To Know Him

The scriptures referred to are Matthew 25:31-46.

It's a topic that frequently comes up in the jail: just how many final judgments are there? Is there one for Christians or are we exempt? Are we judged on what we do in this life or just on our faith in Jesus? Quite frankly, you can cite scripture and argue for either side. Some say there are 5 to 7 judgments, depending on which people are being judged—believers, non-believers, Old Testament people, today's Israel, Satan and his angels, etc! Part of this is due to the fact that in the Bible these truths come out along the way as we read of the unfolding, epic saga of God's love for us and his efforts to save us, not in the neat, categorical way you would find in a scholar's book of systematic theology.

So in today's gospel as well as in other places Jesus does say we will be judged on what we do or do not do. He even says that we will be judged for every careless thing we say! (Matthew 12:36-37) He says, “Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father in heaven...” Which makes it sound as if it is what we do that saves us. But Jesus goes on, “On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many great works in your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'” (Matthew 7:21-23) Which seems to say that salvation is not dependent on specific works or even if they are done in his name but that it is a matter of knowing him.

Well, it's not hard to think of people who have built big churches and launched big ministries in the name of Christ who have turned out to do things that indicate they were far from the mind and heart of Jesus. Con artists and hypocrites and molesters and crooked politicians are always lifting high the cross, as well as wrapping themselves in the flag. Jesus called them wolves in sheep's clothing. (Matthew 7:15) Anyone can say they are doing something in Jesus' name but only some of those things are actually done in his Spirit. For instance, persecuting or mistreating or killing someone in Jesus' name is a contradiction in terms. It would be akin to starting a Jewish orphanage in Hitler's name. It would show that you knew nothing at all about the real person.

And then we have this saying by Jesus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment but has passed from death to life.” (John 5:24) This sounds more in line with what Paul says explicitly about our being saved by God's grace through faith and not by works. (Ephesians 2:8-9) But even Paul says, “For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written, 'As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.' So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.” (Romans 14:10b-12) And “He will reward each according to his works: eternal life to those who by perseverance in good works seek glory and honor and immortality, but wrath and anger to those who live in selfish ambition and do not obey the truth but follow unrighteousness.” (Romans 2:6-8) So are we saved by faith or by works?

One thing that is clear is that what we do in life and our faith in Jesus are both essential. And the way I reconcile them is through the book of James. He writes, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Can this kind of faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, keep warm and eat well.' but you do not give them what the body needs, what good is it? But someone will say, 'You have faith but I have works.' Show me your faith without works and I will show you faith by my works.” (James 2:14-18) He adds, “For just as a body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.” (James 2:26)

The point is that true faith manifests itself in what you do. If you ask me will a footbridge hold you up and I say “Yes” and you still won't walk on it, you really don't have faith in what I said. If I say I trust my doctor and then don't follow his orders to stop smoking and start exercising, I really don't trust him, no matter what I say. These are like the people saying, “Lord, Lord,” to Jesus but who really don't know him. You can't trust someone you don't know. If they did know him, they would also know that following Jesus isn't just about prophesying or casting out demons or doing great works in his name. After all, those are also great ways of advertising yourself and feeding your ego. No wonder big ministries like to draw attention to themselves by doing such things. Maybe in their case Jesus wants them to do less flashy things, things that are harder and that call for humility, like taking care of the unfortunate.

That is the crux of Jesus' parable this week. This is really the only description Jesus gives us of the last judgment and it is interesting for several reasons. First of all people are judged not only on what they do but on what they don't do. In fact, it is the people who actively help the poor and disadvantaged that inherit the kingdom. Those who neglect the same people get punishment instead. So, at least in this parable, sins of omission are particularly evil. It's what you don't do to help others that gets you into trouble.

Also notice that it is social action that is rewarded. It is not the person who improved himself by quiting swearing who is commended but the person who helped someone else, someone who desperately needed aid, someone who can't offer anything in return. Jesus says elsewhere, “...when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:13-14) Paul quotes Jesus as saying, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35)

But we are not to help the poor and needy just because it is noble. It is a crucial part of being a follower of Christ. Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, just as you did to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:40) Conversely when we ignore the poor and unpopular, the help we withhold from them we in fact withhold from Jesus. (Matthew 25:45) How is that possible?

We make much of how Jesus Christ is divine. We often forget that he is fully human as well. As such, he reveals the image of God in which we are all created but which is marred in us by our sin. But that image is still there in all of us and so how we treat others is tantamount to how we treat Jesus, the exact image of God. Jesus is in essence challenging us to see him in everyone, especially those who are often regarded as less than fully productive members of society. We do not treat those who are dirty, sick, hungry, half-naked, asking for a drink, talking with an accent, or imprisoned in the same way we treat clean healthy well-dressed people. But if we trust Christ, we will endeavor to treat everyone as if he or she were Jesus, even if it takes some effort to do so.

To underline this truth, Mother Teresa would sometimes give shift report in one of her shelters for the sick and dying thus: “Jesus in room 501 had trouble keeping his breakfast down this morning. Jesus in 308 is running a fever of 102. The bedsore on Jesus in 415 is healing.” By serving their patients, the sisters were serving their Lord.

