Revelation, the Rapture, and What's Most Important

Revelation 21:1-6

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”

And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

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Do you teach them about the rapture? That’s the question a woman asked me as I sat at Starbucks trying to write a sermon. On Thursdays before I preach, I usually head to a coffee shop or the library to write. It’s not uncommon for someone to strike up a conversation—I guess it’s not every day you see someone sitting in public with a Bible open.

On this day, a woman and her husband sat at the same large table as me. I could feel her eyes on me. I knew what was coming. I made the mistake of looking up from my screen—and she got me.

“So, are you a Bible student?”

No, I’m a pastor here in New Pal.

“Well, you’re awfully young to be a pastor…” (Like I haven’t heard that one before.)

“What’s your church?”

When I said, “Cross of Grace Lutheran Church,” the back-and-forth stopped, and she proceeded to tell me how great her church and her pastor are.

Then, either noticing my intentional body language—literally leaning away—or the way I kept glancing back at my half-written sermon, she ended the conversation with one last question:

“Do you teach them about the rapture?”

The rapture? I thought. I tried to come up with a kind response instead of simply saying, “Uh… no.”

“Well, in my tradition, that’s not something we focus on…” I said.

And goodness, was she disappointed in that answer.

“Well, you gotta teach them about the rapture. It’s the most important thing.”

The most important thing? There’s so much I could have—should have—asked:

• What do you mean by rapture?

• Why is it the most important thing?

• What does your pastor say when preaching about it?

• Who do you think gets left behind—and why?

  But I had a sermon to finish, after all.

I’ve never preached on “the rapture.” I don’t think I’ve ever even preached on a passage from Revelation. So, wherever you are, lady, this one’s for you. Because you’re partially right—it is important for us to understand what the rapture is, the bad and harmful theology behind it, and what we might imagine in its place when we talk about life after death.

Some of you know all about the rapture. Maybe you grew up in a more fundamentalist church or were terrified by the Left Behind series in the mid 90s. Others of you, good Lutherans that you are, may only have a vague idea of what it means. But all of us have been exposed to some version of this belief.

Usually, when people talk about the rapture, it’s part of a theology called dispensationalism. You may have never heard that word, but you’ve definitely seen signs of it—like every time you pass a billboard like this, now how’d that pan out?

Or this…

Or when you notice our culture’s fascination with the apocalypse and end time predictions.

Not to bore you too much, but the idea of the rapture was invented by a British preacher named John Nelson Darby in the 1830s. He took the traditional understanding of Jesus’ return and split it into two parts. First comes the rapture: Jesus appears in the sky, snatches up born-again Christians, and whisks them off to heaven for seven years. During that time, God inflicts wrath on the earth and Christians watch safely from above. Then, after those seven years, comes the final return of Jesus to fight the battle of Armageddon (mentioned in Revelation) and establish an earthly kingdom.

This whole timeline is a patchwork—stitched together from one verse in 1 Thessalonians, three from Daniel, and a single verse from Revelation. Behind all that is a bad theology and a harmful hermeneutic—a way of reading and understanding the Bible.

First, this approach takes the Bible literally, as if Revelation were some sort of roadmap to the end times. But, as you’ve heard us say before, we mustn't read the Bible literally—we’re called to read it literate-ly and seriously, taking into account the many voices and genres that make up Scripture. Revelation is apocalyptic literature, a kind of writing well known to the seven first-century churches it was written for. It’s not a crystal ball—it’s a prophetic vision full of metaphor and symbolic imagery, not a literal forecast of future events.

Second, this theology takes a few out-of-context verses to offer false certainty about what’s to come, rather than wrestling with the mystery of faith. The Bible gives us many different images of Jesus’ return: a banquet in Luke, a wedding feast in Matthew, paradise, green pastures, even a return to Eden. But none of these say when this will happen. In fact, Jesus says clearly: “About that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew 24:36) Jesus doesn’t want us trying to piece together a divine timeline. He wants us to live in hope and with trust.

