Slouching Toward Bethlehem

December 12, 1999

But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give up its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

These words, supposedly spoken by Jesus, make up part of the so-called "apocalyptic discourse" in the New Testament Gospel of Mark. Whether or not Jesus actually said them is a matter of debate. Scholars are divided about whether or not Jesus was an "apocalypticist," that is, one who believed in a cataclysmic end of the world as we know it.

Traditional readings of Jesus’ words have equated the future "Son of Man" with Jesus himself--that is, his words are read as a prediction of his own second coming. More recent scholarship has suggested that Jesus was talking about someone else. This point of view holds that Jesus expected the imminent arrival of a messiah, someone other than himself, a "Son of Man" who would scatter the wicked and save the good of the earth. Jesus was, after all, a Jew, and the Jews expected a messiah, too,--though a more worldly messiah who would come to restore them to the glory days of the united monarchy.

Still other scholars doubt that Jesus ever spoke these words, believing instead that they were inserted in Jesus’ mouth by the early Christian church during a period of persecution. There is very good evidence in the New Testament itself that Jesus refused to take the title "Christ" which the disciples tried to give him. It was only later, some years after the death of Jesus, that the early Christians began to identify him with the "Son of Man" about whom he had supposedly spoken. In other words, it was probably they, and not Jesus himself, who began to speak of a Second Coming.

The term "Son of Man" as associated with an apocalyptic figure remains obscured in mystery, as it does not appear with that association outside of the New Testament.

Speculation about a Second Coming probably began quite soon after Jesus’ death. After all, his early Christian followers must have been disappointed in their leader. For he had allowed himself to be executed in the most humiliating and insulting manner. Crucifixion was reserved only for the lowest criminals. Why had he not saved himself? Obviously, if Jesus was truly God, as the early Christians soon began to believe, then he could have saved himself if he had wanted to. So, he must have had something else in mind: perhaps this man-god who had allowed himself to be killed as a petty criminal, hung up between two thieves, would return one day. Only then he would be transformed from the gentle and weak and suffering human being who had died so ignominiously on the cross, into a merciless and all-powerful Judge, breaking into history, putting and end to time, judging the wicked, destroying his enemies (and those of his followers), and saving the good.

There is much evidence in the New Testament that the early Christians expected Jesus to return almost immediately. In fact, we learn from the epistles of Paul, the oldest of the New Testament writings, that Christians were disconcerted when they began to die like everyone else, and when Jesus did not return as they believed he had promised. Paul had to reassure the Christians of the Corinthian community about why the general resurrection which everyone had expected was being delayed. But he, too, apparently believed in the imminent return of Jesus as the Christ, possibly during his own lifetime.

As the years and the centuries began to intervene, the belief in a Second Coming did not wane; it was simply put off to the future. Obviously, Jesus was delaying his return for good reason. He would return when the time was right, perhaps at the end of the first millennium. When that didn’t happen, Christians began to look forward to the end of the second millennium.

In the meantime, what were Christians to do? What was expected of them? Was this to be a period of testing, when the wheat would be separated from the chaff, as many Christians believed? What should the Church do in the interim?

These questions have plagued theologians and practicing Christians down through the centuries. The Church soon recognized that it must be of this world if it was to survive. If Jesus was putting off his return, it must be the duty of the Church to carry on his message and to serve as a sanctuary in this corrupt world until the end-time. Some Christians believe, once again, that with the coming of a new millenium, that time is near.

Fortunately, the Church for the most part has taken its duty seriously and has tried to improve this world,--even while keeping its sights focused on the next. But much difference of opinion exists about just how possible it is to significantly change this world. Many Christians are very pessimistic about it, to the point of abandoning any responsibility at all for this world. And so, many Christians continue to await the Second Coming when Jesus Christ will return, and all things will be set right at last.

Perhaps you don’t give the Second Coming a whole lot of thought, but in recent years we have had a President, Ronald Reagan, who "mus[ed] about the end of the world," remarking in a 1983 article in People magazine that, "There have been times in the past when we thought the end of the world was coming, but never anything like this." Former Secretary of the Interior James Watt sometimes made public policy decisions which reflected what he called his own "doubts" about "when the Lord will reappear." And perennial Presidential candidate Pat Robertson has made the statement that, "Mine is an end-time ministry." One wonders if his would have been an "end-time" presidency?

This kind of thinking may not bother you, but frankly it scares me to death! Many fundamentalist Christians, struck by the coincidental similarity between the apocalyptic descriptions in the Bible and the effects of nuclear weapons, believe that a nuclear holocaust would be the first step in the return of Jesus Christ. This evil age would be swept away in nuclear clouds, to be followed by the long expected return of that vengeful Son of Man and his thousand year reign of terror.

Actually, we know quite a bit about the apocalyptic literature found in such biblical books as Daniel and Revelation, as well as in some of the gospel accounts of Jesus. We know, for example, that apocalyptic thinking thrives among the powerless and the disenfranchised,--and this the early followers of Jesus certainly were. How else, other than as a result of some cosmic cataclysm, some terrible Armageddon, could they ever hope to achieve a voice in their society?