And let's face it: it takes faith to look at some people, say, “Somewhere deep in that person is Jesus” and then to act on that realization. People who merely give intellectual assent to beliefs about Jesus but don't actually live like those things are real are not spiritually alive in Christ. They are dead to the Spirit of God who should be living out the divine life in them.

We are saved by faith, not our works, but as James points out, it is impossible for you to have genuine faith in God and not have it change how you think, speak and act. As he put it, “You believe that God is one; well and good. Even the demons believe that—and tremble with fear.” (James 2:19) There is no virtue in merely believing God exists. I believe that subatomic particles exists. It makes no difference whatsoever in my life.

The problem is that we compartmentalize our beliefs and our lives. We assent to a lot of things on Sunday that you could never deduce about us should you observe our life outside these walls. And I am not merely talking about our sins of commission, though it says in 1 John that those who live in Christ and really know him do not keep on committing the same sins. (1 John 3:6) We should see some progress. And that progress should be especially evident in our love for others. As 1 John says, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother or sister in need but has shut down his compassion for him or her, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with word or tongue but in actions and in truth.” (1 John 3:16-18)

What Jesus is judging in the parable is not the actions or inactions of people but the truth of their convictions. If they really believe Jesus, if they really trust him, if they really know and love him, they will look for him in everyone they meet and look out for those in need. If they don't recognize him in others it's because they don't really know him.

It is rather like King Solomon's most famous decision. 2 prostitutes were living together and they had babies within days of each other. One baby died in the middle of the night and one woman contended that the other had switched babies, so it would appear that hers was still alive. Both women claimed the living child. So Solomon proposed bisecting the remaining baby and giving half to each. One woman thought that was fair; the other pleaded for the life of the child and that he be given to the other woman. That reaction revealed the real mother, the one who cared enough that she would give him up to save him. (2 Kings 3:16-28) Our actions betray how we really think and feel.

Let's face it: The largest religious group (31.2% of the earth's people or 2.3 billion folks) claim that they are Christians. That should mean that nearly 1/3 of the world's population is following Jesus. Which means they should be treating others as they would like to be treated, loving their neighbors as they love themselves and loving even their enemies. Do we see that? Or do we see so-called Christians mistreating others? Do we see them saying hateful rather than loving things about others, including fellow Christians? Do we see them refusing to feed the hungry because it causes homeless people to gather in their “backyard”? Do we see them resisting giving the thirsty drinkable water because it is more expensive? Do we see them restricting access to healthcare for the sick because the poorest people tend to be the sickest and use more and therefore cost more? Do we see them shun the alien because they fear him and think he is a totally different kind of person than them with different needs and desires? Do we see them write off those in prison and make it increasingly difficult for them to get out and rebuild their lives because they do not forgive others as they ask God to forgive their sins?

If we see those who say they are Christians, not acting in any way like Christ, I think we have to conclude they could very well be the people who will say “Lord, Lord” at the last judgment and hear Jesus say “I don't know who you are.” And the problem won't be that they didn't do sufficient good works to save themselves; it will be that their works will reveal that they really weren't saved by Jesus because they didn't put their trust in him and that they neither know nor love him. There is no evidence of Jesus in their lives. They are at most like people who claim they are "big fans” of this actor or that genre of music and yet you would be hard pressed to prove they were anything more than casually acquainted with the subject. These are people who would like to be followers of Jesus the way a lot of folks would like to be rock musicians or movie stars but not so much that they are willing to put in the practice and long hours and to make the sacrifices necessary to make that a reality. They are definitely not going to disown themselves and take up their crosses and follow Jesus along the narrow way that leads to the kingdom of God. They are Christian wannabees.

Does this make you nervous? Does this make you wonder if you are really putting your whole trust in Jesus Christ? Good. I think that is what Jesus intends this parable to do. Just as the opposite of love is not hate but indifference, the opposite of faith in Jesus is not so much lack of trust as not caring enough about him to make a decision either way. If you don't care about the things Jesus cared about, like helping those who are sick, hungry, thirsty, aliens, or prisoners, you have to ask yourself about your relationship with him. How deep is it? How well do you know him? To know Jesus is to love him. To love Jesus is to become like him.

To be a Christian is to embark on the journey of being Christlike. And that means reacting to sin and injustice and suffering as he would, that is, by forgiving, healing, feeding, comforting, and making things right. In the very first chapter of Mark, it says, “A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, 'If you want to, you can make me clean.' Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. 'I want to,' he said. 'Be clean!'” Jesus helped all who came to him, everyone in need he encountered, because he wanted to. That was the core of his being, to reach out in love and make people better. And I pray God we get to the point where we don't need stories or rules to tell us to reach out and help, but we just do it. Because it is second nature to us. Because it is Christ's nature. Because we are in him and he is in us and because we just want to. 

We're All Gifted

The scriptures referred to are Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 and Matthew 25:14-30.

They were discussing nuclear war on the NPR program the 1A this week. Why? Because current world events made it relevant. They also discussed the heroin overdose problem in this country. Why? Because the latest figures show that in the first 9 months of this year we have topped last year's total of 52,000 deaths. You may notice we haven't been talking about things like a slumping economy. Why? Because the economy, or at least the part that benefits corporations and investors, is booming. When things are going well, we take them for granted. We focus on what's wrong. Which makes sense.

