Posts Tagged ‘signs of the end’

How do we know it’s Jesus?

December 14, 2025

Advent 3 – 2026

Matthew 11:2-11

Marian Free

In the name of God Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-Giver. Amen.

 

Recently I have come to understand the appeal of ‘the rapture’ – the idea that Jesus’ return will be accompanied by angels with trumpets and those who are considered worthy will be swept into heaven while the unworthy will be left to face the utter destruction of the world. It occurs to me that believing in the rapture makes everything so easy. When Jesus returns it will be clear that it really is Jesus – angels, trumpets and the raising of the dead will be obvious to all and are definitely not associated with any other expectation. It will it be impossible to miss the rapture (and Jesus’ return). The other advantage of the rapture is that belief in the rapture is that it has the effect of taking away personal responsibility. Somehow the belief itself  builds up confidence in believers that they are among the ones who will be gathered up because they are among the chosen.

According to this the surprise has been taken away. Jesus’ warning that the day will come as a thief in the night is conveniently ignored. The timing of the rapture can apparently be predicted. Those who believe in the rapture do not have to worry about being prepared, because they have prepared themselves simply by being members of  the believing group. (The fact as recently as this year the prediction failed to come to fruition does not seem to worry adherents, they will happily accept the explanations offered for its failure to materialise.)

Another flaw in this belief is that those who believe in the rapture also seem to think that the rapture will occur in a particular place at a particular time and that believers have to be in that place to be gathered up. This would imply that Jesus’ coming at the end of time will not be a universal, but a very limited event OR that those of us who are not in the in crowd will simply  be left behind.

I’ve been thinking about the rapture, not because some people expected it occur in September this year, but because I’ve also been pondering Jesus’ return – how it will happen and how we will know. It seems to me that if it was difficult for people to recognise Jesus in a tiny nation with a relatively small population how much more difficult will it be today when the population has blown out from 170 – 300 million to around 8.26 billion. How would the word spread? How would we know if it really was Jesus if he appeared in a place a long way distant from where we live to a people with a culture very different from ours? If say, people in Mongolia were convinced that Jesus had come among them, what would they need to do to convince the rest of us to believe them?  Even if Jesus came to a city like Brisbane with a population of nearly 3 million, most of us would only hear rumours that someone amazing was making a difference in the lives of the poor and marginalised. It would be easier not to believe that it was Jesus, easier to believe that those making the claims were simply religious fanatics.

For me this has always been a challenging issue.  We are led to expect that when Jesus comes it will be glaringly obvious – angels and trumpets making the announcement so clear that no one will miss it but is that really how it will be?

In today’s world which is surely as rife with injustice, inequality and conflict as that of the first century there are thousands of good, selfless people, risking their lives and living simply in order to bring healing and hope in places of despair and turmoil. In a time of heightened expectation (or despair) anyone of a number of today’s heroes could be named as (or could claim to be) the one sent by God.

So you see I have a great deal of sympathy for John the Baptist. His successful ministry has brought him into conflict with Herod and he is now in prison – a particularly unpleasant place to be in the first century. He will not have known what the future would bring, but it is not surprising that he is questioning his choices, asking himself if he got it right, if Jesus really was the one who was to come. (After all in his time too there were many ‘messianic’ figures.) John had handed his ministry to Jesus but he is not seeing the dramatic changes he might have expected – the nation as a whole has not turned back to God, the Romans continue their oppressive rule and Jesus is not behaving in a way that will bring about radical change. He must have wondered whether he had got it right.

Jesus’ reply echoes the words of God in the Psalms and in Isaiah, in which God’s promise is that the blind will receive their sight, the lame will walk, the lepers will cleansed, the prisoners set free, the deaf will  hear, and the dead will raised. These subtle signs are evidence of God’s presence on earth but they are signs that we might miss. It is much easier as John’s question attests to look for the more dramatic, earth-shattering signs of disruption and the heavenly signs of angels and trumpets.

If we are to know Jesus at his coming, it is essential that we come to know Jesus now, that we open our hearts and lives to his transforming love, that we seek to understand (and practice in our own lives) his preference for the marginalised, and that we are always on the lookout for signs of his presence among us now. If we are really attuned to him now not only will our lives already be lived as if he were here, but we will not fail to meet him when he returns (in glory or not).

