An empty 'maranatha'

It's Sunday evening. My family is gathered around the dinner table as we have every Easter for the past fourteen years. There, in the center of the table, a wine glass stands on a saucer next to a bottle of wine.

“How much joy have we had this year?” I ask, and fill the wine a quarter of the way. “This much?”

My girls know the drill. “More than that!” they answer, and I fill it halfway to the top. “This much?” I ask.

“More than that!” I pour again. Three-quarters. “This much?”

“More than that!” Wine flows, and a moment later wine fills the cup past the rim and splashes joyously to the saucer below. We have friends. We have a home. We have one another. Middle Daughter has found a passion for the stage that will carry her well into adulthood. Oldest Daughter is in the home stretch of her junior year and thinking about college. For Youngest Daughter, every day is a new adventure, every moment a treasure to unpack. Life overflows with joy, and with love.

After we have measured our joy but before we eat the meal, comes what I am finding is the hardest part of Easter. My own wine glass in hand, I turn to Youngest.

“Before Jesus ascended into heaven, he told us he would return one day,” I tell her. “Open the door and invite him in.” I quickly add: “Don't let the dog out.”

Youngest knows the routine by now. She opens the kitchen door and peers out into the back yard. “Maranatha,” she calls. “Come, Lord Jesus.”

There is a pause. Jesus doesn't come. “Maybe next year,” I say. Mr. Godot told me to tell you he won't come this evening, but surely tomorrow. 

It's been about two thousand years. How long are these Last Days supposed to last, anyway?

I had my religious awakening in 1988, about six weeks after high school graduation. While I was away at college I soon found myself drawn to an Assemblies of God church off campus. Services there were lively and boisterous, a marked departure from the staid Presbyterianism I had grown up in. There was an immediacy about worship there that I had never felt before, a sense that we were in the very presence of God and not just admiring him from a distance.

With that immediacy also came an urgency. Christ could return any day. The modern nation of Israel had formed in 1948, an event that to many evangelicals fulfilled key biblical prophecy in heralding the Second Coming. Adding to that urgency were the dramatic shifts in the popular zeitgeist and in geopolitical power over the course of that one decade.

For much of the 1980s the entire nation had lived under the cloud of nuclear war. Made-for-TV movies like “The Day After” in 1983 and “Countdown to Looking Glass” in 1984 carried the fear right into our living rooms. Conflicts like the military downing of a Korean Air Lines flight in September 1983 set the nation's teeth on edge. Even the pop culture reflected this fear, with songs like "99 Red Balloons" and "It's a Mistake" imagining nuclear war breaking out over a simple misunderstanding. (As it nearly did.)

Then in the late 1980s, reforms like glasnost and perestroika led to the breakup of the Soviet Union. One by one the Baltic republics declared their independence and established democratic governments. The Berlin wall came down, and suddenly there were talks of reunifying the two Germanys for the first time since World War II.

With that much change afoot, it couldn't help but feel that Judgment Day was coming. And when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, armchair interest in biblical prophecy shot up in a way it hadn't since Hal Lindsey had published “The Late Great Planet Earth” in 1970 and Christian moviemakers started producing B-movies like “A Thief in the Night.” Jesus was coming! No one knows the day or the hour, but still it had to be soon. It had to be.

Except Jesus didn't return. In fact it's been 68 years since the founding of Israel, an event so significant that Edgar Whisenant once wrote a popular book, “88 Reasons Why the Rapture will be in 1988,” prompted by that event. (Spoiler: It didn't happen.) Whisenant later predicted the return of Christ in 1989, 1993 and 1994 as well. Jesus didn't return then either.

'And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come.' — Matthew 24:14

This has been going on for a while. The church fathers were so convinced that the Parousia was coming within their lifetimes that the Bible contains apostolic letters reassuring people not to panic that they were dying of old age before Christ's return. He's coming, Peter says. Just be patient. It's been about 1,980 years. How patient do we have to be?

I don't have a good answer for that. I'd love it if I could find a neat and tidy conclusion that makes the interminable wait seem worthwhile. The gospels tell us that Jesus is going to return, and it's in the creeds that we recite; but year after year keeps going by. We keep waiting, and he keeps not returning.

