Thoughts for the Day

Revelation 1:7 “Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen.”

Today we take a detour from Luke’s gospel account of the first coming of Jesus to consider his second coming.  It is another tenet of our faith, another pivotal moment.  Jesus will reappear, this time in all his glory, suddenly, loudly, incandescently, spectacularly and unmistakably.  Justice and judgement will finally arrive, evil will be no more, sin will be eradicated, the dead will rise, and we will be changed, along with the earth and the heavens, for good and for good!  It is a breathtaking and outrageous vista, yet one consistently proclaimed throughout the New Testament.   In the church I attend, we affirm this belief in every communion service with the words “Christ WILL come again.”  It makes the point well enough, but it is a bit tame compared to the declaration in today’s scripture!   I particularly note the one “is” in this verse, which emphasises the writer’s confidence and gives a sense of imminence that we seem to have lost.  Perhaps that is not entirely surprising.  After all, three times in the last chapter of the Revelation Jesus declares “I am coming soon”, but nearly 2000 years later we are still waiting.

If we doubt it will happen, there are plenty of passages to reassure us.  If we are impatient, there is Peter’s insight that God’s seemingly inexplicable delay is an expression of his wonderfully inexplicable patience.  The trouble is that we generally focus our lives on the short-term and the urgent, and we tend to view Jesus’ second coming beyond that horizon.  Perhaps we need a different perspective to give us a jolt.  Perhaps we should not only focus on when Jesus will come but when we will go!  Jesus told a parable of a wealthy farmer contemplating a long and comfortable retirement.  “You fool!” he is told, “This very night your life will be demanded of you.”  How should we respond to this sharp reminder of our mortality?  With a bucket list?  The bible encourages us instead to focus on what is important, to keep running the race, to keep working for God’s kingdom, to stay watchful until the day we no longer can or Jesus returns.  Either or which, it turns out, could be tomorrow.  Enough of a jolt?