But I think the perception that things are basically going well is part of the reason that people are drifting from faith in God. We live in the richest country in the world; there is no war taking place in the streets; we have lots of junk food, and plenty of distractions in movies, TV and the internet. It's bread and circuses, the same stuff the Roman Empire used to pacify the populace. Satisfy people's physical and emotional needs and they will oblige by ignoring the spiritual emptiness inside. Or they look for a spiritual solution that will mirror what the bread and circuses do: just make us feel good. The spiritual void will be mollified for the time being and no demands will be made on you. Just spend some time being quiet and thinking about your breathing. Or go to a church that tells you how much God loves you just the way you are and how he just wants you to be happy.

Sure, after a while of taking in consumer goods and junk spirituality, the emptiness reasserts itself. You realize that something's not right but you may not be able to figure out exactly what. It's like having vague symptoms or a slight bit of pain. It's somewhat disconcerting but it's not enough to get you to the doctor or back to church. In my experience, people don't get help until something hurts really badly. It's true of physical disease as well as spiritual dis-ease.

That brings us to all the doom and gloom in today's lectionary readings. First up: Zephaniah waxing bloodchilling in his description of the the Day of the Lord. When people note that God in the Old Testament appears to be angry a lot, I tell them to imagine a parent with a bunch of unruly toddlers, doing all the things he or she told them not to. They are hurting one another and that is not cool. Passages like this reading from the Hebrew Bible are the equivalent of saying “Wait till your father gets home!” Unfortunately, this is not working on these kids. They are saying to themselves, “The Lord will not do good, nor will he harm.” (Zephaniah 1:12) They aren't worried about Dad coming home. Everything's going well with them. How could the good times end?

I'm sure people living in Hawaii the day before December 7, 1941 felt the same way. And the people living in New York before 9/11. And in Las Vegas before October 1. We rarely see disasters coming. Even with the week's worth of warning before hurricane Irma, few of us realized just how devastating it would be. Zephaniah describes a complacent, wealthy populace who cannot imagine that things could ever get that bad.

And one reason might be that at the time Zephaniah was prophesying, Josiah, king of Judah, was making reforms. During the refurbishing of the temple in Jerusalem, the Book of the Law, either Deuteronomy or the entire Torah, was found. When it was read to Josiah, he was shocked at how far the nation had strayed. He resolved to clean up the land. He tore down the pagan shrines and reinstituted the celebration of Passover.

But the rot had set in. People had incorporated paganism into the culture. They were even sacrificing their children by fire to the pagan god Molech. And archaeologists have found evidence of enormous numbers of child sacrifices, something God explicitly rejected in the story of Abraham and Isaac. We may wonder how could people possibly let their children be killed like that. People of the future will probably ask the same thing when they look back on our lack of action in the face of Columbine, Sandy Hook, the recent attacks on a church in Texas and a school in rural California, plus the fact that at 1300 deaths a year, shootings are the 3^rd leading cause of death for US children. They will wonder if, like the people of Jeremiah's time, we love something more than we do our kids.

Besides betraying God, the people of Judah sinned against their neighbors. Jeremiah also prophesied during the reign of Josiah. He wrote, “'Among my people are wicked men who lie in wait like men who snare birds and like those who set traps to catch men. Like cages full of birds, their houses are full of deceit; they have become rich and powerful and have grown fat and sleek. Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it, they do not defend the rights of the poor. Should I not punish them for this?' declares the Lord. 'Should I not avenge myself on such a nation as this?'” (Jeremiah 5:26-29) Jesus said the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love our neighbors. The people were violating both.

Yet the sense that things were generally going well kept the people from noticing how spiritually and morally sick they were. But just as a neglected mole that's changing color and growing in size can eventually turn into metastatic brain cancer, the spreading spiritual rot would erupt in the horrific consequences we see in Zephaniah.

Paul saw the same complacency in his time. The Pax Romana made folks blind to the corruption and injustice around them. So he warned Christians to “keep awake and be sober...We belong to the day." Nowadays we would say, “Our lives should be transparent.” People should see no deception in us, let alone self-deception. We need to acknowledge that we are all sinners. The difference is that Christians are forgiven and are letting God's Spirit reform them from the inside out. In response to the spiritual threats in a complacent culture, Paul also uses the metaphor for the armor of God that he more fully develops in Ephesians 6:10-18. Here he mentions simply the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of the hope of salvation. Faith, hope and love. How do those protect us?

Faith is trusting in God, in his goodness and love. That keeps us from putting our ultimate trust in the lesser things of this world that pretend they can replace God. Hope is believing in a future where God will triumph and fulfill his promises to save us. That protects us from despair. Love is our response to such a good and faithful and loving God. How can we help but love a God who loves us enough to send his son to die for us? Love of God and of those he made in his image and for whom Jesus died motivates us to fix and not simply accept what's wrong with the world. 

But how can we show that love? One way is found in our gospel reading. Jesus tells a parable about a man who entrusts his property to his slaves. The “talent” in question is actually a measure of weight, around 75 pounds of either copper, silver or gold. So even the guy given just 1 talent had a considerable amount of money to work with. And while the other 2 servants get enterprising with the money they are given, the man entrusted with 1 talent buries it. Perhaps he is intimidated by the responsibility. Perhaps he is comparing himself to his energetic coworkers and thinking he can't compete. For whatever reasons, he is too afraid to take chances on even the most conservative form of investment. He never heard the expression “Use it or lose it.”

