Saturday Night Theologian
2 December 2007

Isaiah 2:1-5 (first published 28 November 2004)

Out of the ashes of World War II the nations of the world came together with the goal of creating a lasting peace. War had ravaged many parts of the world repeatedly during the previous century, and the advent of the nuclear age was a harbinger of death on a previously unimagined scale. The League of Nations, born after World War I, had failed to bring peace to the world, but delegates from around the world remained convinced that an international peace organization was vital for the survival of the human race. The negotiations led to the creation of the United Nations. The preamble to the U.N. Charter spells out its goals:

We the peoples of the United Nations determined and for these ends have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.
To stress the organization's focus on ending war, the cornerstone of the U.N. headquarters in New York City bears an inscription from the book of Isaiah: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their speaks into pruning hooks." The message of today's reading from Isaiah is clear: God desires a world where warfare, hatred, and internecine conflict are replaced by peace. Anything short of peace fails to meet God's standard for human behavior. The preamble quoted above allows nations to take up arms only "in the common interest." Despite this pledge, nations which have signed on to the U.N. charter frequently violate their commitment to the charter by waging war and acting belligerently toward their neighbors. The U.N. is not a perfect organization, and the structure and procedures of the U.N. often leave something to be desired, but the organization's stance in favor of peace is something that all people, and certainly all Christians, should applaud. It is a tragedy that so many Christians, both those who hold political office and those who elected them to office, oppose the mission of the U.N., believing that unbridled nationalism is the answer to the world's problems. They are wrong: nationalism is just a collective version of individual selfishness, and it will never lead to peace, only to more conflict. As we begin the observance of the Advent season, Christians who stand for peace must remind the world--and our fellow Christians--that we follow the Prince of Peace. Although we should evaluate all local, national, and international bodies, including the U.N., critically, we should also support all efforts to bring an end to warfare all over the globe. Let us commit ourselves anew to support those leaders who are working for the establishment of peace and justice in our world and to oppose those whose primary interest lies in expanding their own nation's power over their neighbors.

Psalm 122 (first published 28 November 2004)

Psalm 122 is a song that pilgrims would sing on their way to one of the annual feasts that were celebrated in Jerusalem. These worshipers saw Jerusalem as a place where God's people could gather to offer sacrifice to God and worship God corporately. If the psalm is postexilic, as it most likely is, Jerusalem was no longer the center of political power for the nation, for no king sat on the throne of David, but it was exclusively the center of religious observance, for there stood the temple, which Jews saw as the seat of God. Other religious traditions have their own sacred places. For Muslims, Mecca is the holy city and the primary place of pilgrimage for the faithful. For Samaritans, it is the remains of the temple on Mt. Gerizim, near Nablus. For Christians, holy sites include Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Rome, especially St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. Other sacred places include the Black Hills of South Dakota (for some Native American tribes), Uluru (Ayer's Rock) in Australia (for Australian Aborigines), the sacred city of Lhasa in Tibet (for Tibetan Buddhists), and the Ganges River in India (for Hindus). What makes a place sacred to a group of people? Places are sacred because they are closely associated in some way with the deity, and worshipers have encountered God there. Many modern followers of God don't believe that any particular place is more holy than another, but they can still respect the beliefs of those who do recognize one place or another as sacred. Furthermore, many of them have their own personal places in which they have encountered God and which are special to them. Where have you encountered God in a real and powerful way? A church building? A retreat center? A mountain? The ocean? A forest? The desert? A concert hall? A museum? In a conversation with friends? In a place of ministry? Regardless of whether you recognize one or more places as being especially sacred or whether you have experienced God's presences in a variety of places, you can probably relate to the psalmist's sentiment: "I was glad when they said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord!'" Encounter with the divine is one of the centerpieces of religion; some would say it is the goal of religion. Sometimes we experience God most strongly in a worship service, sometimes during a pilgrimage to a sacred or special site, sometimes during ministry in the name of God. All worship experiences or pilgrimages or ministry opportunities may not result in deeply felt encounters with God, but they all have that potential. When we feel discouraged, or tired, or even unsure of our faith, that is not the time to abandon our quest for the divine, for it is in those times that we need to experience God the most. Luckily for us, it is also in those times that God often seems most inclined to appear to us.

Romans 13:11-14 (first published 28 November 2004)

