Why You Can Bet the House Jesus Won’t Return Today

Perhaps you've seen the news reports about the group predicting the world will end today, May 21.

Associated Press (OAKLAND, Calif.) – Some shut themselves inside to pray for mercy as they waited for the world's end.
Others met for tearful last lunches with their children, and prepared to leave behind homes and pets as they were swept up to heaven.
And across the globe, followers of a California preacher's long-publicized message that Judgment Day would arrive Saturday turned to the Bible, the book they believe predicts Earth's destruction on May 21.
The doomsday message has been sent far and wide via broadcasts and web sites by Harold Camping, an 89-year-old retired civil engineer who has built a multi-million-dollar nonprofit ministry based on his apocalyptic prediction.

But I am absolutely positive he's wrong. Not because I think he's a little confused about how the calendar works (I saw a TV interview with him, and he was definitely confused). Not because I interpret some Biblical prophecies differently (which I do). And not because I've figured out the errors in his mathematical calculations (I haven't bothered). I am confident he's wrong because of one simple thing that Jesus said:

So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. (Matthew 24:44)

So I'm certain Jesus will not be coming back today, precisely because the people are expecting him. Even if this was supposed to be the day, when these folk launched their ad campaign announcing the world would end today, I figure God would have just changed the date.
So instead of trying to calculate when prophecies will be fulfilled, maybe we ought to be trying to do what the prophets told us to do—take up the cause of widows and orphans and foreigners, help the poor and the weak, protect innocent blood, be honest and righteous and faithful.
Which might suggest some better uses for those multi-millions Camping has raised than buying ads to spread his fanciful calculations.

Good Friday from Below

Last night we attended a Good Friday Service, as we have for some 20 years. This year was different, but not just because I am no longer leading the service.

Since we are free now to choose where to visit a service, we considered options. We decided, rather than shopping for a service we might like, we would try to do something consistent with the mission of God which this day commemorates, the mission which has called us into the city. So we chose to attend the service at an African American church in our community.

My parents joined us and the four of us were the only whites present, which we anticipated. We were warmly welcomed by the small gathering. (Good Friday attendance is always much lower than Easter Sunday, and apparently that is true across racial and denominational lines.) The brief litany was thoughtful and challenging. The cross-centered hymns were very familiar, though the style was less so. They sang my father's favorite song, and I was feeling glad we had come.

Then the lesson began.

The guest speaker was eloquent, passionate, and provocative…very provocative. He delivered a fervent exposition of Mark's passion narrative told from the perspective of the suffering of the African American people. He spoke convincingly of the injury to the soul caused by dehumanizing words and injustices, which are just as painful as is harm to the body. Those with power can kill the soul with words before they kill the body—something he persuasively insisted that African Americans have long experienced. And so, he said, they did to Jesus—belittling and ridiculing him before they executed him. Vivid comparisons were drawn between the treatment of blacks and Jesus' unjust treatment by the "po-lice" and other manifestations of Empire, culminating with an excruciatingly explicit description of the horrific torture and lynching of Claude Neal in 1934, followed by an equally explicit narrative of the scourging and crucifixion of Jesus.

There was much about the exposition that was compelling and thought-provoking. It was a bold denunciation of Empire and oppression in any age, especially our own. But there was also much that was disturbing. The comparisons between Jesus and "the black body" were pressed pretty far—too far in my opinion. The speaker wanted us to see Jesus as a young black man tortured and murdered by Europeans and the "Negroes" collaborating with them. The analogy is not without merit—but it seemed to us to be taken too far. (Or maybe we were just uncomfortable being the only Euro-Americans present…and we were admittedly uncomfortable!) His manuscript was undoubtedly written for an African American audience, not anticipating our surprise visit. Yet his strong words did not confront his audience with their own sins, only those of others—missing the confessional Spirit which I personally feel should characterize this occasion.

Perhaps even more troubling to me, though, were several verbal shots taken at Republicans, George Bush, and religious conservatives. In a sermon decrying the dehumanizing effect of verbal attacks, I could not help but feel that he was violating his own principle in his prejudicial stereotyping of his political opponents. I wonder if the message of reconciliation was lost in this reflection on the cross—the cross which has "broken down the dividing wall of hostility," and calls us to do the same.

Still, according to Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein (Breaking Down Walls), if we are to have reconciliation we must hear each other's stories—with the pain and offense often inherent in them. From listening we can move to understanding and to mutual respect.

Following the lesson we shook hands with the speaker as we stood in line to share communion with these brothers and sisters, and I had a very affirming and hopeful conversation with the Senior Pastor after the service. So as troubling as aspects of this evening were, I am glad we were there. Perhaps this passionate sermon was not an expression of reconciliation—but hopefully our respectful presence was.

The Priority of Love

In a recent conversation on ConversantLife (http://www.conversantlife.com/life-with-god/5-questions-for-brian-mclaren), Brian McLaren was asked how he remains peaceful amid all the conflict among Christians. His answer is great. Here's a repost:

You get a lot of criticism from evangelicals, yet you seem to always maintain a very winsome and open spirit. What keeps you in such a positive and calm frame of mind when just about everybody else seems agitated for one reason or another?

I grew up in an extremely conservative and contentious fundamentalist movement or sect. It was filled with wonderful people who loved God, but the sociology of the group depended on exclusion and exclusiveness. When I "emerged" from that exclusive fundamentalism into a broader evangelicalism, I was hoping to find less contention. And I think I did. But in recent years, I think a contentious form of fundamentalism has been making a comeback and is in the process of a takeover attempt in evangelicalism. (I think similar movements are afoot in Catholicism and Mainline Protestantism too.) When I see this, I am not impressed by it, because I grew up with it and saw what it does to people.

I've learned in my own experience that it's way easier to think oneself right than to be loving. So Paul had it dead right when he said that knowledge puffs up, but love builds up, and that without love, no matter how right you are, you gain nothing but produce a lot of noise.

So really, I'm grateful for my religious heritage in fundamentalism. It taught me many things including that if you live by contention - theological swordplay, if you will - you will die by it. If you seek to argue and fight against an argumentative and combative spirit, you become what you are against. (Paul said that if you bite and devour each other, you'll consume each other, which describes our situation pretty well.) So my background forced me to seek a better way—what Paul calls the most excellent way, the way of love, the way of the Sermon on the Mount that transcends the way of the scribes and Pharisees.

Of course, I often trip up and slip back into things I am trying to grow beyond, but even that experience of failure humbles a person and makes it harder to try to put oneself in the position of an equal, much less a superior, in relation to one's fellow Christians. I guess so much comes back to Paul's words in Philippians 2, where he urges us to consider others as better than ourselves and to follow Jesus downward into servanthood. I suppose that to whatever degree I am, albeit imperfectly, able to maintain a winsome, calm, open, or positive spirit, it's because God has used the practices I explore in Naked Spirituality to form me. I still have a long, long way to go, so even though I wrote this book, I need its message as much as anyone else.