The moral is clear. God gives us all gifts and we are to use them in his service. And even the least of them is fairly awesome. We are not to bury them. We are to do as much good as we can with them. It's not a competition. The master praises the person with 2 talents using the same words he says to the person with 5. God is just interested in seeing what we can do with what we have.

Now when we look at this parable we often think of talents in the modern sense: abilities to do things in different fields of endeavor. We say things like, “She is a talented actor,” or “He is a talented singer,” or “She has a talent for dealing with people or computers or money.” And sometimes we compare ourselves with people with a lot of talents like composer, lyricist, playwright and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda of Hamilton and Moana fame or like composer Richard Rodgers, an EGOT (winner of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) who, like Miranda, has also won a Pulitzer. Such people can intimidate those of us with lesser talents. But why? There are plenty of people who have singular talents that are invaluable. You don't care if your doctor is also a gifted violinist. You don't care if the guy who puts on your new roof is also a chess grandmaster. You don't care if the cook at your favorite restaurant is a novelist n the side. You can do a lot with just one talent. But you need to exercise it, hone it, and practice it until you get better.

But let's look at gifts God distributes other than talents. Some people just have 1 good idea. I recently heard of a 12 year old girl who had a neat idea on how to keep roofs from flying off in hurricanes. She remembered how airplane wings work. The curved top side lessens the wind pressure over the wing so the pressure under the wing lifts it. What if you turn the wing over and put it on a roof. The very wind pressure of the hurricane that peels roofs off pushes the inverted wing down onto the house, keeping the roof in place. It worked on her model in a wind tunnel. Will it work under real world conditions? Who knows but it is certainly worth looking into. There are lots of people whose contribution to society was one main thing, like George de Mestral, inventor of Velcro, but that one thing made the world or some aspect of it better.

Other gifts God gives us are good qualities such as perseverance and bravery, both of which were displayed by Desmond Doss. He was a Seventh Day Adventist who refused to kill or carry a weapon but who nevertheless volunteered for military service in World War 2. He became a medic. He managed to save 75 wounded infantrymen during the Battle of Okinawa despite being his being wounded 4 times. While under fire, Doss dragged the soldiers, usually one at a time, to the edge of an escarpment nicknamed Hacksaw Ridge and lowered them by rope to help below. He is the only conscientious objector to win the Medal of Honor. He didn't display talent so much as virtue.

Another gift God gives us is our family. This may be the hardest gift to work with. You can invest most of your life into family members and they still may not turn out as you expected. But we see what happens when people neglect their families. For every one inmate I meet with who has a stable, intact family that loves them, I meet 10 who have experienced such adverse events in their childhood as abuse, neglect, alcoholic or drug-abusing household members, and family members who went to prison. Small wonder people who come from chaotic families have a hard time becoming stable productive citizens themselves. You can't protect your children from all trauma; you can work not to be the one to traumatize them.

Another gift God gives us is one another. We are supposed to love others, not leave them to deal with their demons by themselves. We are supposed to pray for them, not prey upon them. We are supposed to support them, not squeeze every last ounce of work and value out of them and then discard them. As we saw in Jeremiah, God expects us to help and not harm one another. We are especially commanded to look out for the poor and unfortunate. That, not our GNP, is the true measure of a nation's health. Again we are the richest nation on earth. If we invest it in the pleasure of a few rather than the good of all, how do you think God will view our stewardship of what we've been given?

One last gift I want to bring up is that of our planet. God has given us a great place to live. One of the reasons we are on earth, according to Genesis 2:5, is to take care of it, rather as a gardener does. We haven't been good to our planet but for most of our history there weren't enough humans and our technology wasn't powerful enough to do lasting damage to our world. But in the early 1800s we reached a world population of 1 billion and just 200 years later, we have 7 ½ billion people. By the end of this century we are projected to have 11 billion humans on earth. Anyone who thinks this won't affect our environment is not using the brains God gave him. We are rapidly converting land from forests, wetlands and other natural landscapes into farmlands, suburbs, mines, sites for wood extraction and infrastructure, destroying the habitat of millions of creatures. Again this is God's creation and we are meant to be stewards of it. How do you think he will feel about what we are doing to the place?

Which brings us to the instrument of the awful things we see in the few apocalyptic parts of scripture. All the movies and novels about the Biblical end of the world usually have it starting through supernatural means. But the immediate calamity that Zephaniah predicted was accomplished by humans. King Josiah was killed in an ill-advised battle with Pharaoh Neco. He was their last good king. 12 years later, Babylon invaded Judah and took its people into exile. And if you look at the disasters in the middle of the book of Revelation, a lot of them—war, famine, disease, economic collapse, drought, water pollution, fires—are or could easily be man-made. Even earthquakes, we've discovered, can be caused by fracking. You can see many of the calamities predicted as merely the results of us ignoring the natural laws built into creation and the moral laws most human beings intuitively understand. To quote the comic strip Pogo, we have met the enemy and he is us!

All of these problems, by the way, are already in process. But we humans are really bad at recognizing threats that are slow-moving. I'm not sure you really could boil a frog to death by incrementally turning up the heat under a pan of water he was in but the analogy, in terms of global warming, is definitely putting that to the test. And we have no place to jump to.

