Advent 1: A Brief History of Rapture Theology & Waiting with Hope

Text: Matthew 24:36-44

Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.

Happy Advent! We’ve made it into a new liturgical year, a year where we’ll spend a lot of time in the Gospel of Matthew. We begin our foray into Matthew in the middle of the chapters scholars call his “Little Apocalypse”. To put it all into context, at this point in Matthew, Jesus has had his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and cleansed the temple. He has debated with Pharisees and the legal experts, making them angrier at him and solidifying their resolve to hand him over to the state to be executed. Jesus is within his last week on earth. 

After sharing that the temple will one day be destroyed, not one stone will be left on another, he goes into his visioning. In Matthew, Jesus starts out with words very similar to what we heard from Luke’s Gospel two weeks ago. There will be wars and rumors of wars. But hold on because the end has not yet come. Matthew expands out from there. 

The people are warned to run to the hills when destruction comes. The sun will become dark, the moon won’t give its light. They are to learn from the fig tree. They know by its branches when summer will be. In the same way, when they see these things, they will know that the Son of Man is near. Then he begins “But about that day or hour no one knows…”

This is the stuff that rapture theology comes from, the idea that some will ascend into heaven to meet Jesus at the Second Coming.What I call rapture theology is actually several different theologies with such names as premillennial dispensationalism and pretribulationism. I refer to all of them as rapture theology, not because I don't recognize their distinctions, but because they all hold the idea of Jesus coming at any moment to take true believers away before setting the world right. Those true believers will meet Jesus in the sky and will be protected while Jesus cleans house, righting all the wrongs on earth, making it like heaven. Jesus will then reign on earth. It is this group of theologies that give us things like the Left Behind books. 

Rapture theology itself isn’t that old, it was fully developed in a time of deep religious fervor in the United States, known as the Second Great Awakening. During this Great Awakening, much like the first one in 1730 through 1740, revivals and camp meetings spread across the land in the early 1800’s, starting in Kentucky and Tennessee. The preachers called people to repent and lead lives worthy of the Gospel. Jesus was indeed coming back, of that they could be sure, so they needed to not only work towards personal holiness, but social holiness. The world had to be prepared for Christ’s return. The emphasis on the imminent return of Jesus was highly influential and passages like the gospel we read today sparked imagination. Evangelical leaders began to take a hold of the idea of rising into the sky to be with God, of leaving the world behind for Jesus to take care of at his second coming. They spoke of it as the beautiful coming day of the Lord, one that would be there soon. Theologies of how this would happen grew from there. 

While I can see how the scripture passages these theologies references can lead people towards the idea of a rapture, I, and The Episcopal Church in general remain skeptical of this theology and the vast majority of us don’t believe it. First of all, those who wrote apocalyptic texts like what we read today didn’t write them primarily as predictions of the future. They wrote them to help people understand what was happening in their lifetimes. The Gospel of Matthew was written to Jewish Christians after the fall of the temple. They had been through wars and chaos. They had seen Jerusalem up in flames. They were scared, they were frightened, they were confused. Jesus hadn’t come back yet. But they were reminded, not even Jesus knew the hour of the second coming. They were given the strength to continue on in times of deep uncertainty. These words of Jesus were recorded to help them remain true to Christ and continue watching for Christ’s return. 

While Matthew’s words were meant for good, and the theology of the rapture was initially created for comfort, I’ve heard many adults share how as children they lived in fear of being left behind, of arriving home and being the only family member remaining. This is often wrapped in a theology of uncertainty, of having to prove your place in heaven, a subtle twist on the theology of predestination, which at its core says that God knows who will be in heaven, we don't. At least since the time of the Puritans, people have stressed over the theology of predestination, proving you were elect, that you were chosen by God was a big deal. That impetus to prove yourself worthy has never left American Christianity. But still, they could not know if they made the cut. Kids have been asked: Are you going to make the cut? Are you going to be raptured? The answer they are told: No one really knows. Kids are told to hope for rapture, but they can’t be certain they’ll be raptured until the time comes. Kids need security, people to care for them and nurture them. They need to be able to rely upon others and know they’ll be there. So the idea that any day they could come home and be the only one left hurts a child’s psyche. It creates anxiety and trauma that is hard to unpack. 

The theology of rapture also creates a level of certainty that I don't think is supported by their proof texts. When I read passages like our gospel today, I encounter a great mystery, not a great certainty. Two people are working in the field, one is taken the other left. Where does the one taken go? Is being taken good or bad? Asking those questions is like asking what the white whale represents in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. The answers are across the board, from saying the whale represents God to saying the whale represents the devil. In the same way, commentators on this passage will say being taken is good or being taken is obviously bad, and the logic is solid with either case. It really comes down to which interpretation you support. There is no right answer. I don’t think there’s supposed to be a right answer. It’s meant to make you stop and consider what Jesus is saying. It’s supposed to inspire questions, not give answers. What does it actually mean that in the end, Jesus will come like a thief in the night? How does it affect our lives to not know the day or the hour that God is coming? 

