With these verses, we come to a very important juncture in the history of the early church. For years Jesus had been among the disciples – teaching, healing, guiding, comforting, and challenging them as the Word of God Incarnate. And then after his death and resurrection, he appeared to them – suddenly he was in their midst. But that arrangement involving the body of the Risen Christ could not continue. The time of the Spirit had come, and Jesus had to ascend to God.
Gathered on the Mount of Olives the disciples asked Jesus if this was the time he would restore the Kingdom of Israel. In spite of all he had taught them, they still expected God to act according to their national, ethnic, and religious interests and prejudices. And they wanted to know the details of the celestial almanac. “Is this the time, Lord, that we’ve been waiting for?” But Jesus says, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” Now, if church history is any indicator, those words have to be one of the most difficult lessons for Christians to learn. Go to any religious book store, and you will find volume after volume on when Christ will return, when God will act in a final, redemptive way, and when God’s Kingdom will come in power and glory. Some will even give you the day, month and year. This fascination people have with such matters would be laughable if it were not so pathetic – and sinful. Jesus said it was not for us to know such matters. In the Gospels he says the angels don’t know – not even he knows. Only God has that kind of knowledge. But here we are with religious authors, television preachers, cult leaders, and Bible study groups all over the world who claim to know more than Jesus! That information God chose not to share with Christ is now possessed by thousands of people, each of course with different dates, predictions, and agendas.
On this issue – one that Jesus tried to settle two thousand years ago – the church needs to be very clear. Jesus did not come to satisfy our curiosity about God’s schedule but to reveal God and lead us and the world into a right relationship with our Lord. There are many Christians today who are more interested in predictions than in the proclamation of the gospel – many who are more excited about time charts and deciphering than they are about the grace and love of God at work in our world today.
I remember when I was teaching an introductory course in New Testament a very excited student approaching me before class. “Have you heard?” “Heard what?” I said. She looked at me as though I were the most misinformed person on earth. “What’s happening in the Holy Land! The vultures are laying four times the number of eggs they usually do. Isn’t it wonderful?” Not being a great fan of buzzards, I said, “Why would that be wonderful?” Again, she looked at me as though I were an imbecile. “They’re getting ready for Armageddon! The world is going to come to an end, Jesus is going to return and takes all us Christians (by then I’m sure she thought I would not qualify for such a “Beam me up, Scotty” event), and everyone else is going to hell.” Needless to say, I was flabbergasted. That was thirty-nine years ago, and as far as I know, there has not been a proliferation of vultures in the Middle East. I would suggest that this student had fallen victim to some actual “fake news” courtesy of the lunatic branch of the church.
To such tommyrot Jesus says, “It’s not for you to know such things. You shouldn’t be preoccupied with such matters. There is something more important than all that. The Holy Spirit is coming on you and you will receive power to be my witnesses all over the world.” In other words, your calling is proclamation, not prediction–mission, not prognostication.”
The one characteristic I have noticed about those who are obsessed with the end time is that they are largely spectators in their faith. They want to sit on their blessed assurances and watch the world go by (or better yet, watch it go straight to hell). This obsession gives them the distance they desire to keep from living the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s easier to look at hunger, war, racism, violence, immorality, abuse and alienation and say, “See, these are all signs of the end,” than it is to offer oneself in Jesus’ name for the healing and reconciliation of this world. Soon after I endured the student, fixated on buzzards, an English professor whose office was across from mine told me about a student we both had in class. He had failed to turn in a paper Jeanette had assigned. When she asked him about not completing his assignment, he said there was no need to write the paper because Jesus was coming back to earth that semester. I loved Jeanette’s response; “Well, Joe, you may be correct. But if he does come back, I want you to be able to speak perfect English to the Lord. So you WILL write the paper.”
I don’t know if this world will end this year or in a million years, and I am not going to waste two shakes of a lamb’s tail thinking about it, much less being obsessed with dates and times. (In fact, along with many other Biblical scholars I think the language in the Bible about the world coming to an end was apocalyptic language used metaphorically. The writers of such language and Jesus never meant the end of the space-time universe but the end of Temple Judaism and the destruction of Jerusalem. Such events would be the end of that world. But making the case for that interpretation would take another article.) Regardless of what may or may not happen, what I want to do is live faithfully right now as a follower of Jesus – to reach out with his love and grace to a hurting and dying world. I want to be his witness in my time and space and trust God with my destiny and that of this creation. From what I can tell, there is no prize waiting for the one who comes closest to guessing the end. The Kingdom of God is not a celestial lottery or cosmic pool in which we are all invited to guess the day and hour of the end. The question I expect to be asked is whether I have followed Jesus, not how close I came to guessing the end.