So what is the solution? Using our God-given talents, ideas, perseverance and bravery to invest in our families and our planet. But this is going to take sacrifices. So we need something more: we need to turn to Jesus, open our hearts to his Spirit, disown ourselves, take up our crosses and follow him. We need to love one another not merely as much as we love ourselves but as self-sacrificially as Jesus loves us. As it says in Philippians, “Instead of being motivated by selfish ambition or vanity, each of you should, in humility, be moved to treat each other as more important than yourself. Each of you should be concerned not only about your own interests, but about the interests of others as well. You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had...” (Philippians 2:3-5, NET) Jesus was smart, eloquent and articulate; he could heal and feed people; he could even raise them from the dead. He could have used those gifts to make himself the most powerful man the world has ever seen. But he didn't. He didn't use his powers to make himself rich or even comfortable. Instead he used them to help people. He invested his talents and his time (all his time; his entire life) in making the world a better place. He used all he was given for the good of others.

So we need to ask ourselves: what would Jesus want us to do with our time, our talents, our treasures? Because they aren't really ours. They are on loan from our Lord. When he returns he's going to want to see that his trust in us has paid off. And as we've seen in the parable, it needn't be spectacular. Your results may vary. But he does want to see a result.

What has God given you? What are you going to do with it? 

Coming Soon

The scriptures referred to are 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and Matthew 25:1-13.

How do you explain the unfamiliar? That's at the heart of one of my favorite Green Lantern stories. In each sector of space, the guardians of the universe have selected a sentient being who is honest and fearless to act as a sort of intergalactic police officer. They equip him with a power ring, which channels the collected willpower of the universe and turns it into a non-lethal beam of light which can take the shape of whatever the individual Green Lantern chooses. Thus it can be a shield or a big shovel to scoop up the bag guys or a cage in which to keep them. Every 24 hours the ring must be recharged by a power unit that looks like a green lantern. As he recharges it, the ring's bearer recites the following oath: “In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight! Let those who worship evil's might beware my power—Green Lantern's light!”

Though the comic book chiefly concerns the adventures of earth's Green Lantern, we often see his colleagues in the Green Lantern Corps. The artists and writers have had a field day inventing all kinds of alien Green Lanterns. One is a plant, one is living lava, one is a robot, one is an energy being who inhabits her ring and one is a virus. But my favorite Green Lantern origin story concerns Rot Lop Fan, who evolved in a pitch black region of space. He has no eyes. So how can he understand the concept of light or color? The task of recruiting him seems impossible. And then it dawns on another Green Lantern to recast her explanation of the ring and its powers in terms of sound rather than light. She reshapes the ring into a bell and reinterprets the oath. So now when Rot Lop Fan, protector of the Obsidian Deeps, recharges his bell he recites the following oath: “In loudest din or hush profound, my ears hear evil's slightest sound. Let those who toll evil's knell beware my power—the F-sharp bell!”

In today's New Testament readings, Jesus and Paul have a similar problem. How do you explain something people were unfamiliar with—Jesus' second coming—using images and concepts they already grasp? The problem is that both then and now folks too often get so hung up on the specifics of the images and details that they miss the point. That's akin to Rot Lop Fan deciding to use his bell only to make music, rather than to fight for justice.

In Thessalonica, the Christians were anticipating Jesus' return, which they thought would happen very soon. But they were worried about those in their church who had died before Jesus' reappearance. How would they be saved? So Paul tries to comfort them by explaining something outside human experience: the breaking into this world of the other. In doing so he uses familiar images from scripture combined with the symbolism of an imperial visit.

The picture Paul paints of Jesus coming on the clouds comes from the book of Daniel: “As I gazed in visions of the night, I saw one like a son of man, coming with the clouds. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion, glory and kingship, that all the peoples, nations and languages will serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which will not pass away, and his kingdom shall not be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:13-14)

To this Paul adds the language and the imagery of a royal visit. A herald would announce that the king is coming, trumpets would sound upon his approach and the citizens would come out to meet him and escort him into the city. The Greek word for that kind of meeting is precisely the one Paul uses when he describes the resurrected dead, along with those still living, coming together with their Lord. When Jesus comes to establish her kingdom, its citizens, both the living and the dead, will be reunited in greeting him.

Much has been made of this passage by proponents of dispensationalism. This is a method of Bible interpretation popular in fundamentalist and evangelical churches. It divides up scriptural history into 6 or 7 dispensations, or periods of time in which God deals with people in different ways. The attraction of dispensationalism is that it organizes the sprawling saga of scripture into nice neat epochs that operate according to clear rules. (here) It also gives a schematic presentation of progressive revelation. The problem is that it is so determined to make everything fit neatly that it tends to ignore all nuance, subtlety and ambiguity in the Bible. It is so concrete it takes things that are obviously meant to be symbolic as literal. And it has systematized the various visions of the end times into a rigid timetable that has become enshrined in most evangelical eschatology. (here)

This passage from 1^st Thessalonians is at the heart of of the idea of the “Rapture” that figures into structure of the Left Behind series of novels. It comes from the Latin word “rapio” used in the Vulgate to translate part of verse 17. It literally means “to be caught up.” It was John Nelson Darby, the guy who systematized dispensationalism, who came up with the unique idea that this rapture would occur before the 7 year period of tribulation mentioned in Revelation 7:14. Darby posited that Jesus would make a 2-stage return. First he would secretly return to rescue believers from the tribulation, all the plagues and disasters mentioned in Revelation. After they sat things out in heaven, Jesus would return a second time with the raptured saints in tow. He would win the battle of Armageddon, hold the last judgment, and inaugurate the kingdom of God. The way this ties together difficult-to-understand passages from Daniel, Revelation, Thessalonians and others appeals to the orderly mind. The problem is that there are passages in the gospels that indicate believers will suffer through the end times. (Matthew 24:9-13; Mark 13:20; John 16:33) Most non-dispensationalist scholars do not see any reason to insert a secret rapture before or even halfway through the final tribulation. It smacks of reading into the scriptures something you want to see.