And perhaps the biggest thing the rapture gets wrong is this: the idea that we’ll float off to heaven and away from all this; that our souls get to finally escape the pain of this world and just be with Jesus. But here’s the thing: the Bible never says we’re just souls that happen to have bodies. We are both—body and soul—and they will not be separated. Resurrection always includes the beautiful body God gave you.

And what if—just hear me out—what if at the end of all things, we don’t go to heaven… What if heaven comes to us?

Which is exactly what Revelation says. God establishes a new heaven and a new earth here, in our midst, and God takes up residence with us. Doesn’t that sound more like the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ? The God who entered into our suffering? The God who heals what is hurt? The God who accomplishes the divine plan through seemingly insignificant people, places, and things.

It should be no surprise, then, that God would come down to this broken world—full of broken people—and heal it until there are no more tears, no more mourning or pain or death, and make a home here with us. That sounds like the God we know in Jesus.

Lutheran theologian Barbara Rossing, an expert on the rapture and end-times thinking, says people are drawn to rapture theology because they want to see the Bible come to life. They want to connect Scripture with their own lives. They want to experience God—and think that can only happen if they leave this place.

But the truth is: the Bible is coming to life and we do experience God—in this world, in our lives.

The Bible comes to life everytime we feed someone who is hungry, give water to someone who is thirsty, wipe the tears trickling down one’s cheek, visit the imprisoned and detained, relieve someone’s pain, or welcome the immigrant.

We are in the presence of God here on earth every time we come to the table, when we share meals with our friends and our enemies, or as Jesus says, when we love others as he loves us.

Those acts—those holy, small, grace-filled acts—create little pockets of heaven on earth. They allow us to experience God right here and now, until that great day when God comes to live among us forever, making God’s kingdom come and God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

So no—the rapture isn’t the most important thing.

But trusting that God will come down, give us new life, and dwell with us in a world made new, free of pain and suffering and death?

Now that sounds more like it.

Amen.

Tombs for the Living

John 11:1-44

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.” After saying this, he told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.” Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

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As good as it is, I don’t think the most important thing about this story has as much to do with the miracle of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, as we might believe. I might be wrong about that, but it’s not the most important thing for me, at least, for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I don’t think Lazarus’ resuscitation is the most meaningful thing about it all partly because it doesn’t happen often enough in ways we wish it would, or think it should – or maybe even deserve, sometimes – as far as I’m concerned. Who hasn’t wished, hoped and prayed for someone you love to have a second chance to live again after a disease or an accident or even after a long life, well-lived? We would almost always call on Jesus, just like Martha and Mary did, to do for our loved ones, just what he did for Lazarus. Would we not? But I haven’t heard of many successful returns on that investment.

And the second reason I’m not sure Lazarus’ walk from the tomb is the most important thing about it all is that – as marvelous and miraculous as that magic trick must have been to witness – and for us to wonder about, still – it didn’t last forever. Lazarus died again, eventually, so there’s that. Bah humbug. And for that reason, some people consider all of this more of a resuscitation than a resurrection, but that may be splitting theological hairs.

So I always have to remind myself that this story may not be as much about resurrection from the dead as I’m inclined to think, at first. Maybe it doesn’t have so much to do with Jesus’ power to give physical life back to someone who has lost it. After all, what we’ve heard about this morning isn’t the be-all and end-all of resurrection stories, remember. We’ll hear about that one in a couple of weeks on Easter Sunday.

So what could be the point – other than that resurrection stuff? Where is some meaning here I can sink my teeth into?

I’m thinking maybe it has as much, or more, to do with new life as we know it – right here for those of us still living, moving and breathing in the world, on this side of our respective graves. What Jesus shows us – and what he shows Lazarus, and the sisters, Mary and Martha, and anyone else who was watching that day outside of Bethany – is that tombs aren’t just for dead people. (That sounds like a commercial doesn’t it? “Tombs – they’re not just for dead people anymore!”)