After Jesus told the disciples that the Holy Spirit was coming upon them and they were to be his witnesses all over the world, he ascended into heaven. And while the disciples were gazing into the sky, two angels appeared (apparently it took two to get their attention) and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
And here we see the second error the church has been tempted to make over the centuries – gazing into the heavens instead of pursuing their mission as the Body of Christ. The angels said that Jesus would return to earth. Don’t worry about that. Instead, keep the focus where it should be: on the mission Jesus gave you as you help fulfill God’s redemptive presence on earth. See Matthew 28: 16-20 if you need a reminder of that Great Commission. (Stay tuned for another sermon on what was meant by Jesus returning to earth. Its meaning was not what I was taught as a child and not what many conservative Christians assume today.)
The Roman Empire was filled with religions and cults, philosophies and superstitions. And many of these had one thing in common: they focused on escape from this world. The mystery religions permeating that civilization taught that the goal of this life was to depart this earth, leave the body behind, and pass from one station to another through the spiritual spheres until one reached heaven. Many of these cults maintained that there was secret knowledge – passwords that of course only their religion knew, but which could be shared with initiates. And if you knew those words – if you had the inside scoop on those mysteries, then your destiny in the hereafter was assured.
So much religion in the world sees salvation in this way. Even Christianity has been distorted by some circles so that the essence of the faith is understood to be gaining a first-class ticket to heaven, leaving this earth and the physical realm behind to stew in its own consequences.
But no authentic reading of the Scriptures will allow for this heresy. Consider these passages which validate God’s concern for the healing and redemption of this earth.
- “For God so loved the world” John 3 (The Greek word used for world is cosmos.)
- “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” John 1 (We cannot begin to appreciate how radical and shocking those words would have been to many in the ancient Roman Empire. In their religions, salvation was defined as the soul leaving the flesh and joining the spirit realm.)
- “God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self” II Corinthians 5
- “For in Jesus all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross” Colossians 1
- “Creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” Romans 8
- The goal of salvation according to Paul in I Corinthians 15 is for God to “be all in all.” (What is there about “all” that too many of us persistently and stubbornly don’t get?)
- Even that book so terribly used and abused – the Book of Revelation – ends with a transformed heaven and earth and the healing of the nations and the redemption of the resources of this earth. And the movement is not from earth to heaven but from heaven to earth. Read Revelation 21:1-4 if you don’t believe me.
- The Lord’s Prayer has these words: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Frequently I would remind parishioners who were obsessed with heaven that “heaven is in good hands. It’s earth that needs attention.”)
The direction of the gospel is not from earth to heaven. The goal is not to rescue us from this world and transplant us into another. The direction of the gospel is from heaven to earth. The church’s insistence on the truth and importance of the incarnation (the Word became flesh) and the resurrection of the body (not the rescue of the soul from the body or from the earth) reveals the “this world” orientation of the gospel. The goal is for God to be all in all “ruling” in love and peace over a redeemed creation. I love Clarence Jordan’s comment on the essence of the gospel: “The essence of the gospel is the presence of the Lord God Almighty on this earth. He is not in his heaven with all well on earth. He is on this earth, and all hell’s broken loose!”
Those who think the direction of the gospel is from earth to heaven have one thing in common with those who are obsessed with when the Lord will return. They are about as useful as a square wheel when it comes to living the gospel. Both groups have missed the point all together – that God is in Christ reconciling the world unto God’s self – that the Word has become flesh – that the Spirit is at work in this world – and the only legitimate question for us to ask is, “Are we faithful witnesses to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ – a gospel which was firmly planted in time and space as Jesus fed the hungry, healed the sick, raised the dead, and proclaimed Good News to the poor?”
May God save us from focusing on the trivial, the esoteric, and the speculative while the Spirit waits for us to embrace the world with the love of Christ. Instead, may the faith we live be a concrete, tangible expression of what we hope and pray for Sunday after Sunday: “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
