Let
me try your memories a bit. Where have you heard this before, “Great is the
mystery of faith! Christ has died! Christ is risen! Christ will come again!” It comes from the Great Prayer of
Thanksgiving that we pray when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. The prayer is an affirmation, an amen, to what
Jesus did on the night of his arrest. It
says: Christ has died in victory over sin and death so that we are
forgiven. Christ is risen, vindicated to
new creation life and Lordship over the whole Creation. As Lord, Christ Jesus will come again in
judgment, a judgement or verdict that all things will be made new. In him we place our utter trust and can
therefore hope.
Here
is another confession you might find familiar.
“For
our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was
buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he
ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will
come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have
no end.” That is from the Nicene Creed,
the most common of all Christian creeds and confessions. It fills in a little more what we mean by
“Great is the mystery of faith! Christ
has died! Christ is risen! Christ will come again!”
This affirmation and
creedal confession of faith both have in common that they point us to Jesus
personally and bodily returning from Heaven to earth one day. Yet, Jesus’
return is a difficult topic to broach.
When we do, it seems that there a some extremes that show up. On the one hand, there is the Christian fundamentalist
talk of the Rapture, a fabricated event when Jesus will return and all true
believers will be whisked off with him while those who are left behind will have
to suffer living on a Godless earth where all Hell is breaking loose. On the other hand, there is the view of
Christian Liberalism that says, “Jesus is not returning at all. His return as well as his resurrection and
ascension are impossible according to science and reason. Therefore, it is up to us to bring his kingdom
to earth through spirituality and following his teachings.” Or, the Spiritualists who say “all that
matters is spirit. Therefore, let’s get
as spiritual as we can and just feel love.”
Then, in the midst cowers Mainline Christianity thinking that since the Age
of Reason, the Enlightenment, has bound our Western minds with the assumption
that religion is really a matter of private beliefs and since we find this
topic confusing and uncomfortable, let’s just not talk about it and just
privately believe in God or at least the idea of God and be good so that we can
go to Heaven when we die. This view
unfortunately robs us of real hope upon which we should act.
So, to do justice to what
the Bible really says about Jesus return (and it says he really is going to
return) we must lay aside those extremes and our impotent Mainliner middle
ground. Without contest, one element of
the Gospel that Jesus is Lord that the Christian Church should be proclaiming
today as it did in the First Century is that he is coming to judge the world
and the judgement he will render will be the act of putting it to right through
the full establishment of his kingdom.
Therefore, Jesus is coming to judge the world with righteousness
(according to God’s steadfast love and faithfulness) and to rule it with
justice, fairness, and equity. To speak
metaphorically, that which is high will be brought low and that which is low
will be lifted up. This message is meant
to stir the world’s hope and not for fear-mongering.
Psalm 96:10-13 tells us to
“Say among the nations, ‘The LORD reigns.’ The world is firmly established,
it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.
Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and
all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them. Then all
the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the LORD, for
he comes, he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his
truth.” People rejoice. Be glad.
Join Creation’s celebration. It
might sound funny but…sing with the trees!
Daniel wrote: “I saw
one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the
Ancient of Days and was led into his presence.
He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations
and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting
dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be
destroyed.” That son of man was Jesus resurrected and
ascended. Paul wrote in Philippians,
“Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is
above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven
and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” This
is Jesus we are talking about. He is the
one to whom all power and authority has been given. Jesus is the LORD…Jesus who healed the sick,
cleansed the leper, raised the dead, forgave the sinner, and turned the
judgements of the judgemental back upon themselves. Jesus is coming to put the world to
rights.
If
this is true about Jesus, then what John writes at Revelation 1:5-6 is
true about us. “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his
blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and
Father-- to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.”
Because he loves us he has set us free from our sins and made us to be a
kingdom and priests. His kingdom is
coming now in and through yet not exclusively us, his church, his disciples. His kingdom is coming now on earth as it is
in Heaven in answer to the Lord’s Prayer.
So, what are we going to
do about it? Bishop N.T. Wright in his
book Surprised by Hope asks, “What would happen if we took seriously our
stated belief that Jesus Christ is already the Lord of the world and that at
his name, one day, every knee would bow?”
I would add that as we proclaim the Lordship of Jesus according to
Scripture, even now knees are bowing. So,
what would happen? You know, we the
church as his kingdom and priests really do have the responsibility in the
first place of worship and secondly, of announcing Jesus’ reign and his return
and thirdly, holding the powers that be accountable to the standards of justice
and peace presented in the Bible. We
cannot use what Jesus said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this
world,” as an
excuse to sidestep our responsibility to hold our governments accountable to
what God has established them to do.
As a
priesthood of all believers we serve by worshipping him not only in a Sunday
morning service but with the sacrifice of our whole lives as Paul says in
Romans 12:1-2, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to
offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-- this is your
spiritual {Or reasonable} act of worship.
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be
transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and
approve what God's will is-- his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Since Jesus is Lord of the world and we are
his evident kingdom we cannot sit back or throw our hands in the air at the
enormity of evil in this world that our governments and other powers like
multinational corporations are propagating or turning a blind eye to. We must play the prophet. We must demand climate control because this
is God’s good Creation and humanity is its steward, the priest who gives voice
to creation’s praise. Destroying the
Creation is not what God created us to do.
Moreover, Christians must continue to hold global governments
accountable for the corruption that leads to poverty. And the list goes on.
Let me
end with a story. The Duff’s Presbyterian
Church in Puslinch, ON is right next door to the Nestle plant that is arguably
destroying the water table over there by drawing free water from the ground and
selling it to us in little plastic bottles.
The Duff’s Session after hearing of the difficulty of finding clean
water that First Nation reserves in Northern Ontario are having wrote to the
manager of the plant and basically said “you have so much water and these
people have so little; can you help?” Oddly,
the plant manager fully sympathized with the need and she got Nestle to help by
shipping free water up to several communities. Christians held a multinational accountable at
the local level and the kingdom of God broke in.
Friends, our Lord is coming and when he comes stuff like that is going
to happen. The world will be put to
right. Amen.
