[Is. 25:1-9; Phil. 4:1-9; Mt. 24:1-14]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Nothing so troublesome perhaps, nothing so upsetting as the End of Days, whichever shape you belief it will take when the time finally arrives.
They’re difficult passages in the Bible, open for a lot of abuses and misinterpretations.
We have to have the courage to admit we’re not really sure how to deal with these texts, what it all means.
What we do know is that apparently it didn’t happen last month on 23rd September, as predicted. Luckily it didn’t, it would’ve really spoiled a nice Saturday afternoon.
How do we then square these frightening predictions -seemingly of the near future- with a loving God, the Good News preached by Christ?
Because of all the inclusivity of Jesus’ message, the End of Days, the Apocalypse (however you wish to name it) must undoubtedly be the most exclusive, in the negative sense of the word of excluding others.
We forget that these texts were written for a real-life readership, for a specific audience with a specific purpose; but we in our human arrogance too often think that they were written just for us, for our generation.
Jesus was speaking of a real Temple, an actual existing building; He was speaking to actual people living in an actual place, in Judea, at a particular time, the 1st c. AD.
Because we here this morning live in Gent in the 21st c., the context of what Christ is saying isn’t always clear to us, we’re missing some background information.
What is clear, however, is that talk of the End of Days doesn’t necessarily make it true; talk after all is cheap.
Natural catastrophes, wars, upheaval, solar eclipses...they’ve always been around; Earth was created from chaos after all.
It’s a sad fact however: the End of Days is big business, a money making business. Substandard books and films with half-baked scripts, doom prophets in multimillion euro private jets as ‘evangelism machines’, the so-called Prosperity Gospel heresy, mansions as huge as the Temple-complex of old as a ‘missionary headquarters’, etc...
Stick a date on it and scare people into giving you all their cash.
Jesus doesn't mention millennial kingdoms or tribulations, let alone ‘paying it forward’ or ‘bless the Lord with your money and the Lord will bless you even more’.
Unfortunately, your blessing the Lord usually ends up in you giving your often much needed money to whomever is preaching this nonsense.
God isn’t a high-street bank paying out interests and dividends.
It’s called ‘theology of glory’ when preachers promise instant religious gratification, immediate heavenly rewards, and turn God into the caricature of a businessman or -woman doling out euro bills, assuming the Almighty thinks and acts the same way human beings do.
Simple example: If you want me to like you, you will do nice things for me. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Quid pro quo. We do good works for God, and God will reward us for them: good works as a means to an end, rather than the wonderful result of a life restored to its full potential.
God isn’t a vending machine, where you put in a coin and a snack or a drink falls out at bottom.
So why do people literally buy in to it?
Because of the sins of greed and arrogance.
We all crave to belong, we all want to be part of something, and in our sin we like to be part of something big and important and exclusive; and what’s bigger and more important and more exclusive than the ‘Rapture’?!
So if a clever fraudster comes along and offers you a sweet two-for-one package deal, people are very much tempted.
It’s not that these people are naïve, stupid or easily conned, it’s because these people are human, and uncertainty and fear make for bad advisers.
And making a donation to the church isn’t the problem, and the vast majority of preachers or ministers or priests will try to put it to good use. Unfortunately there are a lot of them who won’t.
That’s why we try to divorce materialism from religion because time and time again “the love of money is the root of all evil.”
The message of the Gospel is the direct opposite of all this.
The message of the Reformation is directly opposed to this.
What possible hope and joy do these false preachers bring, when fear and greed are their working methods and their drive?!
They pervert the free offer of eternal life and salvation in to a ‘supermarket of holy commodities’, where membership cards come at a price and everybody else is left on the fringe, at best ignored, at worst condemned.
As such the Kingdom of God becomes whatever they say it is, one with a list of who’s in and who’s out.
But keeping a list of who will be part of this so-called ‘Rapture’ must be most un-Christian, self-centred, heretical, arrogant thing to do!
People who count the sins of others, probably are too worried their own list might be too long! Or as a meme, a picture on Facebook, which regularly pops up, points out: ‘Counting other people’s sins, doesn’t make you a saint!’
‘Counting other people’s sins, doesn’t make you a saint!’
Neither does charging money for redemption!
It’s almost as if we’re saying to God: you sent your Son to save us...but we’ve got a better idea.
Brothers and sisters, the End of Days shouldn’t frighten us, it shouldn’t trick us into loosing heart and faith in the kind, forgiving and just God we have the privilege to call Father.
As Isaiah tells us this morning:
“Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” (25:9)
And for this grace given to us all, we can say: thanks be to God. Amen.