Part of the problem is the language used here. Though in other passages, Paul speaks of Jesus “appearing,” here he writes of Christ “descending from heaven” and of believers, living and resurrected, being “caught up” to meet him in the air. So lots of folks think he is describing a physical event. But as psychologist Dr. Steven Pinker points out, all languages use a kind of internal geography and geometry. We talk of bringing a subject “up” or letting someone “down” or talking something “out” or “going further into” a matter. We even talk of people “coming down” to the Keys as if mainland Florida was mountainous. Similarly we speak of “God Most High,” or of “lifting up”our hearts in praise, or of the “descent” of the Holy Spirit. Now we are talking of real things and events but that doesn't mean they literally involve physical movement or locations. The return of Jesus is real but to insist he must re-enter the atmosphere from outer space, using not the space shuttle but water vapors, is like thinking that because God says Israel is the apple of his eye, he must have fruit in place of eyeballs. (Zechariah 2:8)

Remember the context: Paul is trying to comfort a church going through persecution. He is not laying out a definitive order of endtime events but reminding this parish that transformation and resurrection applies to all Christians.

In our gospel Jesus is discussing his return with a different end in mind. He, like Paul, is using something familiar to explain something that is not. In this case, Jesus is using the sequence of events preceding a wedding at that time. After a day of dancing, the bridegroom and his party would process through the streets so everyone could wish him well. The bridesmaids would leave the bride, take torches and wait outside for him to appear so they could take him to his betrothed. It might take him a while to wend his way through the whole town so he might arrive quite late. In the parable, 5 of the bridemaids know this and so they prepare for the possibility by bringing extra oil to dip their rag-wrapped torches into. 5 don't make any preparations. They all fall asleep while waiting. When they hear someone shouting that the bridegroom is near, the wise bridesmaids are ready. The foolish bridesmaids are unable to get their torches going. Sharing the oil would mean no one would have enough to accompany the couple for the whole procession. When the foolish bridesmaids return after finding a late-night merchant to sell them some more oil, they find out that the party has passed them by. The bridegroom has claimed his bride from her parents house and taken her under a canopy to his house for the wedding feast. The unprepared are shut out of the celebration.

People argue about what the torches or the oil represent but the point is simply to be ready for the Messiah to return or you will be left out. Whereas Paul is using the Second Coming to comfort Christians in distress, Jesus is using the same event to wake up complacent followers. And those are the two main reasons that the Bible tells us what God is planning to do in the future: to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Prophecy is not included in the Bible so the curious can work out the date of Armageddon or to decode who the beast in Revelation is. It is there to give hope to the suffering and a warning to the slumbering.

What do we do in the meantime? We carry out the mission God has given us: proclaim the coming of the kingdom of God in all we say and do. That means living as citizens of the incipient kingdom, modeling its principles, and spreading Jesus' reign by inviting others to follow him. We are to teach and to heal, to rebuke and to reconcile, to love and to forgive, to help and to guide, to listen and to understand, to create and to welcome. The wrong response to the delay in Jesus' return is to sit back and just wait. In other parables, while waiting for the master to return, the servants are to invest money left in their stewardship, or to nurture and harvest crops, or to simply continue with their tasks. The last thing you want to be doing when the boss comes back is goofing off.

Contrary to popular eschatology, Jesus isn't returning on a cosmic bungee cord, to grab us out of the world when it needs us most, and then pull us back up to heaven. The 2 images used in our readings are of a king visiting a city and of a bridegroom coming for his bride. Those who go to meet him then accompany him back to their city or back to the bride they left at her home. He's not turning around to take the people away from their city or to leave the bride behind. 

Nor is Jesus simply returning to destroy the world. He is coming to establish heaven on earth and to renew both. And the good we accomplish in his name will be incorporated into the new creation. That means we must be invested in renewing, rehabilitating, restoring and recreating the world and the society we live in.

Every Sunday in the creed we mention Christ's coming again. In the Eucharistic prayer we not only look back at the glorious things Jesus did for us in the past but we also look forward to his return. Jesus never intended us to spend a lot of time trying to imagine just how he would return. And he forbids us to speculate on exactly when he would come. Only the Father knows that. (Matthew 24:36) Our job is to proclaim that he will come and that he will set things right. That should warn those who do wrong, comfort those who have experienced wrong, and awaken those who have been asleep to the fact that things have been going wrong.

If the presiding bishop were coming to Big Pine Key, you better believe we'd be getting prepared for the visit. We use every form of communication to tell folks she or he was coming and what everyone needs to do first. If your CEO was coming to your workplace, you'd make sure everything was working properly and that everybody was doing their job. If either were coming to your house, you would make needed repairs and take out the trash and invite everyone you knew.

