“Are you rapture ready?” a giant full page ad in USA Today read. I really haven’t said anything about all this recent rapture business trusting that All Saints folks have reasonable intelligence and sound learning about such matters, but since the national media gave it so much coverage, even the ever erudite National Public Radio, I feel compelled to weigh in. The term “rapture” referring to Christian believing souls being snatched up into heaven upon the end of the world is a fairly modern concept. Early modern fundamentalists began using the term in its present context in the late nineteenth century as the theology of these sects of Christianity focused on exclusivity, which of course has far reaching ramifications beyond the “rapture” leaving behind the unbeliever as well as the wrong believer. The language of being “caught up” during the second coming of Christ emerged in the late middle ages, and it comes from Paul himself who says in First Thessalonians that at Christ’s coming again that we followers of Christ, the living and the dead, will be caught up and meet Christ in the air. The term “meet in the air” is an idiom in the Koine Greek that refers to greeting a victorious army outside the city gates. Paul is speaking quite directly of the imminent return of Christ’s Spirit which will vindicate the oppression of empire….in other words Paul is using dangerous highly charged political militaristic language in referring to this return of Christ’s emancipating Spirit. Eventually Paul is martyred in Rome for such speech.
That’s probably more than you care to know….but there are a lot of people who believe such nonsense. I was listening to an interview on NPR when all this was going on…the end of time date fast approaching….It was an interview with a Roman Catholic priest and a Jewish Rabbi. The priest simply stated that the so-called rapture was not a part of the church’s teaching, that only God knows when the end will come (that’s a separate topic, at least for me…I’m currently reading a book that in describing God the writer uses the metaphors of mystery, possibility and contingency….fascinating) The Rabbi was asked in the interview what he had learned about people during this eschatological hype (my paraphrase), and the Rabbi said that he had learned that people have such great hope….What?!…C’mon!! I screamed at the radio….I won’t tell you what I would have liked to have said about such belief, but what I will say is that this whole modern day notion of “rapture” is about two things: fear and exclusivity….and neither have a place in a studied and healthy life of faith.
It is we the sent ones, people of hope and conscience, people of compassion and mercy, It is the sent ones who bear the rapturous and just dignity of God to our world. Christ’s second coming is now….It is now for us to bear to the world….to share the rapture, the victory of salvation that becomes as we speak and act….God’s coming commonweal sets its roots in earth, the good earth…not in some other worldly place up there…somewhere…. as Luke writes this Sunday in Acts…”Why do you men stare up to heaven” …look for him among us…and among those who need his saving life the most…wherever there are acts of compassion and liberating justice…wherever there is non-violence and wherever meals are taken in community…wherever there is gracious dignity…there is the rapture….the rapture of the wounded made whole….Are we rapture ready? you bet….and the true date of it is… NOW…..I’m waiting for the media to call.
You know the story about the two bumper stickers. The one says “Come the rapture, this car will be unmanned.” The other says, “Come the rapture, can I have your car?”
“Are you (are you) ready for that Great Atomic Power?
Will you rise to meet your Savior in the air?
Will you shout or will you cry, when the fire rains from on high?
Are you ready for that great atomic power?”
I was really hoping that we, as a species, had evolved a little given the unnecessary “end of the world” predictions of Y2K. Alas, I was let down and now all I have learned is that there a lot of stupid people amongst us.
When religious belief becomes psychotic, don’t we have an obligation to step in with some paxil or zoloft. Obviously, these “rapture rappers” need help.