Advent : The Second Coming Back on the Radar of Imagination
by Ken Wilson
The Second Coming hasn't happened yet. This means there is a great deal about it we do not yet know. We might approach it with the humility that comes with the knowledge of our ignorance. (Most Bible students 2K years ago were surprised by the first coming; this might temper our confidence in our own ability to get the details right.)
What we have is Scripture, which favors highly symbolic and imaginative language on the topic. And we have the Spirit of Jesus behind Scripture, inflaming the craziest and most trustworthy of human instincts: hope.
Jesus gave us this assurance: that the story isn't finished yet. Some-thing wonderful has occurred, his rising from the dead, the beginning of a new creation; and something more wonderful is yet to be: the complete reintegration of God's realm and ours, of heaven and earth, when as the Scripture says, "the glory of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the seas."
Most of our mental pictures of his return are born of a time when we thought the sky was a dome over the earth, and just beyond that, the realm of God and the angels.
So let's imagine this again, the coming of Jesus.
Imagine the unimaginable: God's realm, heaven.
What if it is literally true: in him we live and move and have our being? What if the old song applies more than we thought: he's got the whole world in his hands?
Heard of that crazy little book, Flatland? A work of the imagination. What if we all lived, not in 3 dimensions of space [lenth-width-depth], but in 2 dimension, just length-width, no depth?
[Harded to imagine than you think; all we've ever known is a 3-D]
But the book tries anyway: what if our lives occurred in 2 dimensions only, on a plane, like a flat sheet of paper with no thickness?
One of the flatlanders discovers the existence of a third dimension, and the others think he's crazy.
From our 3-D perspective, how close would that 3rd dimension be to the inhabitants of Flatland? So close! Right there! If only they could
see! But of course from their 2-D perspective, not so easy.
So that extra dimension, is it infinitely close or infinitely far away?
Depends on your perspective.
What if heaven is like that? What if God's realm is like that?
A dimension just beyond our space-time 4.
Such that God literally has everything surrounded…?
The whole universe, surrounded by this other dimension
Each galaxy, surrounded. Each solar system
The whole earth, surrounded. Everything on earth
You and me, surrounded, by this other dimension
Every cell of our body, surrounded
Every molecule of every cell, surrounded.
Every atom of every molecule of every cell, surrounded.
Every last particle, force field, electron, proton, gluon, muon, quark,
every quanta of energy surrounded
From one perspective infinitely far off, from another, infinitely near
How could we hope to experience a 3rd dimension in a 2-D world?
It would require a transformational event.
[Lantern] Our 2-D world would have to be transformed into a 3-D world. A 3rd dimension would need to crash in to our 2-D existence. We, and everything around us would go from flat to full in the twinkling of an eye.
Not unheard of such a transformational event. Heard of Big Bang? Measurements say universe is expanding. Galaxies getting farther from each other If expanding universe were a movie and you ran it backward, what would it show? Everything collapsing in on itself.
All the matter and energy of the universe--into a smaller and smaller space, until everything is in an infinitely small space with no dimension and no time.
Before the bang called singularity [little ones in center of black holes--wild!?]
Except before the bang, there was no space, and therefore no time (since time is part of the fabric of space); hence no cause-effect. Nothing could be anticipated or predicted.
Enter, perhaps, God--utterly free, uncaused--beyond time and space, beyond matter and energy, saying, "Let there be…." And there is and was and is to come! So transformational events are not unheard of.
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Heaven imagined as God's realm surrounding us, like 3rd dimension--in a 2 dimensional flatland.
Needed: A transformational event, the inbreaking of this God-realm.
Needed: A Big Bang of Heaven-Born Love Invading Our Realm
"God so loved the world that he gave his only Begotten Son…."
God, in his very being is love: irreducible relational love: Father-Son-Holy Spirit. PERSONAL-LOVE.
Our realm came out of this love, and then we closed our hearts to this love and our respective realms became separated, because Love only comes where LOVE is wanted.
The two realms have been mostly exiled from each other...with occasional intersections.
