Monday, February 5 - Matthew 24:1-28
Good Cold Day, Everyone!
I hope many of you are enjoying a day with kids home from school, hot chocolate, etc. I couldn't help but post this appropriate "Children's Letters to God" entry (thanks to Kent & Deedee for reminding me of it!). However, not only appropriate to the cold day and season, this letter also in a way connects with some general disdain for God's timing, a timing that is the topic of our Daily Life text today.
It is best estimated that this Matthew 24 teaching occurs on Tuesday of holy week. Jesus is within 72 hours of making the greatest act of compassion in the history of humanity. Along the way, certainly welling with this compassion, he takes some time leaving the temple area to teach and prepare his followers for the hard realities that will preclude the end of days. "The end is near" is his summary warning at the conclusion of today's reading (v.28).
Of course, Jesus' certain prediction that the last days will include war, famine, earthquakes, persecution, spiritual mutiny, deception, sacrilege, panic and calamity -- is plainly unpleasant. But are his words / is his message "the end is near" also un-compassionate?! Or rather, is it not precisely compassion that urges Jesus to warn us and all humanity of these certainties to come, and by faith in him be prepared to avoid? Is there not also hope held out: (v.13) "the one who endures to the end will be saved"? (It is my sense that these words both urge on present believers to stay true in difficult times now, and also urge those who will believe after Jesus' rapture to cling to him during the much darker days of tribulation.)
But the point I am attempting to make, and felt much as I read and discussed this scripture with my family this morning, is that it is the love of Jesus that says to us and all, "the end is near". Many who reject him hear these words hatefully. And too often, some in the Church have spoken them hatefully. I can't get out of my mind the two-way derision I've witnessed mulitiple times at the tail end of the Rose Bowl parade. First, there were several purporting to represent God and his Word, wearing sandwich signs declaring on one side a "the end is near" kind of message, and on the other side a "God hates the sinner"-toned message. The demeanor and voice of the messenger confirmed this, spewing anger if not hatred. And, many in the crowd were only too pleased to reply in derisive kind, shouting down the 'prophet', mocking and tossing parade trash in their direction. I can yet picture parents not restraining their children from chasing after these men, the kids with their cans of "Silly String" bought for parade revelry now turned into a kind of modern form of 'tar & feathering' of these ones who thought themselves representing God with "the end is near" message.
I was clunked on the worldview-head yesterday while watching the Superbowl commercials (and occassionally the game!), to see how POORLY God's people must have portrayed the heart of "the end is near" message! Did you notice the Coke commercial where the nasty SIM character drinks a Coke, and then transformed goes about changing all that's bad to good in his world (see at http://motionographer.com/media/coke_nexus.mov)? He walks down the street correcting wrongs, rescueing a woman from a purse-snatcher, giving his coat to a homeless man, etc. And, then toward the end of the commercial, he encounters people wearing the sandwich sign "the end is near", and he twirls around their signs (and ostensibly their minds), and when they stop spinning, their signs now read not the line from Matthew but from the preferred (Bay City Rollers?) prophets: "give a little love"!
Is that what people hear us saying?!! To them, is "the end is near" a message of hate, and anything but hope and compassion? Does the world perceive we think we're simply right while they are damned? Have they missed / have we missed conveying that the love of Jesus moves us to care for them and to warn them from death and guide them toward life?
Does the world need to know the heart of "the end is near", or does the world just need a Coke?
PPaul
1 comment:
I am disappointed that no one has commented on this one. Serioulsy, "the end is near" has bantered around for so long. It has shown up in a bazillion political and not so political cartoons. How do people deal with the words "the end is near". I think there is a lot of nervous laughter and then there is silence. Why do we go to all those catastrophe movies or the ones where there is a prediction of ultimate destruction of the earth or humanity by cataclysmic forces of nature or alien invassions? We like the thrill of the idea of it and the fear it sets in us. In the movies, everything turns out OK. In the War of Worlds, the aliens are destroyed because they catch a earthly virus they cannot fight. Right! Like that is going to happen, just in time before they wipe out everyone.
Here is my thinking-- serious people who read the Bible and know scripture know that an end is predicted. We are not completely sure what this will look like and we cannot predict when. However, Jesus attempts to give us some clues. More descriptive ( and confusing)predictions are also found in the Book of Revelation. Are we witnessing them now? Well lets see. Israel has been rebuilt into a country. The earth can communicate in a second with information because of our TV broadcasting capacitiy and now our internet. We can watch each other on Google earth maps. We can know about just about anything in this world within minutes of it happening. Meantime, we have a huge nation called China and its fun cousin North Korea both of which have no God. Just as dangerous, we have Islamic nations being overpowered by something called Hesbula which has vowed a jihad against-- guess who-- Christians and Jews. Then there is the take over of Europe-a previous icon of Christianity- which no longer is such, by either no belief or, again, Muslims. Recent revelations by a BBC documentary shows that the Mosques thought to be conservative Mosques in the UK are instead teaming with extremist preaching and recruitment of young men in their this jihadist thinking. Should we be concerned? We are backed into a corner in Iraq with a possible civil war. If we stay, do we waste more young American lives? But if we leave, how fast will everything collapse in the middle east and how soon will Israel be threatened by Arab nations? All bets are up for grabs. Then there is global warming. We are literally killing the place God gave us to live on. And this is new. This is not like anything any generation has had to face. This is the catastrophic movie you do not want to be in. All of this sounds pretty gloomy. So, If I say the "end is near" am I lacking compassion or am I stating fact. Is what was predicted more real now then it was 100 years ago or 50 years ago or how about even 5 years ago. Think about how much has changed in that span of time: internationally, technologically and scientifically when it comes to our planet.
Maybe this is our last chance to get right with God. Maybe he is planting the warning signs Jesus talked about. My question is are we listening any better now then they were listening to Jesus in his last days. What are your thoughts?
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