thesoulpurposedotorg

The first Sunday of Advent is traditionally Hope Sunday. The first candle on the Advent Wreath is lit and readings and prayers encourage us to hope for the return of Christ. I was raised a dispensationalist Christian in a loving but rigid Bible church. I had a Schofield Bible with notes to explain this point of view in plain King James English. When other translations began to be published they were feared and loudly proclaimed to be the work of the devil. It seems the dispensational reading of end times didn’t work quite so well in the the more accurate translations of older texts so recently discovered in the Dead Sea scrolls or the Nag Hamadi fragments. I have read dozens of books on the end of time and commentaries on the book of Revelation. All of which caused me to become quite cynical about waiting for the second coming of Jesus, thoughts I kept completely to myself for decades. I remember a recent Goshen College graduate who attended a Bible study I was leading back in 1979 asking me, “Who else but Jesus is allowed to be 2000 years late for dinner?” I was shocked and mortified by his question but it certainly stuck with me. I had all the fancy words learned in seminary, the concept of “already but not yet” view of the Kingdom of God. Intellectually, this has never worked and taking it all on faith began to seem a little silly.

When I dared to research the origins of the end of times theologies (there are many) I began to see that this concept of waiting for the Savior to take us away from all of this and to punish all the bad guys to be quite dangerous and not much cause for hope. Even the first century Christians were not at all sure that was what Jesus meant. So what is the basis of hope for the coming of Christ Jesus in these times? He clearly said that heaven and earth would pass away but his word would not. (Matthew 5:18, 24:35, Mark 13:31, Luke 21:33)

I believe that one day we will understand but in the meantime, the only way we should concern ourselves with the second coming of Christ is to allow Christ to be fulfilled in our lives here and now. Many of the earliest Christians understood the meaning of the second coming in this way – The Second Coming of Christ is within our own lives as we become one with Christ in the same way Christ is one with God. In other words, we are to BE Christ in the lives we live here and now. That is so much harder than waiting for a savior to rescue us from the pain of this life.
Today I have tried to be hope to the people I encountered. The young cashier with bright blue highlights in her hair and piercings in her brow that didn’t want to look me in the eye; the lonely woman with so many disabilities; the man in the truck who almost ran me off the road; the person who pumped gas for me (yes, we actually have two gas stations here that do that!)…all these people are Christ coming to me for me to reflect hope back to them. There is a sanskrit word for this way of thinking: namaste – “the Divine in me greets the Divine in you.” This is for me the hope of the coming of Christ, Emmanuel, God with us.