DO WE REALLY WANT JESUS BACK?

In the Bible’s Old Testament we can read about what the ancient Jews referred to as the coming “Day of the Lord.”  In the Hebrew (יֹום יְהוָה pronounced “Yom Adonai”) we find the Prophets of old referring to this as an age to come when God’s Messianic rule would establish social justice and lasting peace.  If only “Yom Adonai” would come, then all would be wonderful.   It was a kind of Make Israel Great Again cry from the people to God through their Priests who would speak for them, pleading for God’s rescue.

When it came to the Hebrew Prophets themselves, however, the message of reply from God to the people was more along the order of “be careful what you wish for.”    Yes, this “Day of the Lord” would come, but the social justice it would bring for the sake of lasting peace wouldn’t be to their liking.  One of God’s Prophets, Joel, put it this way, "The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come" (Joel 2:31).   The Prophet, Amos, put it in even bolder terms, “Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!  Why would you have the day of the Lord?  It is darkness, and not light, as if a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him, or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall, and a serpent bit him.   Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?     ‘I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.   Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them.   Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.    But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream’”  (Amos 5:18-24).  

The jist of matters where the Old Testament Prophets were concerned was that “Yom Adonai” would bring to earth God’s judgment of all nations, including their own.  The Psalmist (110:6) noted that the rulers of all nations would be judged according to their deeds.  So the Prophets essentially begged the question of “do you really want your own nation to be judged by a God of righteous justice?”   Really?

This same social dynamic or cultural norm was in play, to no surprise, when Jesus walked the earth preaching and ministering to the Jewish people of his day.  “יֹום יְהוָה” in the Hebrew was replaced by “ἡμέρα κυρίου” in the Greek as the New Testament cries of the people were for God to bring about what we broadly refer to as the second coming of Christ.  “Christ will come again!”  Or “adventus” in the Latin use of the Greek term, “Parousia,” signaling the arrival of Christ to establish God’s Kingdom of perfect justice and lasting peace.   This was the very crux of the biblical Gospel.  (Any notion that the Gospel involved our personally going to Heaven after we died was a made up gospel coming out of evangelical Christianity within the last couple centuries, not from Jesus Himself….i.e., from God’s Word.) 

Perhaps this is why the Gospel of Matthew makes it a point to report how it was Jesus Himself addressed the issue of this new Day of the Lord when he would come to judge the nations.   Having already issued His own prophetic “7 woes” in Matthew 23, Jesus now arrives at that point in his message where the judgment of the nations is to take place.   In Matthew 25:31-46, he tells the parable of the sheep and the goats.   It takes precious little imagination to realize Jesus is including those looking forward to His second coming as being the goats in His parable.  

Ouch?

Do we really want Jesus back? 

This is the question we may all want to ask ourselves in this blessed season of Easter.    Are we really ready for God’s judgment of the nations?   Do we realize that, where God is concerned and assuming Jesus is allowed to speak for God in the first person (instead of just having other heroes of our faith speaking for God in the second person), God will exalt the humbled and humble the exalted? That God will privilege the marginalized among the world’s people, the strangers in the foreign lands or the poorest in the homelands, and then marginalize the privileged in return?  Have we ever read the parable of Jesus found in Luke 16:19-31?   

Let me ask that last one another time.   Have we ever read the parable of Jesus found in Luke 16:19-31?  Do we dare look it up now?  (Hint: v. 31 is the strangest Easter message ever.)

Yes, I am of the faith that believes there really will be a  “יֹום יְהוָה” or a “ἡμέρα κυρίου” and that God’s judgment will indeed be just.   I believe that social justice alone will then establish lasting peace.   But I tread cautiously into the territory of wishing it would happen right away.   There’s a part of me that trusts the Easter Resurrection as a sign that all will turn out great in the end.   But what if the Resurrected Christ has no such message to bring back from the grave?   What if we are still being told to expect the unexpected?   To be careful what we wish for?   To stop assuming that God would come and Bless, not Damn, America…..my own nation?

Do we really want Jesus back yet again?