I shall return–soon. That is a promise. God’s promises run through Scripture like a thread. God promises Eve that she will stamp out the evil one. God promises Noah that there will be no more mass destruction of the human kind–on his part, at least. God promises Abraham over and over that he plans to make his offspring as numerous as the sand or the stars. And so it continues, through Moses, and the Kings, and the Prophets–promise after promise, and finally, the whole collection closes on that promise: I will return. Scripture ends on a promise. The return of Christ is something devoutly to be wished, not dreaded. This is quite an upbeat ending, very positive, this is not tragedy.
But there’s that one little word, soon. It used to cause big problems.
People at first thought he meant “in a few months.” Then “within our lifetimes.” Than, it was “by the year 1000.” And then–well, then people began to say wait–how long are we waiting?
We’ve waited now almost 2,000 years. And 2000 years is a long time, isn’t it?
Well, the answer used to be yes. Now, it’s yes– and no.
First of all, “soon” depends on the context. Everybody knows that much.
If Fr Warren runs into me at the train station, and I have a ticket my hand and my travel bag over my shoulder, and I say “I’ll be back soon,” what do you think he thinks? Probably, “in a day or two,” correct?
But if I get up in a few minutes and whisper to Fr. Warren, “I’ll be back soon,” he’s going to be surprised indeed if I am gone for two or three days.
So much for the context.
But it would still be ridiculous if we thought 2000 years is a long time. Now it is a question of scale.
And there is one of the many nice things modern science did for religion. People always used to think science somehow ruined or threatened faith. Many people still do. But I think it made everything better. I believe science and religion are closer than they have ever been before in fact.
One example: in the 16th century some stargazers in Pisa and Denmark saw that this earth is not at the center nor the bottom of the cosmos, that in fact we travel around the sun and the sun is just one star in many and so on–fifth grade science today. Some Christians thought that science was horrible. Some still do. Most mainline Christians seem merely to ignore it.
Well for me that is more consistent with the faith not less. Think of that great Psalm for MP on Ascension Day which I’m sure most of you read early Thursday morning: “What is a human being that you would notice one, or the Son of Man that you would pay attention to him?” Indeed, here we are who live a heartbeat or two on an insignificant tiny speck of stardust traveling about a mediocre star located in the suburbs of one of many galaxies–who are we that God should pay us any heed?
Then the answer: God has made us a little lower than the angels.
Kepler and company made that Psalm so much more glorious, deeper by far. Who are we, little creatures in the middle of nowhere? God’s self-portrait, that is who.
Where? On a remote speck; and also just lower than the angels, that’s where.
Science has done this by giving us a different perspective on space.
It has also stretched our sense of time. Magnified the calendar. I think it’s wonderful–full of wonder. It has changed our sense of “soon”; it has shown us that in most ways 2000 years is not a long time at all, as things go. We learn again by the age of 10 that we have lived in cities for 10,000 years; that we have been around as thinking creatures for at least half a million; that mammals like us are millions of yrs old, and the planet itself 100s of millions; that the galaxy is many times that; and that the whole universe is 13.7 Billion years old. They tell us that with the same kind of confidence I would have telling someone what subway to take down to the Village.
Science has given us a mighty spectrum and a wide canvas for God’s work of creation. Compared to what Planck and Einstein and company have shown us, the old 4000 years is pretty lame and petty.
2000 years, on the rel scale, God’s scale, is a heartbeat. One of my favorite shadow Christians, Samuel Beckett, wrote several things based on living in a cosmos as strange as ours, just as he wrote one about what it meant to wait for someone we know not how long or exactly when where or why–all we know is, he’s coming. And Auden, who came out as a Christina about 1950, called this “the time being.”
The lesson of all this is that there will be an endpoint–the fact that Christ left 2000 years ago proves exactly nothing. Time, we have been saying all along, has a shape, it is not merely sequence. There will be an endpoint as sure as there was a starting point. There is an Omega to go with that Alpha. In all this science has come to agree with Genesis. As a fine NASA scientist put it, the scientists finally get to the crest of the hill and find the theologians waiting for them.