Well, the King of the universe is coming to earth to see what we've done with the place since that last painful visit. Isn't there something we should be working on?

Like Him

The scriptures referred to are 1 John 3:1-3.

We know what Sherlock Holmes looks like. Quite apart from the illustrations, he is described in the first novel: “In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively thin that he seemed considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing..; and his thin, hawklike nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination. His hands were invariably blotted with ink and stained with chemicals, yet he was possessed of extraordinary delicacy of touch....”

We know what James Bond looks like. Not from the movies but from the novels. He is described by a female character as “certainly good-looking...Rather like Hoagy Carmichael in a way. That black hair falling down over the right eyebrow. Much the same bones. But there was something a bit cruel in the mouth, and the eyes were cold.” Those eyes are blue-grey. He's 6 foot tall and weighs 168 pounds. One thing no movie Bond sports that the book character has is a thin, 3 inch vertical scar on his right cheek. (And yet people initially said Daniel Craig couldn't play Bond because he was blond!)

Those are two of the best known fictional characters in the world and we know what they look like. Likewise from portraits we know what real people like George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson look like. We have a good idea of what Socrates looked like because we have some busts of him. You know which well known person we have all heard of but about whose appearance we haven't a clue? Jesus Christ. Neither the gospels nor the book of Acts offer any description of him and pictures of him were discouraged in the first couple of centuries of Christianity. Jesus was symbolized in early Christian art by the fish, the peacock or the anchor. When personified he was shown as the Good Shepherd, a beardless youth carrying a sheep on his shoulder. Sometimes he was shown as a baby. In the late 3^rd century, we start seeing Jesus with a beard and by the 6^th century this becomes the conventional picture of him. But whether he actually looked like that, whether his hair was long or short, whether he even had a beard or not, are matters of debate.

And you know what? That's good. Because if we knew what Jesus looked like, it would give some people reasons to be proud and others reasons to feel excluded. If he was redheaded, gingers would feel superior to others. If he was tall, lanky folks would lord it over short people. If he was thin, it would make fat people seem less Christian. I once had an inmate flatly state that Jesus was black. Having been to the Middle East I said it is more probable that he was a lot darker than me but lighter than the inmate. I myself was surprised to see at the Holy Land theme park in Orlando, in a film using very Semitic actors to play Abraham and Isaac, that they nevertheless reverted to a blond, blue-eyed actor to play Jesus. And I have seen Jesus in African American churches depicted as black and in Asian churches depicted as Asian. We all want to relate to God in the flesh. But ultimately it doesn't matter, so long as people realize that in truth we do not know exactly what he looked like. There is enough discrimination in this world without bringing Jesus' appearance into it.

Part of this may be by design. The second commandment forbids our making images of God and worshiping them. So it is interesting that the people who came to believe that they had lived with God Incarnate didn't leave a physical description of him. Perhaps they foresaw people making an idol out of Jesus' appearance. They realized that who he was might get lost in the all too human obsession with how people look.

But then the Bible is pretty much on message all the time. It doesn't usually offer us extraneous facts, like how people looked. We don't have physical descriptions of most of the people in the Bible. Leah, Jacob's first wife, had beautiful eyes (or weak eyes; it depends on the translation.) Esau was hairy. David was ruddy and not very tall. That's about it. 

(Now some people make much of the fact that Jesus in Revelation has bronze skin. Actually it says, the figure was “dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.” (Revelation 1:13-16) Small wonder John falls at his feet as if dead! By the way, the bronze feet look like molten metal, not like a sunbather's tan. And his head is as white as his hair. And his face looks like the sun. And let's not forget the sword emerging from his mouth. This is a frightening vision, filled with symbols. This tells us nothing at all about what the earthly Jesus looked like.)

Why am I belaboring this? Because in today's passage from 1 John it says, “Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2) I doubt John is saying we will all become physically like Jesus. He is saying something more profound.

In Genesis 1 there is one characteristic that humans have that none of the other lifeforms God creates have: we are made in God's image. What does that mean?

In the Jewish Study Bible the notes link the image with God's authority. After all, God also tells the first humans to fill the earth, subdue it and rule over all the animals. But even that commentator points out that we are not owners of the earth but stewards for the actual owner, God.

The Hebrew word for “image” is derived from the word for “shadow.” The word for “likeness” can also mean “shape.” So clearly the author is saying we were created to resemble God. But in what way?

Looking at what we know of God at this point in the story, we can see that he is intelligent, organized, powerful, and communicative. He creates things that are useful and good and he delights in them. We can certainly see those things in human beings.

We are intelligent. Now I know that everyday we learn of ways in which other animals are intelligent as well. But there is a difference. Certain birds and apes can talk—if we teach them. And their grammar and the thoughts they express never progress beyond the rudimentary. They can do addition and subtraction but not algebra or trig or calculus. Some seem to have self-awareness but they do not seem to get introspective or contemplate their own mortality. They have an innate sense of justice but they don't have complex moral codes which wrestle with what you do when two values conflict. As with all the ways the other animals resemble humans there is a difference in degree so great that on a practical level it may as well be treated as a difference in kind. An ape may make a tool out of a stick; he will never make a Swiss Army knife or smartphone.

