“The first time he came as a sacrificial lamb, the second time he’ll come as a conquering king” (i.e. “No more ‘Mr. Nice Guy’!”)
You won’t find that in Scripture but I don’t know how often I heard sentiments like that expressed about Jesus’ 2nd coming. And it took me a long time to get to this point, to where I became absolutely, adamantly convinced that it’s wrong.
Jesus chides his disciples (in one account) as he is being arrested, that if he’d wanted to, he could have had twelve legions of angels at his disposal – and that hasn’t changed: they’re still there at his beck and call. But where once I might have thought that he would come riding back with those twelve legions behind him, to smite and destroy however many people were still opposing him, now that picture is repugnant and unimaginable, utterly incompatible with that of one who prayed for forgiveness of those who had nailed him to that cross.
Hebrews 13.8 says that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. In other words, he is and always has been our shepherd (as his Father is and always has been our Father, too), and one who will go to whatever lengths are required to rescue any sheep no matter how lost. Is it credible that at the end he would initiate a battle to end all battles to bring the whole thing to an end? Is it credible, even, that he would join such a battle if it had been started by human armies on its own terms?
Having this expectation that he would do so at the back of (or shot all through) our minds leads to a kind of prayer that can take escapist overtones: “Christ, come quickly! There’s danger at the door...”<1> as though the parousia will be some kind of Deus ex Machina. When we lean in this direction, I am convinced we are mistaken. Deeply. We have not taken into account what our original commission in creation was: to stand at the junction of the natural and the supernatural realms: reflecting God’s wise rule and care into creation, reflecting nature’s glory back to God. Anything short of this, I believe, doesn’t take account of his ancient intentions: to his image bearers, in his temple, fully restored.<2>
Expecting Jesus to return and fix everything has made us careless about creation. Expecting Jesus to destroy this world and re-create it fails to understand a creator’s heart towards his own works. Expecting Jesus to do all this at the end narrows our focus in “preaching the gospel” to words directed to our fellow humans: his command says our proclamation ought to be broader: to disciple others, we need, ourselves, to be fully discipled, including in how to care for his masterpiece. Expecting him to be the final “fix” lets us off from doing the hard work of being his hands, his feet, his voice, conveyors of his heart, reconcilers by default, toward the world whenever it gets “too hard” to bother with.
And expecting him to advance by violence makes it too easy for us to accept that some other bloodbath we might be inclined to approve of now is right in some way. If “by their fruits you will know them”, then all of these results of this mindset ought to be enough to drive us to shun it with our every fibre.
And I believe changing thus will open the way to better Christian politics than anything we currently practice anywhere.
<1> Winter, Sr. Miriam Therese. “Come Christ Jesus”, I Know The Secret. 1966.
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