Jerusalem Presbyterian Church

On Wednesday my family and I will get in the car and drive down to Indiana.  It’s a new car this year, but an old tradition for us, and a route we have traveled for the better part of twenty-one years.  And at some point in the trip, one of the kids will sigh an impatient sigh, and ask us, “Are we there yet?”  I think now they do it just for sport, just to make the trip seem more authentically ours somehow.  Lots of things have changed since we first began making these trips to Indiana.  We don’t schlep diaper bags or toys, or load the car up with choke-proof toddler appropriate snacks and sippy cups.  Now we ask “Do both of your iPods have fresh batteries?  We’re not stopping for batteries. Where are the cell phone chargers?”

But the question “Are we there yet?” reminds us of how far we’ve come as a family.  By the time the kids were old enough to appreciate sarcasm (about age 2 in our clan) I would answer that question by saying cheerfully, “Why, yes.  Yes we are.  Give grandma a hug and go sit on grandpa’s lap.”    Both kids would either scowl in annoyance or roll their eyes, but eventually they would laugh at the silliness.

The reason we can all smile with recognition when we hear the question is because patience or lack thereof, is almost universal, at least in our technocratic, post-industrial, post-modern part of the world.  A meal that our parents or grandparents cooked took an hour or more.  We can heat the same thing up in the microwave in six-and-a-half minutes.  We don’t like to wait, because we don’t see the need to wait anymore.  Good things come to those who push buttons.

I was reflecting this week on how often I heard this Scripture passage in my childhood church.  “Wars and rumors of wars” were one of the signs of the second coming.   I have to tell you, as hard as I tried to understand that phrase, I just couldn’t.  I grew up during the tail end of the Vietnam conflict, and I saw war on television.  Even after Vietnam, there was the hostage crisis, unrest in the Middle East, and it seemed as if there was always someone fighting somewhere.  Which wars—or rumors—were supposed to be the ones that would tell us that Jesus was about to come back?

All I really remember— part of the lasting theological legacy of that religious upbringing—were fear and confusion.  There seemed to be so much thinking about this Coming Event—the rapture.  I heard about it every week, and it scared me because even at eleven or twelve years old, I felt as though I could mess up badly enough to not be included, and then I would be stuck here on earth without any family to take care of me.  It kept me from sleeping some nights, even.

As a child, I didn’t want Jesus to come back.  I wanted my life to stay my life, and no amount of fire and brimstone from the pulpits of my childhood, no vivid promises of bejeweled crowns to wear or walking on streets of gold so pure they will seem like they are glass, or mansions just over the hilltop, or of all eternity to spend with Jesus could keep me from wanting to see how my earthly life would turn out.  An eleven or twelve-year-old girl doesn’t want Jesus to come back before she gets a chance to go to high school, or drive a car, or kiss a boy, or grow up.  So when the preachers of my childhood would loudly, insistently, and fervently pray, “Come quickly, Lord!”  I, ever the rebel, would be sitting in my pew, or kneeling at the front altar railing, quietly but just as fervently praying, “Not, just yet, Lord. Not just yet.”

Not just yet.  We’re not quite ready just yet, are we?

An entire generation has passed between the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the writing of Mark’s gospel.  And even though the eye-witnesses are long gone, the promise of Christ’s return remains uppermost in their minds—a promise of redemption to a people living under an oppressive government.   The promised return of the Savior.  Each generation has interpreted this promise within its own context, with its own lens.

My adolescent self could not imagine what all she would miss out on if Jesus returned before her life was accomplished, finished, achieved somehow.  Sometimes today when I think about Jesus’ return, it is tempting to think of all the things I would get out of if it happened today. “Well, there’s eight loads of laundry I wouldn’t have to do.” Somehow I think Jesus is probably more pleased with the attitude I had when I was a young girl than the idea of “rapture” as a way to avoid housework—or the difficult work of being the church.

The most fundamental difference between the theology of my youth, and the way I understand God today is this question: what are we here for?   In the movie “Shawshank Redemption” the main character, Andy Dufresne, has a great quote, “Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’”

For Andy, living means finding a meaningful life within prison walls.  There are people for whom life is just a means to an end—just something to be endured until heaven.   Those are people who are busy dyin’.

Jesus seems to be telling his friends to get busy livin’.

Then Jesus began to say to them, "Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, 'I am he!' and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come.

For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.

It is tempting to hear the phrase “wars and rumors of wars” and to wonder, just as I did as a child, if the current fighting and violence in the world is indeed a sign of the end of things.  Scholars believe that this section is actually a commentary on issues already pressing the Markan community_¹  In every generation there have been wars and violence and the presence of evil. Likewise the false prophets, those ones Jesus warns the four friends to not pay attention to.

“The modern church knows aplenty about voices that talk a good game, use many of the right formulas, but at heart worship at a different altar.  There are those who offer a crossless religion, a Christianity without tears; others who wed the faith to the nation and demand a patriotic ideology; still others who are advocates of religion’s utilitarian functions—arguing the importance of prayer as an effective means of self-enhancement.”_²

Even in Jesus’ time, it seems, there were phonies in the crowd, those who offered religion that would feel good, and reassure one of a place in eternity, but that didn’t seem to have any lasting impact on the faithful right here on earth.

When the four friends asked Jesus, “Are we there yet?” He answered them with an answer of hope, of expectation built not on fear of losing out or being left behind or of missing out on the best part of life, but on God’s graceful promise that there is enough grace, enough truth, enough of God’s transforming love for all.  Jesus tells the friends to not be gullible, believing every claim that comes down the pike, but to believe in the One who is in charge, whose plan for salvation cannot be manipulated.

In many ways I’m just like that young girl I was thirty years ago.  I’m excited to see how this adventure I call the Christian life unfolds.  There is so much left to do.  There is so much for me, for us, to accomplish together.  It can be enough to make us want to pray, “Not just yet, Lord. Not just yet.”

Thanks be to God.

¹  Brueggemann, Cousar, Gaventa, Newsome. Texts for Preaching, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky:1993, 593.
²  Ibid. 594.