Revelation. Apocalypse. Open Our Eyes
Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.
We remember his death.
We proclaim his resurrection.
We await his coming in glory.
We celebrate his death and resurrection,
as we await the day of his coming.
We praise you, we bless you,
we give thanks to you,
and we pray to you, Lord our God.
We celebrate his death and resurrection,
as we await the day of his coming.
We praise you, we bless you,
we give thanks to you,
and we pray to you, Lord our God.
The Memorial Acclamation is new to our worship in the recent generation, though not to Eastern liturgy. Hatchett says, undoubtedly correct as ever with Marion, that it's an expansion of 1st Corinthians 11:26, "For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come." The Memorial Acclamation came as a surprise to me when we began using the new BCP after its approval by General Convention in 1976, a surprise then and still not appreciated as being a prominent theological assertion by Christ's Church that is more properly concerned about hungry children than an eternally elusive Second Coming.
With liturgical renewal and reform of the twentieth century, the Western Church in inserting The Memorial Acclamation in the liturgy raised the ante about the Second Coming of Christ. As a one-time amateur astronomer, and while cosmologists peer deeper, farther, older into the heavens and calculate billions upon billions of years, eons, until the big bang slows and cools and fizzles out, and the universe freezes absolutely and space and time cease to be, I see the Church reintroducing the eschatological fever of Saint Paul and the Church’s first generation, even ascribed to Jesus by many scholars as well as in his discourse that we call "The Little Apocalypse" (Mk 13), Mark's follow-on to the 70 AD destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. In the New Testament age many believed that the End Time was imminent and that to come through it saved one had to get under the One Lord, the God of Israel; which was precisely Paul’s agenda; when Christ would return to reign.
It is an intriguing doctrine that each of us may understand in his/her own way; for the most part modernists just let it be as the universe continues to expand, while in every generation, Apocalypse fearers watch for The Beast, and spot the anti-Christ in every nook of evil, and point out who will be thrown into the lake of fire (never themselves) when "Christ will come again."
With liturgical renewal and reform of the twentieth century, the Western Church in inserting The Memorial Acclamation in the liturgy raised the ante about the Second Coming of Christ. As a one-time amateur astronomer, and while cosmologists peer deeper, farther, older into the heavens and calculate billions upon billions of years, eons, until the big bang slows and cools and fizzles out, and the universe freezes absolutely and space and time cease to be, I see the Church reintroducing the eschatological fever of Saint Paul and the Church’s first generation, even ascribed to Jesus by many scholars as well as in his discourse that we call "The Little Apocalypse" (Mk 13), Mark's follow-on to the 70 AD destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. In the New Testament age many believed that the End Time was imminent and that to come through it saved one had to get under the One Lord, the God of Israel; which was precisely Paul’s agenda; when Christ would return to reign.
It is an intriguing doctrine that each of us may understand in his/her own way; for the most part modernists just let it be as the universe continues to expand, while in every generation, Apocalypse fearers watch for The Beast, and spot the anti-Christ in every nook of evil, and point out who will be thrown into the lake of fire (never themselves) when "Christ will come again."
Do I believe Christ will come again? It's not about what I believe as a postmodern and progressive Christian, it's not about what I believe or what you believe. The Second Coming is orthodox Christian doctrine. It’s in the liturgy now, and more anciently it’s in the Creeds, which I freely say, freely confess, freely accept, let it be. As an Anglican Christian, I am not required to clench my eyes shut and my fists tight and say fervently, “I believe that.” It isn’t something that concerns me as it concerned Paul as imminent, and as it concerned early Church Fathers until generations passed and they had to adjust Church theology and practice to the inexorable obvious that the sun will set tonight and rise again tomorrow morning and life will go on without the stars raining down. Will Christ come again? Whatever, whenever, or however, for me to get exercised about it is meddling with the will of God a la Pat Robertson and Harold Camping. The Church wants to proclaim The Mystery of Faith, fine, I’m in. Beyond that it’s “Whatever You Say, Lord.” As Jesus said, the time is not ours to know.
In any event, two possibilities have long occured to me, again as a one-time astronomy enthusiast watching galaxies fade into the heavens and contemplating the possibilities that we are not universe but multiverse or multiverses. And as J. B. Phillips wrote years ago, our God is too small.
At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.
By your will they were created and have their being.
In any event, two possibilities have long occured to me, again as a one-time astronomy enthusiast watching galaxies fade into the heavens and contemplating the possibilities that we are not universe but multiverse or multiverses. And as J. B. Phillips wrote years ago, our God is too small.
At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.
By your will they were created and have their being.
Two possibilities occur.
The first is a Desolating Horror. An inner voice constantly tells me that He has already come again, and again and again. He was the little boy Eli Wiesel wrote about, the innocent child he witnessed swinging and twitching on the gallows that Night of the Holocaust. He was one of the children murdered in My Lai. He was shot to death late last year in a classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He was the toddler who was murdered in Georgia last month as his mother took him for a stroll. He died here in Panama City the other day after being attacked by vicious dogs. Someone was texting and driving and knocked him off his motorcycle, killing him instantly. He is every innocent child who has died in Afghanistan, every little one who will die before the madman’s war in Korea is over. The mystery of faith? There is no mystery, Christ is here. To look piously to some future Second Coming when Christ is present in every hungry child who breathes the breath of God is obscene, yea nigh unto blasphemy. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ has come again and we missed it.
As a first line of defense against this possibility, will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? I must, I will with God's help. To any extent I do not keep my baptismal covenant, finding Jesus Christ in every child He loves, I am not walking the Way of the Cross, but surging in the crowd on the way back to Calvary again with my hammer and a handful of nails.
Secondly, it occurs to me that instead of universal cosmic cataclysm, the Second Coming is a very personal event. One afternoon years ago, a priest friend had a heart attack. Betts was forty-seven or forty-eight years old. We were stunned. Immediately upon receiving news that he had died, I telephoned his wife. She related the events of the evening. He had collapsed while they were at their beach house and had been rushed to the ER, where he had been taken into the back. A little while later the physician, a friend, came out and said, “Margaret, Jesus came and took Betts home.” It was as overwhelming a statement as I have ever heard, thinking about it today nearly thirty years later still bowls me over.
More and above, what the doctor said was theologically profound, absolutely profound. That doctor said succinctly what I hope the Second Coming may be: Jesus will come and take me home. I don’t need to worry about the fantastical horrors of the Revelation to John. That was John’s vision, John’s dream against the nightmares of his day; it isn’t mine, it isn’t my dream or my vision. It does not express my faith in Jesus Christ my Loving Lord any more than it did for Martin Luther five hundred years ago. And it emphatically does not fit with my observation of the ways of God or the nature of God’s creation, for God is Love.
Jesus will come and take me home, and the Apocalypse of John is not the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Praying that the Desolating Horror is not so but fearing that it is, I nevertheless look for Christ to come again. Jesus will come and take me home just as He did Betts. And Bill. And Norman. And William Hall. And ...
Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again? Whenever. Meantime,
Lord God of our Fathers: God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: Open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us.
Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again? Whenever. Meantime,
Lord God of our Fathers: God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: Open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us.
T+