"Here" or "there?"

With the unfolding drama of Harold Camping’s entertaining end-times predictions droning in the background and the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012 drawing ever nearer, faith communities have been abuzz about when the story of God’s redemptive work in human history will draw to a close.

In the course conversations about the end of time, people of faith often quote one of the many sayings of Jesus to the effect that “of that day and hour no one knows.”

But while most Christians can agree about the ‘when’ of Jesus’ coming and the end of the age, the question of ‘where’ seems a bit more controversial.

On one hand, some Christian theology of the past few hundred years imagines a “rapture” event in which Jesus’ followers are whisked out of the material world as it is being destroyed and taken away to God’s “heavenly kingdom” to enjoy an eternal, ethereal, disembodied existence with Jesus and the angels.

On the other hand, other Christian thinkers argue that the age will end with a cosmic renewal of this earth and that we will live eternal lives in a physically renewed, perfectly embodied existence that closely resembles this life but without all the bad stuff.

Rob Bell’s book “Love Wins: The Story of Heaven and Hell and Everyone who ever Lived” has reawakened some of these very old debates within the Christian faith and the recent article “Who Gets Left Behind?” published in the June 2011 issue of Christianity Today puts an interesting spin on some familiar Bible verses. It is to these sources that the remainder of this column is indebted.

Most Christians believe that when our individual stories end at death, something we call our “soul” or “spirit” survives the physical death of our material body to enjoy a disembodied existence of intimacy with Jesus in a distinctly non-earthly place called “heaven.”

This is a reasonably biblical hope for those who are dying in the meantime of Jesus’ return, especially those who suffer injustice, oppression, injury and sickness. But confusion sets in when we try to reconcile this disembodied, otherworldly existence to some of the things Jesus and the scriptures say about how the whole story of everything is going to culminate.

The idea of a “rapture” event attempts to do precisely this. While containing distinctly Christian elements, “rapture” theology borrows heavily from the early Greek philosophical school of Plato, who imagined a person’s physical body as a prison for the soul. “Rapture” theology also borrows heavily from an early religious cult called Gnosticism, which imagines heaven as a layered realm of deities and souls above the earth.

The more Christian elements of “rapture” theology lean on scant biblical witness. Paul, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, writes, “Then we… shall be caught up… in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”

But these words are situated within a paragraph where Paul is promising the Thessalonians that they will see Jesus returning to earth whether they will have died or are still alive at that unknown future time. Indeed, Paul seems to be saying that the followers of Jesus, both dead and alive, will rise to form a welcoming committee to meet Jesus and accompany him back to earth.

Similarly, Jesus describes his own second coming this way: “Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.”

These words have been the basis of much religious entertainment including an anthology of “Left Behind” books and accompanying movies that interpret these words to mean that faithful Christians are taken out of the world while “sinners” are left behind to suffer physical existence without the hope of Christ’s salvation.

But again, Jesus himself compares this event to the “days of Noah” and to Lot’s escape from the destruction of the city of Sodom. Interestingly, both Noah and Lot were “left behind” on earth, having been rescued from cataclysmic events that “raptured” evil out of the earth. Indeed, Jesus seems to be speaking about a global scouring something like the scouring of bathroom tile that removes the mildew and leaves the grout looking fresh and new.

The biblical source material for “rapture” theology ends here. The rest is fanciful imagination and creative amalgamation of other streams of thought.

In contrast, large portions of the biblical story imagine Jesus’ return as a distinctly earthly event. The book of Revelation, which culminates in an elaborate vision of a reconstituted earth to which the city of God comes “down out of heaven” to reside amidst mortals, is a good example.

Granted, the writer of Revelation envisions substantial discontinuity between this present earth, as we know it, and the renewed earth of Jesus’ second coming. But there is also sufficient continuity to recognize that future existence as one of physical embodiment in a material world.

Add to this the Holy Spirit who acts as a liaison between God and God’s created world and appears to enjoy physical embodiment in the judges and prophets of the Old Testament and in the form of a dove, in Jesus, and in the early Christian church in the New Testament.

Furthermore, Jesus was the flesh-and-bones incarnation of God and prolifically promises a second coming to earth without any indication that he might then also leave a second time.

Finally, God, the very creator of this earth and all its material reality, experienced physical embodiment not as a prison but as something positive, as Paul says “in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” God’s prophets promise time and again a future age when this same God will dwell in the midst of God’s own creation.

The possibility that the story of human history ends “here” as opposed to “out there” somewhere, that Jesus returns instead of his followers being “raptured,” raises the question, what will Jesus find his followers doing when he gets back? And what should we be doing in the meantime?

What kinds of relationships should we be cultivating with our neighbors where we live now? How should we deal with the economic impact of our overconsumption on our neighbors across the earth now? How should we be interacting with the land that God has graciously gifted to us? Are we overlords of control and domination or stewards managing a household and tending a vineyard until the master’s return? - By Pastor Matthew Yoder, Menno Mennonite Church