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The Second Coming and the Meaning of Life
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| 12/1/2006 |
Jesus said, "There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near." The Gospel of Luke 21:25ff
In this sermon, I would like to explore what we might believe about the second coming of Christ.
We who claim ourselves as Christians, or, we who struggle to live Christian lives, have at the center of our faith the proclamation, “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”
What does it mean, “Christ will come again?”
I want to connect that question to the question that so many people in their 20’s, 30’s & 40’s ask the clergy around here: “How do I find ‘meaning’ in my life?”
The second question first: If I were purely secular, I’d argue that ‘meaning in life’ is self-generated by our relative success in life, our ability to deal and recover from life’s failures, disappointments and tragedies. Add to that the meaning that comes from being generous and charitable. Many find meaning in the notion of leaving behind something special: a parent hopes for children that will outlive them, architects hope for buildings that become remarkable, authors want to leave books that will be read decades hence.
When students slog through the great texts of Western Civilization, like the Iliad, and the teacher asks, “Why did Agamemnon sacrifice his own daughter Iphigenia so he could be allowed to sail and fight a war of attrition for 10 years?” the answer startles them, “Because Agamemnon knew that if he didn’t sail, he would not fight, and then his name would be lost for ever.” For Agamemnon, life only had meaning if his name lived on for eternity, and this was more important to him than the meaning given him by Iphigenia.[1]
Now, I am not a secularist, I’m a Christian. I don’t worry much about objectively verifying the basis of my belief, for my faith is a gift that frees me to transcend the rather boring limitations of secular meaning and search for my meaning within the vaults and creases of a universe magnificently made. Of course, I fall prey to the seductions of seeking life’s meaning in secular terms, but less than you might think. My primary spiritual discipline is not to seek life’s meaning in material and temporal world, but in the world that we simply call God’s Kingdom.
Now, this is tricky to describe. If you’ve had that experience of someone saying, “Do you see that,” when you can’t see to what they’re pointing, you know the frustration of the preacher. To say that I find life’s meaning in God’s Kingdom means not that I try to escape the material and temporal reality of this world, but rather, that I try to see our world as God sees it. We believe that God created our world for a purpose, and has made our participation in this world for a purpose.
So, seeking a purpose for life does not begin with birth and end with death; it begins when a pilgrim such as me says I want to be part of God’s purpose as lived out on this earth.
I argue that all religious belief operates from a basic choice of how to grapple with the challenge best presented by Albert Einstein in 1932. “Our situation on this earth seems strange,” he said. “Every one of us appears here involuntarily and uninvited for a short stay, without knowing the whys and the wherefore.” For me, to answer the “why’s” of being in this life, and to understand the “wherefore” is the religious life. To pursue this life is to pursue God. If you can pursue the whys and wherefores of purpose in life without God, you are better off than I. I can see no purpose in life without God. The yearning for a life full of meaning and purpose is not quenched when God is abandoned. Life has no meaning if the universe that has birthed us for this brief interval we call “being human” has no meaning. Without God, I can see no way that the universe has a purpose discernible to us. If all that we see in the vast expanse of space, and understand about our fragile earth, our island home, has resulted from an accident caused by the strange swirling of cosmic dust, then we’re an accident, too. If “all that is,” which we seem uniquely blessed to perceive and apprehend, has no purpose, then all of us, not just we religious folk, are simply to be pitied, for our being simply becomes nothingness, forever. Life is just cruel, a struggle to find meaning that is never there, and then you die.
My antidote to this despair, nothingness and hopelessness is the simple assent, “Christ Will Come Again.”
Jesus said in many ways and places that he would die and be raised, and then, at a time uncertain, return to the world, bringing earthly time to an end. Just as our own life can only have a meaning that is ultimately judged and defined by life’s end, the earth and its place in the purposes of God can only have meaning if it has an end.
In today’s Gospel from Luke, he tells his disciples, shortly before his crucifixion, that after his death and resurrection, in the political environment of distress among nations and natural calamity, they will see ‘the Son of Man (Jesus’ own prophetic reference to his Christly yet human self) coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Similarly our creeds encourage us to assent through the words, “Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.”
Though caricatured as frightening, I see this final judgment as liberating. If I want my life to have meaning, I cannot judge if my life truly has meaning anymore than an architect can judge if her building is full of architectural meaning, or a painter can judge if his painting is full of artistic meaning. In my own death, or in Christ’s return, comes the judgment from God as to the meaning in my life.
At least we can discern from our scriptures what God will be looking for. Where the world might be looking for wealth to judge my life, God will look for the abundance of love given and received. The world judges by how high I climb the social and political hierarchies, and God will look for my service to those who couldn’t rise up one level. Where the world will judge how I vanquished evil “over there,” God will judge how I confronted the evil within myself.
Do you know Auguste Rodin’s famous, iconic sculpture, The Thinker? Be it in pictures or in a museum, we usually see that lone, naked man, sitting on a craggy rock, leaning forward, his chin resting on his massive right fist at the end of his thick, sinewy bent arm. His brow is furrowed and his muscles taut, but the observer can feel how still he is. This being is not about to spring up, but he looks as if he is trying to, straining against whatever force holds him in the position that will make him ponder, wonder and think for a long time. Almost everyone can conjure up this image, and humanity always asks, “What is he thinking about?”
