the aisle.  As he was moving in the church somebody asked, "Who is that man?"  Quickly the answer was almost whispered, "It is the Lord"

     When we left the church in procession, I saw him in a pew on the end near the back of the church where he had found a place.  He never gave up.  If that wasn't the Lord who came into the cathedral that day, it was a close approximation.  He went to all of the places where he couldn't be accommodated but eventually found a place to be comfortable.  He stayed among us and never left.   I have thanked God for that experience that day more times than you can imagine.  I learned a lot from it about how it is that we receive one another.  Our Lord comes to us in curious garb sometimes.  It is always important for us to receive him.  He may be sitting next to you now.  What are you going to do about it?

About Golden Calves

      We have protests going on on Wall Street even as we speak. People are camping out in a nearby park, the police are thickly patrolling and the signs abound.  The signs speak eloquently sometimes of greed and ask how long the merchants of wealth will forget the people who are without jobs and enough money to pay their mortgages.

      There certainly is a profound worship of money in this country.  It is almost as if some of the lawmakers and the corporate giants are lusting after the nineteenth and early twentieth century, when greed abounded.  When the poor were forgotten in an era of absolutely unchecked corporate avarice.  There is a shamelessness about it.  Many of the commentators seem to be afraid to call this avarice for what it is as they kowtow to the CEOs.   There are many others who seem to be enamored of those who create wealth for the few at the expense of the many.

     The excesses of the past were dealt with by creating government regulations that reined in the greed and established in the New Deal years of the Roosevelt administration programs such as Social Security for those of retirement age and jobs through the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps for those who were hopelessly out of work in the throes of the Great Depression.  In the Sixties,  under the Great Society, Medicare was established for the elderly who are in need of health care.

      That was a more compassionate time.  Our hearts were more open to care for those in need and we weren't so afraid of our own welfare.  It seems in our time, we have lost our focus on the poor and the outcast, and our economy is in despair that consumes our political parties in endless confrontation and debate.  We have skyrocketing unemployment and jobs being exported overseas at an alarming rate.  When was the last time that you called on the phone for help and didn't get someone from Mumbai to answer your questions?

     When Moses went up on Mount Sinai to receive the Tablets of the Law from God, his brother Aaron was left in charge of the Hebrews at the foot of the mountain.  Aaron told the people to bring their rings and their ear bobs and other gold to him.  He melted it all down and created a golden calf which was erected before the people.  "Here is our god," said the people as they worshiped the calf.

     Up on the mountain, Moses was told by God that his people were behaving shamelessly and that He was about to destroy them for their disobedience.  Moses pleaded with God to withhold his wrath from the  people.  He then went down the mountain and confronted the Hebrews with their insubordination and their flaunting of Moses' rules.  Moses had after all told the people that it was the Lord God who had brought them out of Egypt, and the people had seen the might of God in the destruction of the Egyptian army at the Red Sea and the parting of the waters to allow the tribes to cross over on dry land.  There had also been manna provided for the people to eat when they were hungry and water from the rock for them when they were thirsty.  Now, when Moses was away, they created and worshiped a false god with impunity.

     If all of this sounds quaint and strange to you, look at our own behavior.  The reason that people are protesting on Wall Street is because of the same worship of gold that infected the Hebrew people in the absence of Moses.  We have created a new god to worship who is more tangible than the Holy God who brought us all out of misery and gave us this bright new land.  We even want to restrict immigration because we are afraid of dark skinned people taking over our jobs in this difficult economic time.  We are not a bit different from the Hebrews at the foot of Mount Sinai.  We love our wealth and we are afraid of those who have a lot of it.

     The Wall Street bankers made a lot of mistakes when the various bubbles burst, but they were bailed out by the government.  Now many people are making noises about taxing the rich.  Those who oppose this call them "job creators" although there is little evidence that any jobs have been created.  They want the government to reduce spending by cutting programs, even Social Security and Medicare, which makes people very nervous.  They even want regulations that restrict corporations reduced or eliminated so that the lust for wealth can continue unchecked.

     We live in a frightening time.  What needs to be the response of Christianity to this mess?  I would suggest that remembering Jesus' command to us to care for the poor and the outcast is primary to our lives and to the worship of the God whom we all profess to love.  Keeping the rich happy is not a part of God's agenda, nor should it be a part of ours.  Giving of a part of ourselves and what we have to help our neighbors is God's command to us.  Above all other considerations, we need to take that seriously.  Political considerations are not at all a part of God's plan.  We have been told what to do.  The agenda is clear.  We simply need to be about this critical work.