Left behind

Not so long ago, the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye was very popular in non Lutheran Christian circles.  It was a series of books about the end times, the second coming of Christ, the apocalypse (you can choose the term that is most familiar to you; they all mean about the same).

Using the imagery from Revelation and other apocalyptic literature in the Bible, this fictional series spoke of massive struggles - even wars - between the faithful and the unfaithful until Christ brings about the end time and the chosen ones will be with God and the others will be 'left behind.'

Not only do I believe these were inaccurate interpretations of scripture, they had a tendency to sound like private militia rantings with limited Christian overtones.

I only bring this up because we are approaching that time in the church year when we consider the end times - the time when Jesus comes again and the kingdom of God is manifest on earth.  It is a time in the future which the hope we all hold (to live eternally in the presence of God) and yet about which we know next to nothing specific.

We get a glimpse of God at work in our own times, especially if we are attentive to places of destruction, hopelessness, oppression and sorrow.  It takes faith to see God at work in those places, but our hope is strengthened when we watch and listen for Jesus. 

It's not about the kind of fear that leads you to climb over your neighbor and grasp at final straws.  As Luther would have told us, "remember your baptism" for in it you were joined to the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus.  Now and forever.  Amen

What keeps you up at night?

What worms its way into your head and steals sleep?  Where does fear enter your life?

We all have a list, and probably the same items are on everyone's list, just in a different order: finances, health, relationships, violence, personal well-being.   To sum them all up: we are afraid that this whole world - our whole world - is going to fall apart right before our eyes. 

Jesus tells us we can count on it.  That is one of primary assumptions of the cross: the powers that rule this world are going to lead us only to death.   True, the dramas of our lives are often small compared to the wars and violence in the world, yet as my Grandma would have said, "Your troubles are bad, but my troubles are my troubles."  Our dramas are big to us.

So on some scale we fear that the world is falling apart and it very difficult for us to trust that God is working in the midst of the destruction to bring about new creation.  Life is in the midst of death; life arises out of death.  The ashes around us are a sign of the labor pangs of new life birthed by God.

We are the midwives.  That is our job in this new creation.  To ease the labor, protect mother and child, to assist in the birth of the new.  Jesus insists on standing in the graveyard and speaking of the pangs of birth.  That is what hope looks like.

End times......what do we do with this?

Life has been a little hectic for me these past months.  I can't believe it's been 3 months since I posted on this blog, but I think that many of you who take the time to read it understand the 'hectic' issue.

Because of the planning that is needed in my job, I am caught between the rich gift of Advent contemplation (to come) and the craziness of End Times pentecost (the present).   My life feels much that way as well.

I long for the quiet of an evening with candles burning and no one, absolutely no one, expecting my attention.  Time for reading a book, sorting through the papers that seem to multiply on my desk, cooking up some soup or baking some cookies.  Time that isn't crammed full.

The truth, however, is that life looks much more like the End Times that we are hearing so much about in the lessons these weeks.  Jesus points us to a time of accountability - and with it there are pictures of skies ripping in two and fire coming down from heaven and well, general chaos.  For two more weeks we will be hearing about this time when Jesus comes again - in glory and in judgment, and 'what we have known' will be no more.

I think we have 3 general responses to these scriptures.  #1  we ignore them (because they are fantasy, or ridiculous or impossible)  #2 we are frightened of them (because we don't measure up, because we don't know what Jesus/God expects of us, because we have read too many Tim LaHaye novels)  #3  we get smug (because we are the chosen, the experts, and all those others are going to get theirs).

Here is another possibility.  What if, in order to get to that place of quiet contemplation, of pleasures for all the senses and a sense of well-being or shalom.....that we will need to go through the end times first.  First the chaos, turning upside down all that we know and then the glory ......giving us a new life in Christ.

What if this turning upside down chaos was not just ONE moment in time, but a whole series of moments, calling us again and again to true life and light in Jesus?  What if the End Times were a portion of every time - which, of course, implies that Living in the Glorious Light of Jesus Christ can be a portion of every time as well.

May God help us find our way through the chaos and into the light.  AMEN