In the 1830s a man named William Miller, a farmer from upstate New York, began preaching that Jesus would return bodily to earth to cleanse the sanctuary sometime between the vernal equinox of 1843 and the vernal equinox of 1844. When Jesus did not return in 1844, Miller's followers, who numbered perhaps as many as 100,000, were bitterly disappointed, and many fell away. After the Great Disappointment, however, a core group clung to most of Miller's interpretation of biblical prophecy, and other leaders, particularly Ellen G. White, arose to lead the group. Key to their new understanding of scripture was the idea that Jesus had in fact "returned" to cleanse the sanctuary in 1844, but the location of the sanctuary was heaven rather than earth, so his return to earth remained sometime in the (probably not too distant) future. This reinterpretation of a core teaching was satisfying to many of the group that came to be known as the Seventh Day Adventists, and the group today claims about 11 million adherents worldwide. To judge from many parts of the New Testament, the early church expected Christ to return to earth to set up his kingdom within a generation or so. Paul shares this belief, as he tells the Roman church: "Salvation (i.e., the return of Christ) is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near." He urges the Roman Christians, whom he hopes to visit in the near future, to "lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light." Paul expected that reminding the church of the imminent return of Christ would spur them to good deeds and godly behavior. As we enter the season of Advent, we are reminded of the expectation that the Jews had concerning the coming Messiah, and we remember as well expectation of the early church, who understood Jesus to be that Messiah, and looked for his swift return. After two thousand years, though, our expectation is not the same as that felt by the first generation of Christians. Do we still have hope? Yes! Like the Adventists in the nineteenth century, all Christians have had to reconsider the early church's belief in the imminent return of Christ. Some Christians still look forward to a literal, bodily return, while others think in terms of a spiritual return. In a real way, all Christians experience the return of Christ in our personal lives whenever we have an encounter with God through Christ (this idea is called realized eschatology). Studying the Bible is a good thing, as is attempting to make sense of prophetic passages, but we can't put our trust in our own feeble attempts to comprehend the incomprehensible will of God. "My ways are not your ways," the prophet, speaking with the voice of God, reminds us in Isaiah 55:8-9. While our own misunderstandings of God's plan may disappointment us, God will never disappoint us. We don't know when the end will come, nor do we know how it will come. Will it come suddenly with an appearance of the risen Christ in bodily form? Will it come at our own hands, when we utterly destroy human life on this planet in a frenzy of insanity? Will it come when a wayward asteroid hits the planet, as others have done at least five times over the past half-billion years? Will it come millions or billions of years from now, when our sun explodes in a ball of fire? We don't know exactly how or when the end will come, but come it will. In the meantime, we would be wise to heed Paul's words, which are as true today as they were when he penned his missive. "Now is the moment for you to wake from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers." The church faces great opportunities and great dangers. As we begin another Christian year, we need to remind ourselves to live our Christian lives openly, freely, and deliberately. Christ is the hope of the world; let us show the world that we believe it by our words and by our lives.

Matthew 24:36-44 (first published 28 November 2004)

The story of The Cat in the Hat involves a playful cat, two somewhat reluctant children, and a very reluctant fish. The children are bored on a rainy day, so the cat shows up to entertain them, and the end result is a huge mess inside the house. The cat meant no harm, but the mother's footsteps on the sidewalk indicate that the time of visitation is at hand. Amazingly, however, the cat, using an incredible contraption, manages to clean up the mess and get out the door before the mother reaches the front door. According to Jesus, the coming of the Son of Man will be even more sudden than the kids' mother's footsteps falling on the sidewalk. It will be sudden and unexpected (by most), and it will affect ordinary people who are at work in the fields and at the grindstone. Jesus says that one will be taken and the other left. Those who believe in the doctrine of the rapture point to this passage as proof of their beliefs. However, those in the field and at the mill who are taken are not taken to paradise; they are taken away in judgment, as the context demonstrates (cf. v. 39). There are two key ideas in this passage. The first is that no one, not even the Son, knows the exact time of Christ's return. The second is the simple command, "Keep awake!" The implications of the first idea on the doctrine of the Trinity will have to wait for another time. More important are the implications for the idea on those who interpret certain biblical prophecies in very specific ways, including suggested dates for the Parousia. If Jesus himself didn't know the schedule of his own return, why should people today believe that they can figure it out? The command to keep awake continues to be applicable today. In many ways, it is even more applicable today than ever before. The increasing lethality of human weapons has not been matched by an increase in human wisdom and respect for other people, so the time we live in is more dangerous than any ever before faced by the human race. The Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) continues, despite the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and the advent of democracy and capitalism to many parts of the globe. Earlier generations of Christians were often content to exegete the scriptures, but that is no longer enough. We must also exegete the world around us. The pages of the Bible are not the exclusive "playground" of God, for God is also at work in all parts of the world, and it is our duty as God's followers to divine truth from error, to discern the work of God from the work of humans, whose inclination is evil (Genesis 6:5). Like the children in Dr. Seuss's story, it is easy to get caught up in the situation, knowing that something is not quite right (as the fish said, "He should not be here when your mother is out!"), but failing to take decisive action until it is apparently too late. No one who is paying attention can deny that the world is in a mess, and the mess is getting worse. The indicators are there: species of plants and animals are going extinct at an unprecedented rate; the polar ice caps are melting; knowledge of nuclear weapons is spreading; the human population is booming; autocratic rulers are leading some of the most powerful nations in the world; nationalism is running rampant; wealth is concentrated more and more in the hands of a few powerful families and multinational corporations; viruses and bacteria are mutating at a faster rate than advances in medicine can (or will) keep up; wars are continuing almost unabated. Now is no time to sleep. Progressive Christians need to read the signs of the times in the light of their understanding of God's will as revealed in the Bible and throughout history. Above all, we need to heed the words of Jesus: Keep awake!