See, you might say the disciples are living in their own kind of naïve tombs about the fullness of Jesus’ ministry – trying to protect Jesus at every turn and not understanding what it means to walk in the light, in spite of the darkness around them. Mary and Martha were living in tombs of grief and despair and blame and lack of faith about what had happened – missing their brother, angry at God, frustrated with Jesus, and all that goes along with that. And of course, there was the crowd from town, presumably mixed with people of all kinds living in all sorts of proverbial tombs – some curious, some suspicious, some apparently murderous – over all they’d heard and seen from Jesus up until now.

So, what about us? If tombs aren’t just for dead people, where do they show up in our lives and what are they doing there? Like so much else when it comes to the faith we wrestle with, there are as many answers as there are people to ask those hard questions.

So, I wonder where are our tombs? What is it that keeps us from really living – right here, right now?

- Maybe it’s an addiction or a bad relationship

- Maybe it’s fear of failure or fear of success

- Maybe it’s some kind of bigotry or a lack of information or a lack of faith

- Maybe it’s something in our past or something in our present or something we know is on the way

What kind of caves are we afraid to come out of?

- a cave that’s comfortable because we’ve been in there for a while?

- a cave that seems like the right place to be only because we’ve never known anything different?

- a cave that holds a secret or two no one else knows and that we’re too afraid to tell?

What is it that we find ourselves buried beneath?

- Work or family obligations?

- School or stereotypes?

- Debt? … doubt?

- Guilt? … shame?

- Bad decisions? … bad luck?

Maybe it’s something you can’t even put a name on. There are all sorts of things in our lives and in the world that keep us entombed and buried and anything but living the life that God would have for us.

And the more time I spend with people – particularly for some reason, people like us in the Church – the more it seems to me that God’s greater challenge isn’t to raise us from the dead once we’ve stopped breathing. It seems sometimes like the greater miracle is for God to wake us up and call us out of the graveyards of our Habit and Tradition; to carry us out of cemeteries of Comfort, and Complacency and Low Expectations; to dig us out of tombs of Hopelessness, Sadness and Despair.

But that’s what I see God doing this morning – as much for Mary, Martha and the people of Bethany, all of whom were alive and breathing – as for Lazarus, who was dead as a doornail, and starting to decay!

He calls them all out of their tombs and invites them to live again, differently, on the other side. So maybe that’s the invitation we’re all called to hear, to wonder about, and to pray for faith and courage enough to respond to every day – and maybe, especially – as we head into these remaining days of Lent this time around.

From what …

Out of what …

Toward what … are you being called?

“Come out” of what’s expected and do that thing, volunteer for that project, get involved in that ministry, sign up for that class, take or leave that job, finally.

“Come out” of what’s always been safe and comfortable. Give away that gift or offer up your time or extend that mercy.

“Come out” of your pride and ask for help or ask for direction or ask for forgiveness.

We all have things that keep us entombed – that keep us in the dark – that keep us locked up or locked away from what God would have us do or be or become. This morning – and every day that we gather around Word and sacrament and in the presence of one another – we are hearing God’s call to us…

…to come out of our tombs. …to step into God’s light. …to throw off the darkness and the trappings that tie us up and keep us down and prevent us from living most fully, as God intends.

So, as we wait and long and hope for Easter, let’s plan to “come out, come out from where ever we are.” Let’s hear God calling our name in a way we haven’t before. Let’s accept the invitation for a change and step into a new way of living right where we are.

Let’s be unbound by the good news that even though tombs may not be just for dead people anymore, neither are things like resurrection and new life and second-chances. We all stand to be revived, resuscitated, raised up in some way to get a taste of everlasting life – not just after we die – but on this side of heaven, too, thanks to the grace we share and that calls us by name, in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen