Close Encounter Series

Have you ever fantasized about living in some other time in history? What is it about that period that appeals to you? People have often tended to look back at earlier, simpler days with a sort of nostalgia, longing for a time when the mail held nothing worse than unsolicited requests for money or past due bills. (Well, I suppose you could call that an unsolicited request for money, too...) If your child got in trouble for mentioning God at school it was as a violation of the third commandment rather than the first amendment...

Only a few years ago, many people believed that the upward economic and technical trajectory we were on seemed to be endless, with democracy defeating tyrannies of all sorts all around the world, free markets improving everyone’s economic prospects, and the dot.com boom seeming to promise a repeal of the business cycle and universal prosperity for a miraculously peaceful and cooperative global village....

But since 9/11 and the subsequent "War on Terror" people have started looking around for a security they hadn't previouly felt a need for. Some looked to our government to defend us from all the frightening new threats. Some looked to family, reorganizing their priorities around relationships. Some came to church, seeking a new or strengthened connection to the eternal. Many denied that the danger was real, or blamed the old ways for it. Others despaired of the old ways and experimented with exotic spiritual practices or abandoned the thought of religion altogether.

But perhaps you don’t look either around or backward, but instead manage the scary times we are in by looing forward. Maybe, like me, you wonder when the Lord is coming and hope that we are, in fact, coming to the end of the age... For many of us the temptation is, whenever we read one of these passages about the coming of our Lord, to intensify that hope and wander about looking upward, like the disciples in the beginning of Acts, after Jesus left them for the last time. “While ...they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? [Acts 1:10-11] They were angels, of course, and their message is for us, as well as for those 1st century disciples. I have friends who are convinced that the uncertainty and violence of the present is proof that we are entering the end times. Most are looking forward to the day, and spend more time debating the signs than preparing for it. But we need to be a little less complacent. "Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light." [Amos 5:18]

Paul’s words in this passage turned St. Augustine, the great fourth century theologian, toward Christ and away from a life of pride and ambition and self-indulgence. In his Confessions, Augustine said of that moment when he took up the Bible his mother had left upon the garden bench and began to read, "The light shone upon my conscience and I realized that Jesus was the way." Now, the fourth century was a time of great turmoil, with danger both from a decaying culture and a collapsing empire. The barbarians were at the gates in every sense of the word. And yet Augustine took this passage personally. He was no worse than others of his age, in fact better than most: he was faithful to his mistress, he was a good son, an honest man and a respected scholar, and yet he recognized that he fell far short of what God wanted him to be. And - even though we are mostly pretty good people, coming to church pretty regularly and loving our neighbors at least most of the time, we can still do a lot worse than follow Augustine’s example.

Paul gives us two charges in this passage. There's something we’re supposed to know, and then there are some things we’re supposed to do.

First of all, he says, “you know what time it is.” [v. 11] But do we? We have more ways of measuring time than Paul ever dreamed of. And yet most people don’t know how to measure God’s time. Anybody remember the old song “Does anybody know while time it is? Does anybody really care?” Jesus said to his disciples, “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” [Mt 16:3]

They were fishermen; they had to know how to interpret the weather because they couldn’t afford to be caught on the lake in a storm. We have the Weather Channel. But we still don’t understand God’s forecast. Paul says that this is a strategic hour, just before dawn: "The day is near.” [v. 12] What day is that? Well, of course everybody thought that he meant the day when Jesus comes back in power to set things right. And when he didn’t, a lot of people were disappointed, they thought Paul had been mistaken, some even have abandoned the idea that Jesus will return at all.