Why do we do this? Is it because the Second Coming is supposed to be such a major event? At the Parousia, that wondrous appearing of Jesus, we're told that all will be made right. Fish once more will team in rivers and streams whose waters will be restored, and herds of buffalo will stampede across the plains again. The wicked will no longer feed off the anger in the land and turn us against one another, and the arrogant will no longer walk in the halls of power.

When Christ comes, we'll recognize the dignity of one another without pause or exception. We'll recognize the wrongs we've done one another over the centuries, and we'll ask forgiveness for not setting it right sooner. We'll apologize for separate drinking fountains and for glass ceilings, for stolen land and for stolen labor. We'll dismantle empire and repair the damage it has caused, and as we get to know our neighbors, we'll wonder why we ever avoided them before.

Is that why we wait, to remind ourselves what the Kingdom of God is supposed to look like? Do we have the promise of a Second Coming so that we can take seriously what he said the first time he came, and start working on that in the meantime?

“Maranatha,” my daughter dutifully says. There is a pause. Jesus doesn't appear, just like he didn't appear last year, or the year before that.

“Maybe next year,” I say, and I think: “I doubt it.”

That doubt is all I have, Lord. I give it to you, and pray that it's enough.


Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission. Tweet

The doctrine behind 'Good Omens' (spoilers)

The thing about "Good Omens" is, it's just as fresh and original the third or fourth time through as it is the first time.

Bar none, this is the finest novelization of the Apocalypse that has ever been written. Leave "Left Behind" under the short leg of your table, where it's actually useful; and never mind the attempts of other authors to cash in on Antichrist fever. If the End of Days doesn't happen the way authors Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett describe it, there needs to be a do-over.

The bulk of the action takes place in what is supposed to be the last week of history as the armies of heaven and hell amass for the epic conclusion of their war, at the culmination of human history. There's only one little problem. The forces of hell accidentally misplaced the Antichrist shortly after he was born, and no one's really sure where to find him.

As the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride their motorcycles toward Tadfield, England, a demon and an angel who have been living on earth for so long that they can't bear to see it destroyed, join together in a desperate effort to find him and avert Armageddon.

Not surprisingly, the book is full of oblique references to "The Omen." For instance, the infant Antichrist was meant to be switched with the infant son of an American diplomat, as in the movies. The satanist nun involved in the switch suggests "Damien" as a name for the baby, as he was named in the movies. And so on.

Originally published in 1990, "Good Omens" was ahead of the curve for the millennial craze that eventually spawned "Left Behind," so "The Omen" at the time was the most recognizable story to feature the Antichrist.

The fast pacing and British humor that Pratchett and Gaiman bring to the book are reason enough to return to this book again and again; but these two are intelligent writers, and there's enough meat in the book to draw me back long after the jokes will have worn out. (If that ever happens, which seems unlikely.)

There's an interesting humanism at work within "Good Omens" that expresses itself through the framework of Armageddon. Since Adam was raised not at the center of power, as the son of a powerful American diplomat, but as the son of nobody important in Tadfield, England, he's grown up free of the influence of both heaven and hell. He's just pure boy, loving the things a boy loves, doing the things a boy does, and seeing a resolution to the War in Heaven that neither heaven or nor hell apparently anticipates.

The book also repeatedly underscores the role and nature of humanity itself, as the unconsidered third party in this war. The angel Aziraphale and his demonic colleague Crowley, regularly are surprised by a capacity for goodness in humanity that astounds Aziraphale, and a capacity for evil that shocks Crowley. Crowley, we discover, took credit for the Spanish Inquisition even though he had nothing to do with it; and Aziraphale blows up the radar guns of police, because he always assumed that hell's side had come up with them.

In a sense, the humanist themes of "Good Omens" are a rejection of popular Christian eschatology, which often juxtaposes harmonious depictions of Christians leaping straight from earth to heaven via the Rapture, with horrific descriptions of the Great Tribulation, in which God pours out of his wrath upon the earth, and a third of all living things perish, a third of the grass burns up, and a third of the stars are darkened, and so on.

The existence of God himself isn't called into question in the book, ironically enough, although that admittedly would be hard to do when you have angels, demons and the Antichrist himself running around as major characters. God instead is treated fairly respectfully; the questions about his ineffable purpose, such as "Why put a tree right in the middle of a garden and say 'Don't eat from it' instead of planting it somewhere remote and inaccessible if it's such a bad idea?", are hardly new questions, and have in fact bedeviled Christian and Jewish thinkers and philosophers alike for thousands of years.

Crowley and Aziraphale wrestle with these questions themselves after Armageddon passes with the world unexpectedly still intact. Crowley ultimately rejects the notion of history as a cosmic chess game between God and Satan; and, given God's omnipotence and omniscience, decides that it is, instead, more like a very complicated game of solitaire.

Like any good piece of fiction would do, "Good Omens" ends there, leaving readers to sort out for themselves such questions, as well as the general morality of evicting humanity from Paradise over a piece of fruit.

As I once wrote about "It's a Good Life," the Twilight Zone episode where 6-year-old Anthony Fremont sends anyone who displeases him to "the cornfield," stories like this serve an important function for Christians and for the church, if we will let them.

Far from being attacks, they usually are thoughtful critiques of the message that Christians present as coming from God. Sometimes they point out ways that we have bowlderized or just avoided difficult or painful truths; other times, and I think "Good Omens" falls into this category, the stories can and should shore us up, and draw our attention to faults we never admit to ourselves or one another but that are painfully obvious to anyone who has listened to us for five minutes.

(In this case, I'd have to say it's the self-righteousness that glories in the suffering of non-Christians, combined with the narcissism of the prosperity groups that most push the Rapture. Gaiman and Pratchett serve this up in the midst of the Apocalypse with a scene involving an American televangelist who embodies both those traits.)

When you get down to it, "Good Omens" really isn't primarily meant to be a depiction of the Last Days or of biblical prophecy, any more than the book of Revelation is. It's a rollicking good tale, with several themes beyond those I just outlined. The book of Revelation, while it does contain prophecy, is primarily a book about the majesty and glory of God, and the promise that however bad things are, we can be assured that Good will prevail.

And isn't that a more meaningful story than the one they like to tell in church about the Antichrist?



Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Praying for peace, not for victory

I'm not praying for our troops.

That's not exactly true. I am praying for our troops, just as I'm praying for Iraq, and for the members of the insurgency there. I'm not praying for coalition troops to visit a crushing defeat on the heads of their enemies, and I'm not praying that President Bush will bring our troops home tomorrow, nor that he'll announce a timetable for a withdrawal from Iraq.

And I'm certainly not praying that the quagmire we've turned Iraq into will continue as it has been, sucking in more lives every day as neighbor turns upon neighbor and the holiest, most sacred and most mundane duties become life-endangering.

What am I praying for then? If you rule out a decisive victory, a sudden or gradual withdrawal, and the perpetuation of the mess we've made of Iraq, what is there left to pray for?

I've realized something over the last few days: War is outside the nature of Christ. Completely outside. Not just this abominable mess where people are raping young women and destroying families to cover it up, where suicide bombers are blowing up religious services, where one person cuts off another one's head and calls it a righteous act, but war itself -- where one member of the family of Man fires a weapon at another member in hopes of ending his life -- is a horrible abrogation of what God intended his creation to be. It is outside the nature of Christ. It is not what God desires for his creation.

The prophets, looking ahead to the Kingdom of God, saw a time when the nations would lay down their swords and shields, when we would beat our weapons into plowshares and study war no more. They saw it coming from far off, and they rejoiced to see it, if only at a distance. I realized today that I've been doing the same thing, waiting for a pie-in-the-sky time when the poor would receive the Kingdom of Heaven, when the meek would inherit the earth, and when peace would come.

There's no need to wait. The Kingdom is here. It's now. It's arrived.

Speaking to the stunned congregants of his hometown, Jesus declared, "'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

"Today this scripture is fulfilled in your presence."

If we believe that the Kingdom of God is incarnated in the person of Jesus, and if we also believe that Christ is in us and we are become the Body of Christ, then there is no need for there to be war, poverty, hunger, or other such afflictions among us. They are there because we allow them to be, because we accept that they are a part of life, and because we have failed to engage the world around us and address the root causes of these problems.

Peace — note that I did not say appeasement — is not easy. It is far harder to maintain the peace than it is to go to war. Peace requires understanding your foe, meeting his needs and making sacrifices yourself, something we are woefully unprepared or unwilling to do.

Peace, not war, is God's dream for the Middle East, just as it is his dream for every tribe, nation and language.

I'm not praying for victory in Iraq. I'm praying for peace.




Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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