Until LOVE sent HIMSELF. As one of us. Born of a young woman.
+ Living as a mortal among us; LOVE in human form; wherever he went heaven broke through like shafts of light in a thick forest.
+ Suffering as we do, taking the full weight of our UNLOVE into himself, like someone might suck the poison out of a snake bite.
+ Dying under torture, his lifeless body was gently laid in a tomb.
And that's where it happened, the transformational event. Life, and by that I mean ETERNAL LIFE, the life of God, the abundant life that's normal in God's realm, reintegrated with his mortal body and death was swallowed up in victory. In his risen flesh, glory broke out as heaven broke in.
Over 40 days he appeared & disappeared--slipping between the two realms, heavenly & earthy, as one who at last was at home in both. Like we might slip through a door or a wardrobe or through a looking glass, from one realm to another.
During that time he commissioned his disciples to spread the rumor that the New Creation was underway, Centered, Located, in Him.
On the day of his last appearance something big happened: "So when they met together, they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. "Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven." (ACTS 1: 6-11)
What happened? He slipped into God-realm, infinitely near, but out of sight. From there, he breathed on them His Spirit, to lead them.
And part of their message from that time on was this:
The story isn't over yet, final act in wings. With Jesus we're re-working this tragedy into the comedy it's meant to become….the story of new life, new creation in the shadow of death….
He will come back as he went.
The word they often used was "parousia": appearing.
There's a long history of this.
Genesis begins with Eden: heaven & earth united.
Then comes the exile--God's realm and ours separated.
Jacob asleep on a rock has a vision of heaven & earth connected.
In the tabernacle, heaven & earth intersect
Jesus, on earth was the new temple, and we are to carry that on…
He who dis-appeared in the Ascension is to re-appear [parousia] and the whole earth becomes the temple of God's manifest glory
A transformational event: A BIG BANG OF LOVE BREAKING IN TO SWALLOW UP DEATH, and renew the face of the earth.
"For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life appears, you also will appear with him in glory" (Col 3: 3-4)
"Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus. Heaven must receive him until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets." (ACTS 3: 19-21)
This is something to get ready for: by turning from UNLOVE to LOVE, from ourselves as King to Christ as King…starting to live now according to the new regime….
Jesus called it, "the renewal of all things" "Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life." (MT. 19: 28-29)
And what about life in the meantime? Our hardships and sufferings, are less debilitating for the hope of what's coming. Like a pregnant woman in her 9th month, can't sleep, feels like a whale, feels like twins, one named Braxton, the other, Hicks. She endures it all for the joy of what's coming: the never been before.
"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8: 18-?)
So much foolishness surrounding this business of return! The American Marketing Machine has a preference for the bizarre.
Minus the appetite, the thing drops off the radar…of our imagination.
Hard times approach, and instead of looking forward, we look back for comfort. Oh, for the bubble-bath of the 90's!
We live in times when our imaginations are fired up, fueled, vibrating with fear….when and how will the other shoe drop, we wake up in a cold sweat imagining….
Our brethren around the world are sustained through much worse-- by an inflamed hope anchored not in the latest economic indicators, but in a NEARBY LORD whose presence makes the TIME feel NEAR.
"Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord!" (Ps. 32:34)
Fear might lose some of it's potency, if we could imagine anew what those in the wake of his rising imagined: that he was right next door in heavenly realm, so close they could feel his breath through the veil
What's in it for us--allowing his parousia a place on the radar of our imagination again? A new sense of his NEARNESS.
The DAY is NEAR, because he is near.
The TIME is NEAR because HIS SPACE-TIME is right next to ours.
There are times when we can feel it too….As when we worship and heaven vibrates right next to us.
OR when we are in pain and suffering, and feel the one with wounds on his resurrection body near us, just the other side of what is, in fact, a very thin veil.
Or when we are wounded by the wrongs of others, and we like him, forgive our trespassers as we, by him, have been forgiven.
Or when we do our small part to bring the justice of that day into this day, by caring for the needy, by strengthening the ties that bind, by declaring and practicing the peace with God that has been won, and will be forever established…