On First and Second
Comings
November 13, 2020
The Scripture
quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible,
copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council
of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights
reserved.
In a couple of weeks it will be
Advent, one of the two seasons of waiting and anticipation in the Christian
calendar. Advent is the time of anticipation of and preparation for the birth
of Jesus. Like Lent it is an artificial season. We pretend that something that
something that happened over two thousand years ago hasn’t happened yet. We
anticipate the coming of God into the world, which really is a strange thing to
do. It’s strange because as a matter of mere fact Jesus was born ages ago. It’s
also strange because we confess the God is always in the world and always has
been. We can think of that strangeness in terms of Trinitarian theology if we
like. God is and always has been in the world as the Holy Spirit and came into
the world as God the Son Incarnate in Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Son being
both the same and not the same at the same time. Or we can just anticipate
Christmas without worrying about obscure (though ultimately important) theological
issues and answers. Either way, Advent is the time of anticipating and
preparing to celebrate the birth of Christ.
Every year as we approach Advent I
feel sorry for the people who compile lectionaries, those schedules of Bible readings
for Sundays and other holy days. Preachers in some traditions like the Roman
Catholic tradition are required to use them. Others of us aren’t required to
use them, but many of us do anyway. Lectionary compilers try to make the readings
they select relevant in meaningful ways to the holy days and seasons of the
Christian year. That’s easy enough to do for many seasons and holy days. For
Christmas just put readings from the Christmas stories of Matthew and Luke (the
only two Christmas stories there are) in your lectionary. For Lent include
stories of Jesus as he comes to Jerusalem for the first time in his adult life
(except in John, where he comes to Jerusalem several times). Maundy Thursday,
Good Friday, Easter, Epiphany and other holy days present no particular
challenge to people compiling lectionaries.
Not so Advent. In Advent Christians
want to hear the stories of Christmas, never mind that Advent isn’t Christmas
and the short season of Christmas in the Christian calendar doesn’t begin until
Christmas Day (though we usually cheat by a few hours and start it on Christmas
Eve). Lectionary compilers want to give us stories that lead up to the birth of
Christ. That, after all, is what Advent is all about. When they try to do that
they run into a great big problem. Except in Luke there really are no Bible stories
leading up to Christmas. After a puzzling genealogy the Gospel of Matthew jumps
right into its birth narrative. Mark has no birth narrative. Neither does John,
so they don’t have stories leading up to a birth narrative.[1]
Luke has the stories of the angel’s annunciation to Mary and Mary’s visit to
Elizabeth before Jesus is born, but at least the Revised Common Lectionary, the
one most used by Protestant pastors, doesn’t want to use Luke’s stories all the
time. There aren’t enough of them, and that lectionary wants to restrict its
use of Luke mostly to year C of its three year cycle.[2]
So lectionary compilers coming up with appropriate readings for Advent is quite
a big challenge.
The Revised Common Lectionary at
least solves that problem in a way that I find quite problematic. While there
are almost no New Testament stories that lead up to the birth of Jesus, that
is, to the first coming of Christ, there are all kinds of references in the New
Testament to an anticipated and hoped for second coming of Christ. Matthew
24:37, for example refers to a second coming of Christ as “the coming of the
Son of Man.” At Acts 1:10-11 we read that two men in white, presumably angels,
tell the disciples who have just witnessed Jesus’ ascension, “Men of Galilee,
why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up
into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” The
oldest account we have of Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist clearly
anticipates a second coming when it ends with the line, “For as often as you
eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
1 Corinthians 11:26. 1 Thessalonians, a letter written largely in response to
people’s concern that the second coming hadn’t happened yet, has a reference to
a second coming that has caused a good deal of mischief because of misguided
Christians who call the even predicted there “the rapture.” We read:
For the Lord himself, with a cry of
command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend
from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 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; and so we will be with the Lord forever.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17.
Other New Testament references to an anticipated (or at
least hoped for) second coming of Christ can easily be found. From the earliest
days of the post-Resurrection Christian movement, Christians hoped that Jesus
would come again.
The Revised Common Lectionary
solves the problem of there being very few New Testament passages that really
are appropriate for Advent by putting many of these references to a second
coming of Christ into the lectionary during Advent. Thus that lectionary has as
its Gospel reading for the first Sunday of Advent in that lectionary’s Year B
Mark 13:24-37. Those verses are part of what scholars call “The Little
Apocalypse of Mark.” The Little Apocalypse begins at Mark 13:3 and continues to
the end of chapter 13.[3]
It is indeed apocalyptic. Here’s how it begins:
When he was sitting on
the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked
him privately, ‘Tell us when this [the destruction of the temple] will be, and
what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?’ Then
Jesus began to say to them, ‘Beware that no one leads you astray….When you hear
of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the
end is still to come. Mark 13:3-7.
Jesus goes on to speak of natural disasters, persecution of
the disciples, and betrayal within families. It’s all very unpleasant. It’s all
very apocalyptic.
The verses of the Little Apocalypse
that the Revised Common Lectionary specifies for the first Sunday of Advent in
Year B appear at the end of chapter 13 of Mark. They include a prediction that
people will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory.
Mark 13:26. Jesus tells the four disciples with whom he is speaking that only
the Father knows when these end times will come. Therefore, keep awake.
These verses obviously have nothing
to do with the birth of baby Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas. The adult
Jesus speaks them, but he doesn’t talk about his birth. They are about
something that’s supposed to happen in the future not something that has
already happened in the past. They aren’t about a human baby being born or even
a divine one. They are about a vision from the book of Daniel about a figure
called a son of man coming through the clouds. See Daniel 7:13a. (When Jesus
called himself the Son of Man his audience would immediately have thought of
that vision.) Yet there they are in the Revised Common Lectionary’s readings
for this year on the first Sunday of Advent.
Now, I understand why the lectionary
people put second coming texts in the readings for a season about the first
coming. They don’t have much choice. I get it, but I can’t approve of it. I can’t
approve of it first of all because the New Testament’s images of a second
coming are so radically different from its images of the first coming and of
who Jesus was during that first coming. When he’s born into his first coming he’s
destitute and born in a stable. In one vision of his birth (Matthew’s) he and
his parents have to flee to Egypt so that the evil king Herod doesn’t kill him.
When he grew up he healed people and preached love, forgiveness, inclusion, and
nonviolence. Earthly power tortured and executed him. He was gentle and kind
(most of the time at least), not imposing or intimidating (except on rare occasions).
Compare all that to 1 Thessalonian’s
images of a second coming. In those images Christ comes in the air not in a
stable. He comes with a cry of command and the sound of God’s trumpet not with
the lowing of cattle. He chooses some over others to meet him not on earth in
their common lives but in the air as he descends. The early Christians
envisioned the second coming not as a time of grace but as a time of severe
judgment. At Matthew 25:46 for example the risen Christ doesn’t forgive those
who didn’t care for “the least of these,” he sends them off into eternal
punishment. The New Testament’s images of the actual first coming and an
imagined second coming could hardly be more different. Those second coming
images in no way speak of preparing for the first coming, a truth that makes it
odd at best that they get used during Advent.
Yet I have a second and more
fundamental reason for not approving of the Revised Common Lectionary’s use of
second coming passages for Advent. I can’t approve of it because I reject the
whole notion of a second coming of Christ (unless his resurrection appearances
are his second coming, but that’s not what the New Testament means by a second coming).
What are these New Testament images of Christ coming again in power and glory
really? With John Dominic Crossan I say that they are a great denial of the
first coming. They say in effect yes, Jesus was a nice guy and all, but the
world’s still a mess. Those damned Romans are still here. We’re still poor and
living at the mercy of the tax collectors and moneylenders. Sure, Jesus said
some nice things and all, but look around. What did he accomplish? Not much.
Here’s what those second coming
images have the early Christians saying to Jesus: Lord, we need you to come
again and do it right this time. We don’t need your meekness, we need divine
power. Grace? We don’t need no stinking grace. We need the bad buys judged and
condemned. We don’t need you to bless the poor, we need you to make the poor
not poor. We don’t’ need someone the Romans executed, we need someone to drive
the Romans into the sea. Not metaphorically as at Mark 5:1-13 but literally. We
need you to use lethal force to get rid of them for us. We don’t need you to
come as a nobody from some backwater hamlet like you did. We need power. We
need force. We need violence against the bad guys. We need them judged and
damned not loved and forgiven. That first time you came was nice and all, but
it just didn’t work. So now come again and do it right this time. Don’t do it
God’s way like you did the first time. Do it our way.
I simply do not believe that our
call from God is for us to dream of some unreal future time when Christ will
return to do it “right.” Our call isn’t to wait for a second coming, it is to
live into the first coming. It’s not to wait for Christ to come again to
establish the realm of God on earth. Our call is to do the work of building the
realm of God on earth, the work of justice and peace, ourselves, relying always
of course on God’s unfailing support as we do. Jesus came and did it God’s way.
It’s high time for us to start doing it God’s way too as at least some
Christians have for a very long time.
So Revised Common Lectionary
people, I’m sorry. I get why you do what you do for Advent, but what you do is
just wrong. I wish you didn’t give us all the second coming stuff you give us.
I wish you gave us more stories of Jesus doing it God’s way so that we could
better learn how God wants us to be doing it. As far as I know no one is
working on a second Revised Common Lectionary. I don’t expect the Advent
readings to change. I just wish they would.
[1]
The Gospel of John does say that the Word became flesh and lived among us, John
1:14, but that’s hardly an account of a human birth.
[2]
You’ll find the Revised Common Lectionary at lectionary.library.vanderbult.edu
among other places.
[3]
The verses Mark 13:1-2 are often considered to be part of the Little
Apocalypse. They aren’t. For what they are see Thomas Calnan Sorenson, Liberating
the Bible, A Pastor’s Guided Tour for Seeking Christians, Revised Edition
(Briarwood, NY, Coffee Press, Inc. 2019), Volume 3, The New Testament,
50-52.
No comments:
Post a Comment