Bishop David Kendall

ON THE RAPTURE THAT WASN'T

On Saturday, May 21, Harold Camping and followers were wrong.  They predicted that Jesus would “rapture” his people out of this world by day’s end.  It was at least the second time they were wrong in this way.  The story of their anticipation moved from front page in the morning to page 43 by nightfall.  Once again, Christ-followers put on display their ability to miss the point—totally.  More about that in a bit.

On several counts, however, I admire our friends.  First, they “knew” what they were about.  Though wrong—oh so wrong—still they rigorously pursued the implications of their conviction in truly radical ways.  They matched their understanding of urgent truth with appropriate, unqualified action.  I mean, assuming they were right, they did things that made sense—liquidated assets and used them to share their passion; suspended most features of a life soon to be over; and relativized everything in light of the good news they embraced with their all.  And, they didn’t care what nay-sayers had to say.  No possession, relationship, comfort, or preference could deter them from pursuing the path God had set before them.  As a matter of fact, I must confess, that the kinds of things they did (no doubt about this—they are on tape and a matter of public record) and the motivation that drove them remind me of the earliest followers of Christ who eventually turned their world “right-side-up!”

This reminder haunts me with a question: what’s our excuse?  By “our” I speak particularly to and for one segment of Christ-followers, with a sense that others might benefit from considering the question as well.  Seriously, what’s our excuse for passionless following after Jesus, and for discipleship that, practically speaking, stalled after we filled in the last blank on the last page of the last little “After You Believe” booklet we studied after “saying the prayer?”  What’s our excuse when we have to think long and hard to recall the last thing we did, stand we took, place we went … that felt “radical” or “sacrificial?”   We say with enthusiasm and fervor, especially if we think some godless people or group or government seek to deny us, that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.  But what’s our excuse for a following that exhausts itself on an hour or two per week meeting with others who are just like we are, content with a life-style that is far more supportive of us and ours than the priorities Jesus makes so clear that so few really argue about them, resulting in so many forgetting about them entirely?  “Things” like the needs of the poor and Jesus’ relentless call to share (both in deed and word) with the most broken, enslaved, hopeless and helpless right around us.  If I don’t stop, someone will think I’m just ranting, when I aim rather for confessing that could be prelude to repenting.

Our friends missed the point, Big Time, but their fault lies not in their devotion to Jesus and willingness to lay it all on the line for him.  To that devotion and willingness, I say, “Yes!  It surely reflects the radical responses the gospel merits.”

But our friends missed the point—Big Time.  Not least, they got the direction that the gospel moves totally wrong, and in this they are hardly alone.  They embrace the hope that HOPE draws them “out of this world,” that God has given up (perhaps even by implication, that God has been defeated here), and now has relocated the salvation of the world somewhere out of the world.  It is as though the best God can do is snatch a remnant out of the battle and then conduct a scorched earth conclusion to the war.  Given the whole biblical story that reveals, celebrates and anticipates the whole gospel for the whole world and person, they missed the point and misdirect the good news of Jesus by 180 degrees.

In fact, rather than “rapture,” a number of other R-Words can get us back on track.  Here are a few.

Rupture: The present age and its sway over all God made has been penetrated with saving and judging consequence.  The fabric of the way things are has been ripped and has begun unraveling until only shreds will remain.  Grace and truth and life and light have penetrated in a Person and His Way, against which the present order will have no defense at the last!

Reclaim: The Creator God has never given up on what God made originally, nor on the things and persons who inhabit the world.  For reasons we cannot figure totally, alien and hostile powers have claimed squatters-rights in a world not their own.  That world God reclaims as rightfully his.

Repair: The once very good world has been broken and remains in profound disrepair.  The squatters and their allies have trashed everything, to the near ruin of all.  But only near ruin.  Renewal and restoration have begun.  Repair and renovation are underway.  The squatters are on the run, and many of their allies will reconsider their alliance with them.

Re-creation: The once very good world will be very good once again.  No, better than very good.  More like new, as in re-birthed or regenerated or re-created.  The hope of the whole gospel leads to new heavens and a new earth.  The old—even at its best—will turn out a mere shadow of the New, in just the way that the seed is to the rose, and the limp, broken Good-Friday corpse is to the re-animated, re-invigorated, resurrected body of our Easter-Lord.