 

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Reading the signs

November 14, 2015

Pentecost 25 – 2015

Mark 13:1-11

Marian Free

In the name of God who remains beyond our knowing and beyond our ability to control. Amen.

“Red sky at night, shepherds delight. Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning,” goes the saying. Reading the weather is an essential part of a farmer’s life, whether the farmer is a herder or an agriculturalist. Lambs have to be brought in if it looks as if it is going to snow, grapes have to be covered if a frost is likely, seed is best planted if rain is imminent and so on.

Signs and signals are an integral part of all of our lives. Signs help us to order our lives and to navigate our way through what can be a complex and confusing world. Signs can be natural or constructed, simple or complex, obvious or subtle and our ability to read them can make a difference to our day-to-day lives and to our relationships with others.

Signs warn us of danger, create order and provide direction. Signals at a level crossing tell us when a train is imminent, green lights indicate that it is safe to continue driving, traffic signs warn us that a road might be steep or windy, slippery or gravelly. Signs enable us to drive in a way that is appropriate to the conditions and to avoid accidents at busy intersections.

Some signs warn us of unseen perils – telling us that we are close to an edge of a cliff, that we are approaching crocodile infested waters, or that kangaroos are likely to jump out onto the road in front of us. Others provide helpful information – which train to catch, which road to take to get to a certain place, which gate our plane is leaving from and so on.

There are signs are relatively easy to read. If the clouds are low and black we can presume that there will be a storm somewhere close. If the clouds are low and green then we can be sure that hail will accompany the storm. Other signs are much more subtle and complex and require a certain amount of knowledge or skill to interpret. Symbols don’t always mean the same thing to all people and pictures can have more than one meaning that can lead to misinterpretation. The subtle signals that make up inter-personal relations can be particularly confusing. People can say the most malevolent words while at the same time keep their facial expressions absolutely bland or even friendly and others can make a joke while keeping an absolutely straight face.

A failure to properly interpret signs can lead to all kinds of misunderstandings – between people and sometimes between nations. Missing an important cue in another person’s facial expression or stance or giving off the wrong cues by one’s own expression or bearing can lead to embarrassment or even cause affront. A misplaced look or gesture can leave another person (or nation) feeling denigrated, insulted or humiliated.

From a human point of view then, the proper interpretation of signs is absolutely vital to the smooth running of society and even of international relations.

Reading heavenly signs is another thing altogether. Indeed, it can be a foolish and dangerous occupation – foolish, because behind such reading is an assumption that God is able to be interpreted and dangerous, because it leads to rash and sometimes deadly actions[1]. A belief that we know what God will do and can predict when God will do it can on the one hand lead to the sort of complacency that Jesus’ return is not to be feared because it belongs in a distant and irrelevant future and on the other lead to a state of constant terror that God will return at any moment and catch us unawares.

In today’s gospel Jesus warns the disciples to be careful how they read the signs lest they make the mistake of believing that they are able to discern when the end is near. He tells them that there will be times when the world seems to be collapsing in on itself, times when violence prevails or when natural disasters wreak untold destruction. These things will happen he says, but they do not herald the end of all things[2]. The planet on which we live is unstable, the weather patterns are essentially outside of our control, and we seem unable to be able to leave peaceably with one another. None of these factors mean that God is behind the heartache and devastation that we witness on a daily basis.

In fact, if we read to the end of the chapter, Jesus reminds us that even he does not know when the end will come. “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.”

Two things are essential. The first is to remember that in good times and in bad we need never fear for we are never alone, God is always with us and in the event that it is necessary God through the Holy Spirit will even speak for us. The second is to live in joyful expectation of Jesus’ return – whenever that might be.

We might not be able to read the heavenly signs, but that does not prevent us recognising God’s presence with us, and living lives that allow that presence to be a reality in the world.

[1] The Jonestown massacre comes to mind, as do other apocalyptic cults that persuade members to take their own lives in the belief that the end is near or that their deaths will bring on the end.

[2] I write this within twenty four hours of the terrible violence in Paris, and in a world that seems hell-bent on destroying itself through terror and war and through a careless disregard for the environment but I am not sure that these signs of human failings are evidence that Jesus is about to come and rescue us from ourselves.

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