I think I have figured out what he’s thinking about. Up at the Rodin Museum on the Parkway, you can see The Thinker in its original setting. It’s not a solitary sculpture, but rather a smaller sculpture that is part of a massive sculpture depicting the immediate aftermath of the Second Coming and the Last Judgment of Christ. In 1880, Auguste Rodin was commissioned to sculpt massive bronze doors, 20 feet high and 14 feet across, as an entrance to a new art museum in Paris. He titled the massive door project, The Gates of Hell, and on these doors he sculpted the souls of the damned arriving in the torments of Hell after Christ’s return. Some twist while others writhe. The faces are full of anguish. Lovers are separated. Faces scream. In the frozen bronze, you can feel the bedlam.
The Thinker sits toward the top of this massive 20 foot sculpture, above the massive doors, sitting perfectly still, leaning forward, thinking. Only when Rodin removed and enlarged him to stand alone did he become the world’s most famous sculpture. On this Thinker’s face is not the look of anguish, but of disbelief, of regret, of sadness, that he did not watch and wait, did not align his life in justice, righteousness, faith and love. He is thinking, “Why was I so stupid, so arrogant, so certain, so earthly, so concerned with just myself, that I did not align myself with demands that God put upon me? Why was I so certain that I had more time, that I didn’t have to change, that I was accountable to no one but myself?”
I think the Thinker’s mistake was believing that he could bring meaning to his life, and did not trust God to provide that meaning. So, he set his own course, and made his own mistakes. Now, he is condemned to think of them forever. The Thinker is thinking all the same thoughts you and I do when the scales of denial fall from our eyes, when we admit our failings to ourselves and others, when we don’t confess a sin but rather are caught up in one. He is thinking, as you and I often do, I am so smart, how could I be so dumb?
If I understand myself as created by God, then in God is my purpose. Suddenly, I am part of something far larger than this earthly life. Further, if my life’s value is bestowed by God’s love of me, then I am part of a love far larger than any love I can generate within my own small emotions. My purpose is enriched by taking this large love into this world to represent the transforming value of God’s love. So, I best find my purpose through the journey into God. As a Christian, the only way to map that journey is to follow Jesus Christ.
The reason you need this church today, the reason you need a relationship with God today, and the reason I ask you to build that relationship through following Jesus Christ, is that you must be connected to something vastly larger than yourself to be part of a larger meaning in the universe.
The Thinker’s arrogance is his thinking that his life was big enough to save him. There is no way to gain enough meaning from one individual life. Jesus said it best: To save your life, you have to lose your life—lose your life into the meaning and purpose that God has for it.
So, are you in, or are you out?
Are you going to find your meaning in this church, or in the streets?
In the scriptures, or in your iPod?
In the greatest story ever told, or, the greatest story you tell about yourself?
Are you in or out?
An Appendix
I want to put into context how the Second Coming of Christ fits into the entire story of God’s creation, as told for us in the Scriptures. First, God, before time, God, just God and nothing, a mystery so deep we look into the depths of the universe and time and only see that which is not, and know that cannot be, so there is God, and God, from nothing, explodes into chaos, and from chaos comes cosmos, and from the cosmos, comes forth this small planet earth, a fragile island, of sea and mountain, upon which God will call all living creatures forth, including you and me, to share in this creation and its goodness, this earth, “her blue green body everything we know
But, something goes wrong. Creation is perfect, harmonious, magnificent, glorious, but we cannot obey its perfection. Humankind, it turns out, wants to be our own God, and not have the God who made us in perfection be our God. From a perfect place in the cosmos, we return to chaos, through greed, murder, hatred, in hoarding while others hunger, in laughing while others cry. At our hands, evil overwhelms the good. Though we realize that the perfection of the creation can only be destroyed by one of God’s creatures—us—we don’t humble ourselves before God
Is it all our fault? Or, a fault in design? Regardless, God’s singular intention is to get us back from the chaos into the harmony of creation, back, as Joni Mitchell sings, “Back to the Garden.” God’s solution is to give us time to end our exile, to restore us to harmony and perfection. In this expanse of time, God gives law, prophecy, signs, to show us the way back. But God reveals, in the mysteries of God’s silence, that time is not forever, that humanity’s time to return to perfection is not endless, and that God will come to end our time, and bring home those who can be restored, and leave behind those who can’t. So, in the books, in the prophets, in the wisdom, the people of God discerned that at some time, in some place, God would come. And, these prophets and sages, left in the pages of our holy books that this coming would not be peaceful, but tumultuous, even violent, as violent as when the heavens and earth were first made.
And we who are Christian, or striving to be such, or striving to understand what it means to be such, remember that God did come, but differently than expected. So Christians see a new story, in which we see God enter, not trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored and letting loose the lightening with a terrible swift sword, but entering as a baby, vulnerable, small. This baby grows, not to divide, but to unify all of God’s creatures in the new vision of the perfect creation, what we call the Kingdom of God. Jesus coming into the world was not the end of time, as so many expected the Messiah to be, but the beginning of a new time, a time to gather us all in. In Jesus, God was offering us, a stubborn people, a way back to the garden, but not in a moment, over millennia, but not forever. One day, God will bring to an end this particular version of the story, which is what we mean when we say, Christ will come again.
[1] I use this last example because nations gather power over their inhabitants by promising them “meaning” if they die for their country. Thus, war memorials that list the name of the dead soldiers are in abundance, and there always seem to be room for more, and we assure those memorials will last forever. I am not being critical. This is as it should be. Clearly, though, there might be less war if we could see that war is far more likely to take away more life than it can ever give meaning to.
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