That brings us to why this passage is used for the first Sunday of Advent, why we start with this weird apocalyptic text rather than jumping into the story of Mary’s pregnancy. Because more than anything, Jesus is asking us to be watchful, to live our lives with purpose. The expectancy of Advent is one of Christ coming into the world again, of incarnation, God becoming flesh. Do we see where God is at work in our lives? Do we have the strength to wait and hope for God to appear to us again? 

Apocalyptic texts like this one ask us how God is working in the world today, especially when the world is harsh and cold. After so many shootings, after needless deaths and destruction, can we see the sparks of something different? Can we fan the flames of new life that are budding up around us? Can we still believe that in the end God wins? 

There is an intentionality that this scripture is meant to invoke. We are to pay attention, to see the presence of God around us. Even in the midst of the average work day, we’re meant to watch for God at work among us. Monastic communities call this kind of attitude ora et labora, prayer and labor. They seek to infuse their work with prayer, to focus on God in the midst of even the most menial task. They are reminded by their sibling monks that even cleaning the toilet or washing the dishes can be done prayfully. That sounds easy when we think of cloistered monastics who live together and pray seven times a day, but it becomes more challenging as the average American. There are so many distractions from prayer. 

The people in our gospel today were doing average daily work. They were working in the fields and grinding grain. The difference was not in what they were doing, it was how they were approaching their work. One was being intentional, the other wasn’t. One noticed something while the other didn’t. That’s why one was taken and the other left. It doesn’t really matter whether being taken was bad or good. The act of being taken is not the focus, watchfulness is the point. Where are our prayer opportunities?Where are our opportunities to embrace watchfulness in our lives?

There are ways of infusing a focus on God into all our daily tasks of life. One of my friends has a diaper change prayer. He knows that there are repeated times throughout his day when he will have to pause and take care of that task. So he takes the time to pray with his child, to thank God for the wonders of the digestive tract, and pray for the continued health of his kids. Rather than seeing diaper changes as a chore, he takes them as an opportunity. Where are our prayer opportunities?

I think it’s interesting too that Jesus brings up Noah in this text. Jesus isn't emphasizing the flood, he's asking us to consider what the people were up to before the flood happened. The people around Noah paid no attention to what was going on nor did they particularly care about God.  They went about their daily lives and did their own thing until their lives ended abruptly. 

Jesus is asking us to be attentive to the things happening around us. Sometimes small things like noticing our neighbor building a boat, could help prolong our earthly lives. Jesus was talking to a people whose temple would soon be destroyed and who would go through battles within their own cities. Telling them to watch and wait did indeed save lives. Those who paid attention got out of dodge at the first sign of conflict. But what does watching and waiting do for people for whom war is not imminent? 

I invite you to consider this:How many times has paying attention to a small thing changed our worlds? Perhaps it is even the smallest of things that tend to change our lives forever. I think about how my professor in college recommended my seminary. We were in a room studying biblical Greek. I wasn’t a particularly good student, but I was trying rather unsuccessfully to get it under my belt. The conversation turned towards seminary, my ultimate goal, and he told me Candler was my place, a school I had not heard of before he mentioned it. I paid attention because he didn’t recommend his own alma mater. So I googled it. I managed to fill out that application, the only seminary application I actually completed. I got a scholarship. I moved to a city I had never been to before. I encountered The Episcopal Church. I met my spouse. My world changed because of a professor’s comments. God was leading me through him. How has your world changed because of small things? 

Being watchful changes us and it changes the world. Being able to listen to what God is saying and what is going on in the world is crucial. There’s a saying that a preacher should have a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other, which is a good reminder of why we preach, but I think that it leaves interpretation to a select few. Jesus asks us all to pay attention in our own times and places. Considering what God is doing in the world is not just the task of sermon writers. Jesus invites all of us to be curious, to ask questions, to not bury our heads in the sand. We are to be people deeply invested in the world around us, people who are intentional about our interactions with neighbors, friends, and strangers. We are to pray and contemplate even while we’re in the midst of our busy lives. That way we can see when even the smallest things call us to something new. 

In the end, we don’t really know when death will come. We don’t know when Jesus’ second coming will be or what that will look like. What we do know is that God is at work in the world around us. God is using us as the hands and feet of Christ. So may we live with intentionality and purpose. May we ask good questions about our present times and what God is asking us to do. May we pay attention to what God is birthing into this world. Amen.