What's Not Left Behind

Easter 5A
22 May, 2011

Well here we are. All of us. Safe and sound and on the ground. Did anyone have a family member or friend get raptured last night? I confess I’ve followed the rapture buzz online quite closely. I find the rapture culture fascinating. Having grown up in the land of “in the event of the rapture, this car will be unmanned” bumperstickers, the whole notion of a group of people suddenly disappearing into nowhere brings out my inner sci-fi geek. Did you know that there’s a place, where, in the event of the Raputre, for a mere $135, atheists will provide care and a home for your pets, including not only cats and dogs, but also donkeys and llamas. The buzz about the rapture is everywhere.

If you haven’t been following all the buzz here’s what you need to know: there’s a fundamentalist group that has, for sometime now, been reading the Bible as a time map, and has marked May 21 (that’d be yesterday) as the date of the rapture, the day when all faithful followers of Jesus are suddenly swept up into heaven, leaving a palpable void on the earth. And yet, here we sit.

The Rapture is an interesting enough concept, but one that is relatively new to the Church--just a couple of centuries old, cherry picked together from a few pieces of Scripture.  The word “rapture” does not appear in the Bible and it’s a 19th Century invention. Based in part on a verse from First Thessalonians (4:17): Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, the concept is that Jesus will have not one, but two second comings. In the first, the dead will be raised with Christ and then those of us who believe in Christ will be lifted up. There are many different camps and schools of thought on the details of how and when and why this will happen. Within recent memory, the Tim LaHaye books, the Left Behind Series, have brought our sacred text, the Revelation of St. John, into popular culture with the authors of this series playing with the text and taking it from a vision and turning it into a supposed literal prophecy. The Rapture is big business and good insurance to make sure we churches don’t go out of business anytime soon. For if you get left behind, not only are you not hanging out in the great bye and bye with Jesus, but those of us left behind (and by all accounts, I’ll likely be left behind--Episcopalians don’t rank real high on the “getting raptured” list), those of us left behind are in for a world in pain and tribulation.

If you hear a note (or two) of skepticism and annoyance in my voice, you’re picking up on my frustration with this concept. Beyond that it’s become a comic money maker for Atheists and a scare tactic for some fundamentalist preachers, the problem I have with the rapture and the way it has been presented to our society is that it is counter-intuitive to what Jesus himself has taught.

The famous monk and writer Thomas Merton once wrote: “For eschatology [conversation about the end things]  is not finis and punishment, the winding up of accounts and the closing of books: it is the final beginning, the definitive birth into a new creation. It is not the last gasp of exhausted possibilities but the first taste of all that is beyond conceiving as actual.”  


This marries right into the Gospel today where  Jesus says:  In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. Jesus speaks these words at the end of his life to the people he loves most. Words to teach them how to walk through this world once he is gone. The Gospel we hear today is a classic text that we use in funerals, words to comfort and remind the bereaved that Jesus has gone to prepare a place, that Jesus waits for us with joy and with love. A place, we are told,  that is big, with many dwelling places, or in the King James translation, many mansions. We hear similar echoes in a different funeral reading where Jesus reminds his disciples that he is the Good Shepherd and that he, the Good Shepherd, has other sheep, too, that are not in this sheepfold.

At the risk of speaking heresy, Jesus is teaching that there’s more to God’s reign, more to God’s Kingdom than we can see in this mortal coil. We are so quick to try and understand the mind and the depth of God. Jesus seems to be telling the disciples and us to stop limiting ourselves, to stop trying to predict and set the boundaries of God. Thanks be to God, we can see the power and love of God, made manifest in Jesus, and, in the same breath, there are many dwelling places or mansions, many sheep outside our sheepfold, that probably don’t look like us or like what we’ve decided God looks like. As we walk this earth, we are just beginning to understand, beginning to see the wideness and wildness of God.

The problem with the rapture, is that it takes Jesus and tries to make Jesus, make God, so narrow, so scarce, that one must submit in perfect form and fear to be found acceptable. The motivator is fear, is being left behind. Lost in the hype of the Rapture is the generosity, the abundance, the irrational love that was, that is Jesus Christ. Notions like the rapture tell us that there isn’t enough--not enough time, not enough belief, not enough worship. Jesus, in contrast, tell us that there is plenty, there is more than enough. There is  profound love, life-giving love. Jesus tells us not to worship him, but to follow him, out into the world, out into the places that need not the fear of death and destruction but the healing and balm that is the way of the Saviour of the World. Jesus says to his disciples: Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these. Jesus is in fact calling us to go out into the world, to be that love, to pour out hope and grace and kindness to a world that broken and weary and worn. Jesus calls us to out do him, to do greater works than the ones he has done. Pure and simple, we are called, as ones who follow, to love in that abundant and pure and life-changing way that Jesus loves us.

Beginning to understand the movement of love, the Sufi mystic Rumi wrote: Love is recklessness not reason. Reason seeks a profit. Love comes on strong, consuming herself, unabashed. Yet in the midst of suffering, Love proceeds like a millstone, hard-surfaced and straight forward. Having died to self-interest, she risks everything and asks for nothing.

While Rumi was not writing about Jesus, Rumi’s description of the recklessness of Love, so beautifully describes the way Jesus lived his life, the way Jesus died his death. Incarnate Love danced into the world with joy and abandon. Incarnate Love that walked and with every step offered hope and healing. And Incarnate Love poured itself out, fully and completely, without thought of consequence.

So what do we make of the great non-event of yesterday? Former President Jimmy Carter once said “We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon.” I think that’s pretty good advice. To live our lives, prepare our hearts and souls, to live into the promise and command of Jesus: Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these. And perhaps what we can take away from this event that never happened, perhaps what we need to remember most  is what has truly been left behind: the reckless, transforming love of the Risen Christ, that flows for you and for me.  Love that can not and will not be contained, but insists on pouring itself out, in heaven and right here on earth.

The best part of waking up?

 

Wow. Just wow. 

Snow and Santa

How the heck did this Southern girl end up in Chicago? Don't get me wrong. I love this city, but I'm sitting by my window, trying to crank out a sermon, and my coffee has gone cold because the outside air is effecting the temperature inside. Oh well. At least the radiators are working.

Tomorrow I will don a Santa hat and beard (don't tell the Advent Police) and run my first 5K in over a decade in the Santa Hustle. I'm really excited, a little nervous about my ability to finish, delighted that 4 of my friends are also running and terrified about the fact that there will be snow falling as I run by the lake in this Windy City.

I've been using the C25K (Couch to 5K) app on my iPhone. A better app has never been created. I love, love, love it. I've gone from being able to run for 2 minutes to being able to run 25 in less than 6 weeks. Amazing. I never thought I'd get there again.

It seems appropriate that it falls in Advent--a time of rebirth, of expectation, the new liturgical year, for those of us who do liturgical cycles. I asked my congregation last week (in my sermon) what they were waiting for, watching for, expecting. I've been sitting with the question myself--still no real answer. Maybe there doesn't have to be something. I mean, it's good, I suppose, just to learn to wait. Especially for me (I'm a terrible wait-er). In the mean time, there are sermons to write and recipes to make (mango black beans and rice is simmering on the stove. Moroccan chicken a little bit later!) and Presiding Bishops to dine with later tonight (just me and the rest of the clergy of the Diocese). 

At any rate, it's good to be writing a bit. It's good to have day off. And it's good, ready or not, for Santa hats in the snow!