We are organized. Well, not all of us individually if you go by my desk. But as a species which is not the strongest or fastest or has not been gifted with the longest and sharpest claws and teeth, we have triumphed by using our intelligence to organize ourselves. A group of humans properly organized can take on a woolly mammoth or a whale. Sure, ants and bees come together to create the equivalent of cities but they don't make traffic lights or handicapped ramps or have traffic courts to determine who is right in a dispute. Nor can they organize anything as vast and varied as a country made up of beings not related through a queen/mother but held together by a constitution, embodying certain ideals. We are so intelligent and organized that we are the only species on earth to go off-world.

We are powerful. We can and do affect not merely the ecosystems in which we live but the entire planet. Sadly our power is often displayed in our tremendous ability to destroy things. We are the only species capable of destroying virtually all life on earth, either slowly by climate change or rapidly with nuclear or biological weaponry.

We are communicative. Most animals communicate vocally, visually, by touch and/or by olfaction. We have them beat. We are always communicating content to one another not merely by voice or look but by book or TV or radio or by text or via the internet.

We are creative—immensely so! It is difficult to find a place on earth where you can't see or interact with things humans have created. In fact we have left things some of the things we have created on the moon and on Mars and we have even crashed some into other planets.

Sadly not all of the things we create are useful—fidget spinners are the pet rocks of today—nor are they all good. Mankind has expended a great deal of creativity on ways to hurt, harm and kill each other. That said, we do delight in what we make, even the awful things, if only because it shows off how clever we are.

Those are all ways in which we are like God, if in a diminished and often distorted way. But I think there is one more significant way we are like God.

In Genesis 2, we are told something odd: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24, Everett Fox) The math doesn't add up. The writer may just have gotten poetic but we all know that 2 people do not literally become one body. The oneness is a metaphor for the unity that comes from love. And that would put humanity one up on our deity, unless this is also true of God in some way.

And the clue to that is in 1 John 4:7-8, where we are told: “Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been fathered by God and knows God. The person who does not love does not know God for God is love.” Notice that it doesn't say God is loving but that God is love itself. Again, if the writer is not just being poetic and sentimental, he is saying that God is a love relationship. If we put together all the other data the Bible gives us, this means God is the Father loving the Son loving the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

It also means that as God Incarnate, Jesus is the Divine Love made concrete. In Jesus we see the God who is Love in human form.

Now I know you have heard this from me before. I want to look at what follows from this. As we saw, we were created in the image of God. But our misuse and neglect of the attributes he has endowed us with—authority, intelligence, power, our abilities to organize ourselves and communicate, our creativity—has marred that image in us. In some people it is really hard to see even a glimpse of God. But as we said, we see that image of God restored in Jesus.

And if we accept Jesus into our hearts and lives, he sends us his Spirit to dwell in us. As it says in Ezekiel 36:27, “I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will be careful to observe my ordinances.” Paul says, “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16) And the Spirit of God works to restore the image of God in us.

Recently we saw an image that Russian hackers disseminated last year showing Jesus arm wrestling the devil. And it appeals to a lot of people who see Christianity, like everything else in the world, as a competition. There are 2 sides, God's and Satan's, and you have to choose one or the other. The problem is that looking at it that way brings out the worst in us. We want our side to win at all costs so we will do whatever we can to make that happen. When you see so-called Christians lying, cheating, using worldly power and unethical means to achieve their ends, that is because they have succumbed to blind partisanship. When they do such things, they have, in the words of Jesus, gained the world but lost their souls. (Mark 8:36) If you simply must look at life as a game, then at least take the old adage to heart that it does not matter whether you win or lose, at least not in the eyes of the world; what matters is how you play the game.

Because what life is really about is who we are and who we are becoming. Our goal is to be like God. The way we do that is by letting God's Spirit work in us so that we are becoming more loving, more joyful, more peaceful, more patient, kinder, more generous, more faithful, gentler, more self-controlled, more Christlike people day by day. Jesus is God made human; he calls us humans to be the Body of Christ, the ongoing embodiment of the Divine Love in action on earth.

Of course we will not achieve that Christlike image of God perfectly in this lifetime. That's what's so exciting about our passage from 1 John. First we are assured that we beloved and that “we are God's children now.” Not later, when we get it right, but now, while we are still in the process.

And then it says, “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” And that's true. We don't know what the ideal version of us is. I don't know what a perfected Chris Todd looks like. We do not know what God's version of us, what he intended each of us to be, looks like. But it says, “What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” When we see our Lord, we will not be him, of course but we will be like him. We will see how closely we have come to be approximate him. We will see the family resemblance, if you will.

And we will see him as he is. What does that mean? God is infinite; we are finite. We will see that no one of us can truly reflect his image, which is, remember, love.  Love requires more than one person. It is really only in a loving relationship that we can reflect God's glory. All of us reveal some aspect or more of him but it takes all of us, living together in love, to reflect our multifaceted God. Only redeemed humanity, from every nation, tribe, people and language, coming together like a vast living mosaic, has any hope of reflect the infinite, intricate, amazing love of God in Christ.

But remember, not only is God infinite, he is eternal. So while we will be like him, we have all of eternity to keep growing in Christ, to keep tweaking and filling in and perfecting our destiny, which is to be like our God, who is love and reflects love and includes all who love and who made everything out of love and who calls all to love. Like him.