way as evangelicals. We might not believe in any kind of literal second coming (or even a metaphorical one), and we might even go so far as to question the existence of any kind of heaven. Instead, we argue that heaven happens here on Earth when we act out the teachings of Jesus, and that hell is simply an invention of the medieval church designed to control the masses. I might be going a bit far, of course, but it’s not a stretch to say that most progressive Christians struggle when it comes to talking about anything related to Jesus’s (or the rest of the Bible’s) apocalyptic passages, as they usually ascribe them simply to the culture the Bible comes from when people quite clearly believed in a coming apocalypse of some sort.
Thus, we’re left with what to do with these passages. I’m never comfortable simply dismissing passages as presenting archaic beliefs that have nothing to teach us, as there are almost always truths lying beneath the surface of those passages, and I definitely believe that to be the case here. One of the reasons our society is so focused on apocalyptic scenes (note the number of zombie shows and movies that have replaced the focus on nuclear annihilation prevalent in the 1980s) is that we all will ultimately suffer from our personal apocalypse: we will all die. The world will come to an end for us, so, whether we want to admit this truth about ourselves, we believe the world will, for all purposes, end. We are unable to truly imagine a world without us in it, as our viewpoint is the only one we know and can imagine.
Thus, if we want a different way of thinking about the afterlife, we can think about the world that will exist after us. Samuel Scheffler, author of Death & the Afterlife, takes an interesting approach to this subject. He doesn’t believe in the afterlife in the traditional sense, but he does talk about a literal world that exists after our deaths, as the earth will continue after we die. He then proceeds to argue that, if we were to ignore that world, it would change almost everything about our lives. He uses the example of a cancer researcher to ask whether that would be a good use of time and resources if everyone on the planet was simply going to die out in seventy or eighty years; why would anyone do research that will not see real results in their lifetime? He even references a scene from Annie Hall, where Alvy Singer, a nine-year-old, says that he won’t do his homework because the universe will end. The doctor assures him that that end will not happen for billions of years, but Scheffler asks whether or not Alvy would be right if all lives would end in ten or twenty years. Essentially, he’s taking the idea of what we would do if we only had six months (or two decades) to live, but complicating it by removing any future generations.
It is these future generations that might help us better understand what Jesus and Paul are getting at here, as opposed to the more traditional view of the afterlife. Rather than wanting us to live a certain way to get into heaven, Jesus wants us to live a certain way to affect those around us and those who will come after us, those who will live on in what we can call our personal afterlife. Even if we don’t have children, we have an impact on the world that exists after we cease to, whether that impact is large or small. We should “keep awake,” as Jesus says, because we never know when our world will end and our impact will cease.
This unexpectedness, combined with that impact, leads to Paul’s passage on loving one another. He, too, wants us to wake up, to move from darkness into light, but he is more explicit about what he means by that. He wants us to love our neighbor, as that is “the fulfilling of the law.” Loving those around us will have ripple effects, changing the world that we leave behind, not in any sense of cheesy funeral scenes from movies, but by truly changing people around us, causing them to live different lives, as well. If we believe that we will one day die and cease to exist and that we don’t know when that will occur, we should live in the light Paul talks about, loving our neighbors. We might or might not exist in some sort of heaven above, but we can help those who come after us to live in a world that is closer to heaven, giving our lives more meaning than we can now imagine.
Questions for Reflection or Discussion:
How do you think about apocalyptic passages in the Bible today?
What are ways we can live out loving others that will live on after us?
The Harbinger of Things to Come
Second Sunday in Advent
Luke 3:1–14
I’ve often wondered if John the Baptizer could find a job as a minister. His wardrobe and eating habits certainly wouldn’t endear him to any kind of pastoral search committee (I can just imagine their taking him out to dinner when he arrived for the interview), but I also think his message would take him out of contention. Most ministers who begin their sermons with “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” don’t last all that long.
Many scholars believe that John was a member of the Essene community, a Jewish sect that lived outside of cities who devoted themselves to purity and an ascetic lifestyle. In fact, some scholars go even farther and argue that John is the one who changed the Essene lifestyle into something different, which ultimately became Christianity. They point to the fact that there was the same communal lifestyle we later see in the book of Acts, as Essenes lived in communities where they held everything in common. Their belief in purity led to a firm belief in baptism or bathing, which continued on into Christianity in a way it hadn’t in Judaism. The Essenes eschewed marriage out of an avoidance of uncleanness, and the early Christians also avoided marriage, though they did so because they believed the second coming of Jesus could occur at any time.
There are other similarities: a belief in the power of prophecy; a similar system of organization; similar rules for people who traveled to do charity work (as when Jesus sends his disciples out with only the clothes they are wearing). Most importantly, though, the Essenes took part in love-feasts, which the early Christians continued and connected to what we now call the Last Supper. A few scholars go beyond connecting John to the Essene community and put forth the idea that Jesus had been an Essene, which is why John was familiar with him. Others take issue with that connection, given that Jesus seems anti-ascetic in many places, and he was clearly not concerned with rules of purity and cleanliness, given his willingness to break Jewish rules on those subjects.
Regardless of whether or not all of these connections lead us to connect John or Jesus to the Essene community, it’s clear that John’s teaching is quite similar to theirs. The first part of John’s teaching is the most familiar, in fact, when he warns his listeners that their connection to Abraham, and, thus, their Judaism, will not save them. In preparing the way for Jesus, John is bringing the ax to the root of the tree, as he puts it, showing that God’s love will be for all people, not simply for the Jews. By taking up the metaphor of the ax, though, his message seems to emphasize judgment over love.
The similar passages in Matthew and Luke stop with this teaching, leaving us with an image of John as a wild-eyed prophet who seems bent on bringing some cleansing of Judaism, wanting nothing more than to wipe it clean, so Jesus can start from scratch. However, John’s message is much more than that, as he is setting up the main ideas that Jesus will explore in his ministry. Whether that connection comes from their similar backgrounds in the Essene community or because they had spoken at some point before (they are cousins, according to several gospel accounts) or simply because God had given them the same message to bring to the people, John’s influence is clear.
First, the Isaiah passage sets up the idea that God’s love is for all people, and the path to that love is being made clear and easy. In a culture where everyone walked or rode donkeys everywhere they went, the idea that valleys would be filled and mountains would be made low would be appealing. God is making their journey as easy as possible, as it will be straight and smooth and flat. Because of the message that John (and then Jesus) is bringing, it will be possible for all of humanity to see the salvation of God. This quote from Isaiah is much more about the love of God than the judgment of God.
Second, the part that the author of Luke adds that is not