Groups such as these, unable to participate in the political, cultural, and religious leadership of their time, came to believe that their only hope of empowerment lay in an end to history as we know it: that their hope lay in the radical in-breaking of a new world order in which they would become the power elite, and their oppressors would be destroyed. Apocalypticism radicalized the notion of "messiah" as the mainline Jews had envisioned it.

We need to keep in mind that the people who created the books of Daniel and Revelation were not healthy, either mentally or spiritually. They were oppressed peoples, perhaps even hunted peoples, who were marginal to the seats of power. And we need to recognize that apocalypticism still appeals to such groups.

Jesus was much too concerned with improving conditions in this world to have been a full-blown apocalypticist, though it is clear that he was the founder of a radical, marginal Jewish sect, which, as the gospel accounts make clear, was very dissatisfied with the ruling orthodoxy. But that does not necessarily mean that he desired the end of the world.

It frightens me when people put their trust in the idea of a Second Coming, or when people despair so much over this world and its problems that they winsomely muse about the end of time. It’s even scarier when they equate certain historical events or the threat of nuclear devastation with the imminent return of Jesus Christ. This "apocalypse now" mentality has no appeal for me.

One of the surest ways I know of to combat this apocalyptic reasoning is to look again at the stories of Jesus’ first coming. For there is much that is hopeful in the birth stories about Jesus, even if they are not literally true.

Where the apocalyptic writers foresaw a cosmic cataclysm, the early Christians who wrote the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth celebrated the birth of a human child-god in the most humble of circumstances. The first coming of Jesus could hardly have been less auspicious. He certainly didn’t come trailing clouds of power and glory. The rumor of illegitimacy hung over his birth. Many husbands would have lacked the trust which Mary received from Joseph.

These parents were common folk. Joseph was a carpenter, so the legend goes. They were unable--too poor?--to procure a room in the inn, despite Mary’s condition, and they had to settle for the stable instead. Jesus came into the world among animals; his first advent could not have been more earthy.

What strikes us about these first Christmas stories is their essential humanity and this-worldliness. On the other hand, what strikes us about apocalyptic stories is their repudiation of human weakness and ineffectualness, and their extreme other-worldliness.

There is in the Christmas stories an implicit honoring of the human. Look, they say, God became human even to the point of being born of a human mother. The apocalyptic stories show a disgust for the human; humanity simply cannot accomplish the changes that need to be made, so an all-powerful Son of Man must intervene to set things straight. In both cases, one might say that humanity needs some assistance: but where the Christmas stories honor God’s and our own human-ness, apocalypticism yearns for an end to human dominance in the world.

The Christmas story contains all the characteristics of great drama, precisely because it is a human story. Even the terrible massacre of the male children by the evil King Herod [see Matthew 2] is all too human. We know that there are always tyrants; yet even tyrants, we learn, can be defeated.

One element of the Christmas story that even a religious liberal can get excited about is the idea that God became human: so human, in fact, that God was born in a stable and lived and suffered like the rest of humanity. The Christmas story actually elevates the human, for it brings God into the human realm. It expresses implicitly the faith that humanity can solve its own problems without the aid of messiahs who end history, the world, and life as we know and love it.

We don’t have to believe that Jesus was literally God in order to appreciate this. Instead of placing our hope in a Second Coming, I think that what Christmas reminds us is that we should place our hope in our own humanity. That is something of which we can be certain. We know that there are still Herods out there, but they can be subverted, just as the three wisemen subverted Herod.

As the reading for the morning ["The Second Coming," by William Butler Yeats] makes clear, the Second Coming may not arrive as we expected. We know all about that rude beast, slouching its way on toward Bethlehem. We’ve seen it, and it is of our own creation, not God’s. That beast may not be bringing the salvation of which we dreamed. Perhaps we would do better to rely upon ourselves for a while longer, before we welcome it through the stable door.

I want to close with the affirmation that Christmas must remain a season of realistic hope. Given the choice, I’ll take the story of divine birth in a manger over the doubtful one of apocalypse any day. For as Sophia Fahs once wrote, "Every day that a child is born is a holy day." The message of that old story is a real one: The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light; a child is born; the prince of peace. It’s as simple as that, except, of course, that as Jesus constantly reminded his followers, we need "eyes to see and ears to hear."

Haynes Johnson, a noted editorialist, once put it this way:

The Christmas season always evokes the eternal contrasts between peace and pain, generosity and suffering, selflessness and selfishness, love and hate. It remains a time when, in the words of the carolers, the hopes and fears of all the years are met--and the evidence of all the centuries is that the fears, however pervasive or well-founded, never have extinguished the hopes.

The humorist Ogden Nash captured the bittersweet truth about Christmas in his poem, "A Carol for Children":

God rest ye merry Innocents;
Let nothing you dismay,
Let nothing wound an eager heart
Upon this Christmas Day.
God rest ye merry Innocents,
While innocence endures.
A sweeter Christmas than we to ours
May you bequeath to yours.

That is the hope which the first coming of Jesus was meant to convey, not the horror of an Armageddon. And it is a hope that we trust, in this Christmas season more than in any other season, will yet come to be. We may not get a second chance. May our holidays be bright with hope, love, and generosity. And may we be filled with thanksgiving for this world and this life, the life which is, after all, the greatest gift of all. Merry Christmas! Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock