I can always tell when a product is moving from the fringes to the mainstream when I see it advertized on television.
So it is that I have been seeing more and more commercials from The Wise Food Company who in the past have sold their products to two niche groups: Campers who plan to spend more than a week or so in the wilderness and those who are preparing for some kind of dire emergency where they will be cut off from food and water for a long period of time.
The second group are called “doomsday preppers.”
The late comedian John Pinette was spot on theologically when he said, “As far as the end of the world goes, I believe you’re prepped. There is nothing you can do.”
“If I wake up, look out my window and say, ‘Oh, it’s doomsday.’ I turn off the light and I go back to bed. There is nothing to be done.”
“But my relatives, they say things like ‘We got about six months of water, some ramen noodles, and we got a lot of firearms.’
And I think to myself, ‘It’s a good thing you got those guns because after six months of nothing but ramen noodles and water, you’re going to want to use them.”
“And, they think their cellar is in a different universe.
They say, ‘You know we got a two foot thick door.’ And I look at them and think, ‘Well, I’m sure that will stop the 30 mega-ton nuclear blast. I’m sure nothing will happen to you. You’ll be safe. You won’t be doomed like the rest of us poor suckers ... scraping for a tomato.’”
The sad part Pinette’s comedy is that I have read about people who are preppers. They are anxious preparing for the end of the world. And that would be fine if they wouldn’t want me to be a prepper to too.
But Panetta was right, and strangely enough Jesus seems to be in complete agreement with this 21st century stand-up comedian.
Jesus could not have been clearer on the subject. “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
We don’t like the idea of “not knowing.” It makes us anxious. We want to know what is going to happen to us. We want to know not only what tomorrow may bring but the day after that and the day after that and the day after that.
We want our lives to be neatly planned out so that we will know what to do. We want to know how many bags of ramen noodles we should buy thinking that if we have a six months supply of those things in our cupboard we will be less anxious. But we won’t be.
Even if we somehow knew with absolute certainty that the end of the world would come three weeks from next Thursday we wouldn’t be less anxious. If anything, we would be more anxious. “Should I make the rounds of visiting my relatives or take the trip to New Zealand I always wanted to take? Gee, I feel guilty if I didn’t go see the relatives one last time but, gosh, I always wanted to see New Zealand.”
What to do? Anxiety.
Listen! You know the exact day when Christmas is coming, don’t you? Are you any less anxious about all the stuff you have to do between now and then?
Continue reading the words of Jesus, not those who want to add to those words with their predictions, and you’ll discover what you need to be doing.
He describes some pretty mundane stuff. People eating dinner and perhaps having a glass of wine afterwards. Couples preparing to get married. Men and women working at home or in their business. Jesus is talking about people who wait for his coming not by building bomb shelters but living out their lives.
And here is where even the next images Jesus uses which seem scary and cause great anxiety can even out if you know even just a little Greek.
We have those very scary images that have given rise to the cottage industry of “preppers”.
Two men in the field and suddenly one is gone and the other is left behind. Two woman grinding at the mill, one is gone and the other is left. And we think this is some kind of disappearing act. One moment one person is there. The next moment, poof! Gone!
I almost never do this to you but I have to share with you the original Greek word that appears in this text. That word for “taken” is paralambanomai [para-lamb-ban-o-my] and is doesn’t mean “to go up” or “to meet” but “to go along with.”
The people who are with Jesus in then end are those who have decided to follow him now. To put him above everything else in their lives now.
I couldn’t help but thinking about this one Thanksgiving morning when Lowell and I went downtown not to attend the Thanksgiving parade, or be the first ones at the Christkindlmarket in Daley Centre but to attend worship at The First United Methodist Church - Chicago Temple.
It is located at Clark and Washington and so swirling all around us were people frozen solid from watching the parade, people searching stall after stall of items for just the right Christmas gift and inside the church people who were not raptured (a word that never appears in scripture) but enraptured by Jesus and who wanted to have their first feast of the day with him, gathered around his table before they gathered around their own.
There were no more than a couple of hundred of us in that place while there were thousands outside. And while we get no extra credit for this, we wanted to “go along with Jesus” before went along with the maddening crowds.
That is what separates us.
There are some who will be too busy with and anxious over their businesses to go along with Jesus.
There are some who are too busy toiling at and anxious over their daily grinds to go along with Jesus.
There are even some who are sitting at home this morning as they have for weeks, months, or even years now, anxious over the state of the church and world and complaining over how bad things are but who still refuse to go along with Jesus and work for the betterment of his kingdom here, now, in this world, which is the only world we have to live in.
In his usual roundabout way Jesus is telling us that the questions about our future need not be answered because what matters is how we are going along with him now.
Christ is breaking into our lives repeatedly. Not just at some unexpected moment but repeatedly, every hour, every minute, every second, every nano-second, and our job is only to keep watching for those moments so we don’t miss them.
John Pinette was in pretty good company when he gave his doomsday advice, “I’d turn off the lights and go back to bed.”
Martin Luther said with confidence: “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”
John Wesley when asked what he would do if he knew the world was going to end at midnight replied: “Why, just as I intend to spend it now. I would preach this evening at Gloucester. I would pray with my family as usual, retire to my room at 10 o’clock, commend myself to my heavenly Father and lie down to rest.”
What separates Luther, Wesley, Pinette, and I hope the rest of you from those who would anxiously stock pile water and noodles while building shelters with two foot doors is a trust that whatever is to come, whatever your future might hold, Christ will be a part of it.
That is what turns anxiety into hope, trauma into trust, and makes the future not something to dread but something to alertly anticipate knowing that you will be going along with Christ and Christ will be going along with you, every moment of time until the end of time.
Now you're prepped.
Thanks for listening.
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