"Why do you stand here staring into the sky?"
Knox, 5 June, 2011 © Scott McAndless
Isaiah 40:27-31, Psalm 138, Acts 1:1-11, Luke 12:42-48
Over the last few months, there were a lot of Christians who spent a lot of their time looking into the sky. You have probably already heard all about it by now. A man name Harold Camping made some very complex calculations based on his rather unique interpretation of Biblical history and prophecy and came up with an absolutely certain and guaranteed prediction that on the 21st day of May the rapture would occur – that 200 million believers would simply disappear from the face of the earth and this would set off a series of horrible disasters which would lead to the complete destruction of the earth five months later.
Well (spoiler alert) it didn’t happen like that – although I do understand that there were widespread pranks – people who left empty clothes and shoes on the ground to give the impression that they had been raptured. But it certainly did get a lot of attention. And I think that it would be a good time to think about what was wrong with that. I mean, obviously there was a lot wrong with the guy’s “calculations” a nd, I would say, also with his contention that he could use such calculations to produce a guaranteed result when Jesus himself said, “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.”
Of course, Camping is not backing down. In fact, his latest line is that he was absolutely right and the rapture did occur on May 21st. It is just that nobody noticed it because it was “spiritual,” whatever that means. But he is still convinced that his prophecies are on track and that the world will end on October 21st. Fortunately, this time, he’s not planning to do any more advertising. But his mistakes and his insistence on sticking with them are not what bother me most about this thing.
Another travesty, of course, is the sheer number of people who were taken in by it. According to estimates made by his own staff, his organization spent over $100 million on billboards and painted trucks and other advertising to put out the word for this. Most of that money came from the life savings of people – many of whom will now face destitution. They were convinced that they didn’t have to worry about things like their retirement savings, their mortgage payments or their insurance because, well, the world was going to end and they wouldn’t be needing any of it. And I know you can say that it is just their own fault for falling for it, but I think we should have some compassion for them.
But even that is not what really gets to me. For me it is about the basic assumptions behind it all. Here you had an entire multi-million dollar ministry that was devoted to doing one thing – announcing a date. They had reduced the entire Christian Gospel (including all the Jesus had said and done and the whole content of the New Testament) to little more than a circle drawn around a number on a calendar. And I think that there is a problem when that becomes all that the Christian faith is about.
In the Book of Acts – the second volume of a two-part work that began with the Gospel of Luke – Luke tells us that, after the resurrection, Jesus stayed around for a while and appeared to his disciples many times over a period of forty days. And then a decisive change took place. Jesus would no longer be with his people in the same way – the appearances of Jesus in a resurrected body would stop taking place because Jesus bodily ascended into heaven.
And the disciples were standing around doing what anyone would do if something that extraordinary had happened – they were staring up into the sky at the place where Jesus had just disappeared – when a couple of angels came along. Now, if two angels are sent from God with a very specific message as such a pivotal moment – at the very moment when the disciples have been left without the physical presence of Jesus for the very first time and they are trying to figure out what they are supposed to do now – I would imagine that what those angels have to say is going to be pretty important. Here are God’s very first words of instruction to a church that is just coming into being.
So, what are these all important first words? “Men of Galilee,” the angels say, “why do you stand here looking into the sky?” Now that is a pretty odd question to start with, isn’t it? And it’s not as if the answer to that question isn’t obvious either: “What do you think we’re staring at – didn’t you see that? It is the freakiest thing I ever seen! He just sort of floated upwards before our very eyes until a cloud took him from our sight.” In fact the answer to the question is so obvious that I think that there must be more to the question than what is on the surface.
In fact, I believe that that question is actually not addressed merely to those eleven or so men (and perhaps a few women) standing in that clearing outside Jerusalem. It is also addressed to all of their spiritual descendants – that is, to the church down through its many generations. And it is also more than a question, it is an accusation.
The church, you see, has done a lot of that down through the years – staring into the sky. Sometimes that staring has been of the sort that Harold Camping does – setting dates and preaching the imminent return of Jesus. And, make no mistake, Harold Camping is far from the first to do that sort of thing. And, what is more (and here I give you a prediction that is fully guaranteed) he won’t be the last either!
And, as I say, it is not just that all of these predictions have turned out to be wrong. It is about how this obsession with setting dates has warped our sense of what Christianity is all about. It leaves people with the impression that Christianity is all about the final judgement and about getting people to heaven at the right time.
Now, when I say that, I’m not trying to suggest that there is no judgement or justice for what has gone wrong in this world. And I’m certainly not trying to suggest that we, as believers, should not have hope of heaven. These things are affirmed by the angels who come to the disciples. “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven,” they say, “will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” What I object to is when that becomes all that the Christian faith is about. That is why the angels seem to rebuke the disciples (and by extension the whole church down through the centuries) for standing around, staring at the sky and waiting for that to happen.
The issue is not the reality of the second coming, or when it will happen or what it will look like when it comes. The issue is what do we do while we wait however long it might take. Jesus spoke often of the Christian life as a life of waiting. His parables were full of people who were waiting for something – the crops to grow, the bridegroom to come to the wedding, the master to return to the house, the thief coming to rob the place.
He speaks, for example, of “the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time,” and then apparently goes away on a long journey. Now, in telling this story, Jesus is clearly suggesting that this wise manager’s job is to wait for and prepare for the return of that master. But how exactly is he supposed to do that? I do not get the sense that Jesus is suggesting that the proper way for that servant to wait is to spend all of his time staring out the window looking for the master’s return – waiting for the master to come and set all things right in the household. He certainly doesn’t suggest that everything in that household should be put on hold in the meanwhile. No, the proper way for that servant to wait for his master is to do his job – to take care of the house, to make sure that its inhabitants are fed and well taken care of.
And I believe that Jesus would say the same thing for the church which is waiting (and which has been waiting for almost two thousand years) for the return of Christ. Yes, he would say that we should wait and that we should be prepared. But somehow I don’t think that he would agree that the proper manner of waiting was to set dates or to spend $100 million telling people to “save the date.” Most of all, I don’t think that he would agree that preparing for that day (whenever it might be and whatever it might look like) was merely a matter of telling people all about the things that God would do to establish justice or to punish injustice when he came.
He would say that waiting was a matter of living well and living faithfully according to what God has called and made you to be. He would say that preparing was a matter of going out and practicing justice and of doing what you can to make the world a place of justice, respect and understanding. Perhaps most important of all, he would say that those who share the message of hope, forgiveness and new beginnings that is the Christian gospel to all who will hear it are doing the very best that they can do to prepare for that coming.
Not all Christians, I know, get caught up in the imminent expectation of the return of Christ. Not all go around making calculations and setting dates. Harold Camping’s background is apparently in the Reformed Church and the Presbyterian Church, but most Presbyterians I have known do not generally get all caught up in that kind of hysteria. Because of that, we may sometimes find ourselves feeling superior to those Christian who do – especially, perhaps, when their predictions turn out to be so publicly and embarrassingly wrong. But feeling superior for things like that is often foolish. Just because we don’t do that, does that mean that we do not spend a good portion of our Christian life standing here looking at the sky in our own way.
I think that one of the key ways that we stand there looking at the sky is by assuming that the Christian life is only about heaven – only about what happens when we die. Jesus didn’t come merely to offer you a way out of this world. Jesus came because he had a deep and abiding love for this world and wanted to save it. Note the difference: Jesus didn’t want just to rescue people from this world; he wanted to save this world. And when we turn the Christian faith into a matter of waiting for God to take us there someday, we are missing the point.
We are called to spread a message of hope, a message of change and infinite possibilities, not simply to grab ourselves a ticket to heaven. We are called to make a difference in this world, not just to escape it. We are called to live in harmony with the natural environment, not just to destroy it because it doesn’t matter in comparison to the promise of heaven. When you realize that being a Christian is not just a matter of staring into the sky you recognize that there is a lot that we need to keep doing. The tasks are daunting, but fear not, we do not face them alone. Jesus has promised that we will receive power as we trust in him. He may have ascended into heaven, but he has promised that he will be with us even until the end of the age – whenever that might be. (October 21? – no, whenever)