Live, Encourage as a People with Hope

One unavoidable conclusion of finding out what Christianity was like in its earliest days is that everyone thought Jesus would be right back. Jesus said he would come again and the early Christians assumed he meant within their lifetime. The New Testament referred to Jesus’ return as the “parousia”—the Greek word for “coming”—is what today is usually called the rapture (though that term is not found in the Bible).

The early Christian expectation was that Jesus’ return would happen any minute now. One problem in the early Christian church came when some followers died and the hope of the Christian community wavered.

Wasn’t Jesus going to return soon? How soon is soon anyway? They wondered if those who died while waiting would somehow miss all the excitement. Paul wrote the First Letter to the Thessalonians about the year 51 to explain that the living would not precede the dead in the resurrection. Paul taught that Christ will descend from the heavens, the dead in Christ will rise and then the rest of us will join them.

Paul easily handled the pastoral problem of feeling as if those who died first will be left out in the excitement that will usher in Jesus coming again. But the very way he states the case presents a problem. Paul wrote, “Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them….” The problem is not the gravity-defying ascent into the sky. God can handle that without working up a sweat. The part that makes me pause is that Paul speaks of those who are alive at Jesus’ coming as if he expects he’ll be one of them.

Guess what? Paul was wrong. Paul was way wrong. The Roman Emperor put Paul to death more than 1900 years ago and Jesus is not back. Not yet. Where’s the hope now after nearly 2,000 collective years of watching the sky?

I think we have to acknowledge that the early Christians really did expect Jesus back any minute, in their lifetimes to be sure. Jesus himself had warned that no one knows the hour or the day, not even the Son. Only the Father in heaven knows the time. Though Paul thought Jesus would come like a thief in the night soon, he did acknowledge it would be at a time no one, including himself, could predict.

Time is a different concept in the Bible. Jesus has two time based sayings he uses a lot. One is to say that something will happen “in the fullness of time.” The other is to say, “The hour is coming and now is.” That’s about as precise as Jesus got with time. Jesus was expressing the biblical view that there are two types of time.

In the Greek of the New Testament, the two types of time are chronos and kairos. Chronos is regular clock time. A watch is also called a chronometer, because it ticks off the seconds, minutes, and hours of chronos time. The other kind of time in scripture is kairos, which refers to God’s time. Something like the appointed time, the right time, or as Jesus puts it, “the fullness of time.”

When God looks at his watch, it either says “already” or “not yet.” Something has either happened or not. Soon is a bit vague in God’s kairos. It’s God’s time when it’s God’s time. You may or may not like that answer, but that’s what scripture teaches us. The fullness of time or the right time does not come when we want it to, not ever. God’s right time comes when a group of conditions come together that we could never take into account or predict.

When Paul wrote in the year 51, he was sure that Jesus would soon return in glory to declare the end of the age. Thank God he was wrong. If Jesus returned in Paul’s lifetime, it would have left us out. We don’t know what factors God is taking into account. If Jesus returns before you finish reading this column, or waits another 2,000 years, the timing will be just right. What is true now that was true then is that Jesus’ return is immanent, meaning it could happen at any time.

So what is left for us in the idea of Jesus’ return if we can’t use the scripture about it to guess when the end of time will come? The goal was never to give a timetable. Paul, for example, was not writing about Jesus’ return exactly. Paul wrote to explain that God has not forgotten anyone who has died. Those of us who are alive are no more alive to God than those who came before us. All of us who love God will be with our Lord forever. Paul wrote first and foremost to be a comfort to all who mourn. 

If you mourn for a loved one who is now gone to you, remember that they are not beyond God’s reach. Paul reminds us that we should not grieve as those who have no hope. We have the expectation that Jesus will return. We are taught by experience that God’s timing is perfect, where ours is not. We are to live as a people with hope and encourage one another with words of scripture.

            (The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland.)

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