Now, imagine if our devotion to all Jesus has and will accomplish and our willingness to lay it all on the line in “the right direction” matched those of our disappointed friends!

THE CHURCH--LIKE A ROAD WRECK!

We were in a hurry—on the way to church, actually.  As I passed the late model Chevy Suburban, my wife called out, “step on it!”  The Suburban had begun to move into our lane.  The other driver never saw us, or the Semi-truck just moving into her blind spot.  In the next moments we watched as the Suburban slowed and then turned directly into the path of the truck.  Apparently the driver thought she could make a quick U-turn after missing her exit.  You can imagine the force of the impact as Semi slammed into Suburban at full highway speed.   Instantly the driver’s side of the Suburban was crushed and dragged 200 feet, leaving behind rear axle and wheels.

 We stopped, called 911, and ran to offer what help we could.  Soon others joined us—a retired couple headed home from vacation, an African American truck-driver who had just lost a brother in a similar accident, and several others.

Unbelievably, we found three persons inside alive but seriously injured.  A mother, her daughter, and a friend clung to life.  When the accident occurred they were on the way to church.  Now the mother called out to Jesus for help.  I told her I was a pastor and prayed for them.  In time the highway patrol and emergency squad arrived.  Eventually all three were OK.

As I reflected on the accident and our opportunity to help the injured there came new insight on the church Jesus calls us to be.

We who witnessed the wreck, along with others who stopped to help, became a kind of community.  A community of grace, in fact.  We shared a deep awareness that mere seconds of travel separated us from the victims of the crash.  Yes, mistakes had been made, but they were honest, human mistakes, the kind we all make.  Though not expressed explicitly at the scene, gratitude for mercy welled up in our hearts and knit us together.

Empathy and compassion also characterized our newly formed community of grace.  Our hearts broke as we heard the little girl scream in pain, her mother call out to Jesus, and their friend moan in and out of consciousness.  Then, our broken-heartedness mobilized us—whatever we could do, we did.  We joined the mother in calling out to Jesus, we assured the little girl that help would soon come and, to minimize injury, we urged her not to move.  We swabbed cool water on the suffering faces, directed traffic, and assisted the experts when they arrived.  Though we could not offer what the injured would ultimately need, we prepared the way for the help that would come.  Until then our ministering presence signaled hope and inspired confidence.

The community of grace we became “by accident” joined us with people we would never otherwise even know, much less share important life experiences.  But the emergency at hand made our differences irrelevant—whether of race, culture, socio-economic status, or religious affiliation.  What drew us together were the incredible gift of travel-mercy that had spared us—this time—and the compelling need of those whose injuries beckoned our attention.  As different as we were, in those moments we shared far deeper bonds of fellowship with each other than with the many people who passed by us, who looked, and probably were, very much like us.  The presence of compelling and ultimate human need, combined with the ability to help, had forged a community that transcended the external and superficial qualities of most human associations. Yes, a community of grace!

Within the community created by the accident, we embraced new priorities for our lives.  Every one of us had things to do that day.  We were not just out for a Sunday drive.  We had places to go and appointments to keep.  No doubt some items on our different agenda seemed pressing, even urgent.  But suddenly we were caught up in a new agenda, so important and urgent that we forgot for a time all the other things we had to do.  And when it occurred to us what we were missing, it was OK.  The work at hand was simply too important.  Other things would wait.  Deep down we knew we’d never miss what we had missed.  Later I also realized that, in those intense moments of community-response to the needy, none of my personal cares and concerns, and none of my worries, invaded conscious thought.

Since that day I’ve become convinced that the church Jesus creates by His grace, the church He longs for us to be, and the church that, at some level, we long to be as well, is like "a road wreck!”  Let me explain.

None of us has escaped a collision with sin and evil, less obvious but far more devastating than the worst auto wreck.  If we’ve been “saved” it’s because Another stopped along the way to offer assistance—supremely costly assistance.  And, He gathers us to Himself, commissioning us to go and do for others as He has done for us.  For some of us, however, doing as Jesus does seems an impossible dream.  So, we either give up in despair or grit our teeth and determine just to “do it,” even if it kills us.  But this is not the way of Jesus.

No, Jesus would draw us into a community of grace—much like we experienced at the crash sight.  Indeed, we constantly encounter such “crash sights,” scenes of heart wrenching human wreckage, minus the auto.  Truly we do encounter them, if only we could see and understand as Jesus does.

The church, fashioned into a true community of grace, is a people who see and understand in Jesus’ way.  Everywhere they go they encounter the most terrible scenes of spiritual, moral, and physical wreckage.  Gratitude wells up within them as they recognize that generous travel mercy has spared them similar woe.  Nothing but mercy!  They shudder to think what could have been and embrace one another in joyful celebration.

Celebration flows into compassionate response.  Sometimes we actually feel the pain of those pinned into the tangled human wreckage.  We mobilize, doing whatever gifts and opportunities allow.  We signal the greater Help He offers and prepare for the arrival of saving intervention.

I say “we” do such things, a strange assortment of people drawn together by common mercy, and the joy it supplies.  We laugh at the sheer folly of our fellowship.  Who could have imagined us being friends, and here we are—family!

Somehow simply being His, knowing His mercy, understanding how desperately the wrecked and wretched need His help, and being able to help them receive it—draw us together in ways hard to describe, but still profoundly real.

In our best moments, nothing matters more than being this kind of people, engaged in this kind of roadside assistance along life’s way.  We’re busy people with much to claim our time and energy, but just a glance at a crash sight captures our attention and calls us to passionate response.  In fact, nothing in life compares with the delight of being a community of grace that celebrates and shares His help with those in need.

The three persons injured that day were on their way to church when the accident occurred.  What a powerful metaphor this is!  Seeking the place and people of God, they were waylaid by a life-threatening collision.  The accident—attributable in part to choices they made—kept them from their destination.

How many others are like them—on their way to the place and the people, perhaps without really knowing it?  Then, some harsh reality of life slams into them leaving them to suffer and die “on the way to church.”

But what a wonder!  The Lord of the church sends His people here and there, and inevitably they happen upon the wreckage.  The victims of the accident never made it to the church.  But the church made it to them!  Yes, that’s the church Jesus longs for us to be.

 

 

 

OSAMA BIN LADEN IS ALIVE!

                                                                                                                        

That is not true, of course.  But what if it were?  Imagine it.  A few days after that fatal Sunday, just a couple days after his corpse was respectfully “buried at sea,” according to good Muslim practice, a small coastal town was startled when several young men reported that at dawn a man had washed ashore.  At first they assumed he was dead, but then suddenly he groaned once or twice, turned over, coughed the sea water from his lungs, sat up and said, “Salem!”  They blinked, looked at each other, and then at him again.  His face was disfigured with a massive scar, but they recognized him still.  This … was … Bin Laden!

Their coastal town was Muslim, of course, but most were only culturally Muslim.  A few of the young men, however, had followed this folk hero and their imaginations had been fired up by his defiant stance against the corrupt West, his courageous acts of holy war against the aggressors, and the thought that his word and promises were true—that a time was coming when Islam would overtake the world, that the wrongs of the centuries perpetrated against Allah’s most faithful would be made right, that a paradise of heavenly and sensual delight awaited those who would defend the honor of Allah and pursue his will to cleanse the world of the enemies of the truth!  And, now, with the incontrovertible proof that not even the mightiest nation on earth, the best trained, the most sophisticated war-machine in the world’s history, could stop their hero—perhaps the time he promised was actually now!

Imagine how news of the storied martyr’s survival, no his absolute triumph over the corrupt aggressors, the usurpers of the Prophet’s and Allah’s honor, would spread.  Imagine how quickly this “gospel” would go viral.  Imagine the breath of new life and hope that would surge throughout the network of Al-Qaida in every part of the world.  Envision the eagerness and joy with which young people would find their life’s purpose and goal in joining this movement.  Picture how even the ultimate sacrifice would become easy for them to make—as it was with their Martyred Hero whom not even death could stop, so it will be for them.  As he promised, paradise awaited.  Their blood, along with the blood of all they took with them, would surely only generate more followers and hasten the Day at last.

imagine how long it would take for the movement to be found everywhere—emboldened, hopefully confident, doing whatever it took to express the truth, to embody it, to welcome all who will embrace it, and to be Allah’s instrument of judgment against all who won’t.  Imagine how long before some would say, “They have turned the world upside down!” 

Of course, it’s not true.  Osama Bin Laden is dead and will stay dead.

But, just imagine!