ARE WE READY?
I love Bonhoeffer who, ever since he came back from the USA where he had been offered a comfortable position at Union Seminary, knew that by returning in 1939, to Hitler-ruled Germany his chances of surviving the war would be minimal. The Gestapo had already curtailed his movements, had closed down the community he had established and he recognized that with the godless Nazis in power, a death sentence was merely a matter of time. And yes, he was hanged on April 9 1945, less than 4 weeks before the war ended, at age 39.
That prospect colored his entire theology, and now, with the expiry of the world no longer in question – perhaps in no more than a decade, with the pandemic galloping globally and Climate Change unstoppable – it also deeply influences my pattern of thought. Of course, being nearly 93 may also be a factor. This means that, before the End comes, we have to be ready for Christ’s return. I struggle with that daily. From Revelation 21 I have learned that in the New Creation, of which I am a firm believer, there is ‘no temple’, indicating no church, no Bible, not any form of religion, all being human instruments. The Bible tells us that God’s law be written on our hearts.
All this indicates that, after some 2,000 years of probing and testing, of accepting and rejecting all sorts of doctrines and religious statements, of diverse confessions and a multitude of institutions, we have come to the end of the ecclesiastical era, with signs galore that this already is happening. No wonder, Bonhoeffer toyed with the idea of ‘religious-less Christianity’, a state of affairs where there is no place for red-hatted cardinals, or white-hatted popes, or purple-hatted whatever, and no need for denominations, and church buildings and clergy. No more hot heads and cold hearts about homosexuality and celibacy, about baptism and creeds. No more marriage either, also becoming more and more the case.
Parousia.
That’s the Greek word for Jesus’ stay on earth and his return to earth. This phenomenon has consumed the church from its very inception. Right after Pentecost when the Holy Spirit visibly appeared, the community in Jerusalem lived in the full expectation of Jesus’ immediate return. The entire Bible has been written with that in mind. Peter, the impetuous Peter, damped the rash feelings a bit when he wrote – 2 Peter 3 – that with the Lord a day is as a thousand years, and a millennium like a split second – and cautioned patience, but nevertheless, through the Spirit he prophesied that “the Day will come like a thief, and the elements consumed by fire
Today these signs are there for all to see: unprecedented heat waves incinerate bone-dry forests and threaten to release gigatons of methane in the tundra and under the shallow Arctic Sea, possibly causing a sudden tipping point, and immediately implementing Peter’s prophecy, of which the June 28 ARCTIC NEWS bulletin is an enlightening illustration.
GOD’S DISAPPEARANCE.
All this goes hand-in-hand with God’s disappearance, true to Deuteronomy 31: 17, where it says, “I shall hide my face from them. I shall see what their end will be.” Well, I believe we have reached that stage in history: its final stage, where we have to cope without God’s presence.
Of course, God is still there. He is from eternity to eternity, but that does not mean that he is still present in the world he created, and we uncreated. Oh yes, he’s still out there because his world is still out there, his legacy, his passive presence, so to say. But as an active participant, such as the direct force in the form of the Son of Man, Jesus the Christ, no, that phase has passed. We are on our own, and that is for our own good: finally, God has judged that we can stand on our own feet or, as Bonhoeffer put it, “We have come of age.”
Of course, the Scriptures are still there, as a testimony to his involvement with his creation in the past, but these writings have, to a great extent, lost their punch because for many the Bible have become the great unknown, and often misquoted and misunderstood. Take Jesus’ words in John 17 where he says that he does not belong to the world and neither do we. Here Jesus refers to a world where not God but Satan, the great adversary calls the tune. Jesus calls him, quite correctly, “The Prince of this World”. Jesus assumes that with his departure his followers are on their own. 1 John 5: 17 simply affirms this: “The whole world is under the control of the evil one.”
The age of abandonment.
What applies to God also applies to the church: we live in the Age of Abandonment: God has turned away from us, and has left us to our fate. Of course, he is alive in my life, and speaks to my heart. But it is from our history, our society, our cultures, our religious communities, and our politics that God is absent. This also means that his word is no longer spoken, because the structures are in the way. By that I mean that, by now, the hierarchical ecclesiastical organization, mostly based on the ancient Roman army, prevents genuine reform. And, of course, there still is the ‘woman’ thing that remain unsolved, and, of course, there still is the ‘sex’ thing that plagued us: there simply are too many distractions that keep the church from bringing the message.
The Message?
That message Jesus voiced in one sentence (Matthew 6: 33) “Seek first the Kingdom and his righteousness”. That ‘righteousness’ he further explained when, in that same speech, which he gave out in the open, on the mountain slope, because he had bad experiences while talking in the synagogue, in his own church. There, in Matthew 5: 48, he used the word ‘teleios’: Be teleios, be perfect, as my Father is perfect. That Greek word ‘teleios’ we find back in our language in ‘tele’vision, and ‘tele’phone, something that comes from afar.
Bonhoeffer called himself an “Anthropos Teleios”, a person who strives for the perfection of the earth. He said this because In Jesus we are ‘a new creation’, which implies that all our actions must be done with the welfare of creation in mind. It also means that God sees us as grown-ups, as fully responsible adults, accountable for the fate of the world.
Always remember that Jesus did not come to bring a new religion: No. He came to teach us how to grow up to become like he: an adult Christian. That’s why the church today has only one single task: to prepare us for the return of the Lord, who now sits at the right hand of God, “from where’, says the Apostle’s Creed, “He returns to judge the living and the dead.”
“Are we ready?”
That is the last question that concerns us all. Are we ready to live in the New Creation? Does our current way of life and our thoughts reflect being an Anthropos teleios, a person that NOW already fits into the New Creation? A person who suffers with God in experiencing the ravaging of his cosmos?