(That means a lot to me because I was in that short generation where because Russia had started throwing littler into the stratosphere, we had science and math force-fed, and everyone was saying theology was ridiculous and science had proved it. Wise minds have had some serious second thoughts about all that.)
The first Xns thought Christ was coming immediately. Within some of their lifetimes. They were wrong–as far as the facts go. But facts don’t always go very far when truth is concerned. And truth is what’s important here.
They believed Christ would return. We believe it too– at least most of us will say so in about five minutes. “And he will come again in glory.” Or sing it, I suppose.
I think they had a much firmer grasp of that belief. Because of what it seemed to do for them.
When you are convinced of the outcome of something, your whole attitude changes.
Did it make them careless and otherworldly? Hardly. But it did make them–well, take a look at the reading from Acts today.
Suppose you were thrown in jail for worshiping here today. The police come in and arrest us all and haul us of to Ryker’s Island. We are so dangerous they have us manacled. Then, at midnight, an angel comes, an earthquake happens, and the bars fall away and the handcuffs break, and the doors fly back.
What do you do?
Well, I will show my priestly qualities by being the first one out the door.
But that is not what happens in the story we heard. Paul and Silas stay where they are. You are meant to notice that. When something odd happens in scripture—I don’t mean a miracle or supernatural things, I mean something like the behavior of these 2 prisoners—something really worth thinking about is going on.
Now it soon becomes clear why. Paul and Silas have a very powerful move to make, and it will only work if they stay. And the Holy Spirit has a plan to go along with it–the Holy Spirit being one of the real heroes of the book.
But my point is this: to carry out their Plan took calm, courage, and presence of mind. These two show these this in the most awful circumstances. That isn’t otherworldly or escapist or unrealistic. It is the very opposite.
Paul we know thought Christ was returning so soon, it didn’t make sense for people to start families since there wouldn’t be a next generation. He was mistaken. But even had he not made that mistake in predicting, the faith that Christ would return is the important thing. Look what it did for Paul.
This is the same Paul who was Christ’s enemy just months before. Then look at what it did for the other disciples. Look at Peter’s behavior in this book. This is the same disciple caved in just weeks before. Remember Peter during Holy Week? Betraying Jesus then going into hiding after boasting he would never do those things?
Now his outlook is radically strengthened. Christ is coming back. I want that kind of centeredness, that confidence, that calm.
There is a splendid expansion on the Lord’s Prayer in Old English—what the rabbis would call a Mishnah on the Prayer, we might say it is a meditation. Every line is drawn out. Most blossom into four or five lines.
But the petition forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us is expanded with one single phrase:
Forgive us every debt we have incurred against others— Just as we forgive others in the light of eternity.
Conviction of the 2nd Coming is that light of eternity. It is so much easier to see our way to forgiveness by that light. And to be patient, or courageous, or good-humored, or reasonable, or just, as well as forgiving.
Yes Scripture ends on a confident and glorious note: I shall return–soon. Scripture ends–but the story doesn’t.
And all those other promsies, from the beginning until almost the very end–well, those promises seem to have been pretty well kept.
I spake a lot about re-claiming and I say it again. I would like to reclaim that sense of the second coming that closes the Bible. The Parousia, it’s called in Greek and that’s even better because it means “the presence.” We are now dealing with Christ’s absence–present though he is in many ways. Next week we re-experience and remember the giving of the Holy Spirit as a strengthener in the meantime. But that meantime means Christ is going to be present again.
That conviction is too good to leave in the hands of the heretics who are the only ones who make much of it now.
Gregory of Rome lived in the seventh century, when no one especially thought the end would come any time soon. But Gregory advised, live as though it were. Always be mindful of these three: ubi erat, ubi est, ubi erit: where one has been, where one is, and where one will be.
For “soon” actually is not the very last word. That is our response to it: Maranatha, “even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
