Eschatology and common sense

Because I can't think of anything else to write about today

During my first year of seminary, before I had to start taking on the tougher assignments of actually serving in supervised ministry or student pastor roles in various parish locations, I usually attended the local Methodist church adjacent to the campus. The pastor at the time was a fellow who was quite gifted in the pulpit but had a rather annoying habit of going down the rabbit hole of explaining, in considerable detail, the meaning of this or that particular New Testament word or phrase in its original Greek. You might say this was a deft exercise in contextualization, considering his congregation consisted largely of seminary students and professors, but I was still a year or so away from taking the required course in New Testament Greek (which I failed three times before finally before finally getting to study under a professor so esteemed that it was said that some students actually flunked intentionally just to get into his class), so much of what he said fell flat with me.

Naturally I came to understand and appreciate that having at least a rudimentary grasp of the original languages of the Old and New Testaments was important to the preacher in properly exegeting a text. Most of us, however, are not going to have a congregation full of Greek or Hebrew scholars. There are times when citing the original Greek can be helpful (eg. noting the connection between the Greek word for “thanksgiving” and the sacramental term “eucharist”) but an extended discourse on the subtle nuances of active and passive voice is not going to hold our parishioners’ attention.

All of that to prepare you for the heavy dose of Greek I am going to use in today’s little discussion of another subject that often falls flat with certain people, eschatology (the meaning of which, from Greek, is “last word”). Call me strange, but when I have nothing else to write about, this is my default subject.

Of the four Gospels, John’s is the one we might say is the most self-contained. The ordeal of Jesus’ passion is presented as embodying the “tribulation” that the whole church must endure to the end, with Judas cast in the role of “the son of destruction” (John 17:12) and the hour in which the Apostles will be “scattered, each to his own home” (John 16:31) being the apostasy that must necessarily precede the Day of the Lord, a term we might consider synonymous, or at least concurrent with, the resurrection (Peter and his three denials being, perhaps, the embodiment of this episode).

Christian eschatology is nothing if not simple common sense. The Greek term for “falling away” is apostasia, literally, “standing off.” Conversely, “resurrection” in Greek is anastasis, literally, “standing again.” Simple logic would dictate that a “standing again” be preceded by a “standing off.” So when Paul says, for instance, in 2 Thessalonians 2, that “the Day of the Lord” will not come unless the apostasy comes first, he is merely stating the obvious. It is a scenario as old as Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve fell away by eating the forbidden fruit, had their nakedness (lawlessness) revealed, and had to face the judgment of God, being able to “stand again” only after God himself had intervened to provide them an adequate covering for their nakedness. If you want to understand “the end,” then go back to “the beginning” and everything begins to make sense.

Following his resurrection, Jesus appears to his disciples on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias (John 21). There, he reminds Peter, in particular, of his apostasy (through symbols that recall the night of his denial, such as the breaking of bread and a charcoal fire), reinstates him in love (asking him three times, “Do you love me?”), and then says to him, “Follow me.” Previously, in a conversation with Peter in chapter 13, Jesus said, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward” (v. 36). The conversation in chapter 21 closes the circle. Jesus, having gone to his death on the cross and then rising in triumph over sin and death, has established the pattern that Peter is now called to follow, even though it may lead him to a place he does not want to go. As John states several times throughout his Gospel that Jesus said this or that “to indicate the kind of death he was going to die,” he now writes that Jesus said this to Peter “to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.”

Peter, and by implication all who would follow Jesus, must now replicate Jesus’ ministry of redemption and transformation, up to and including making the ultimate sacrifice out of love for him. The path of each individual may not be completely identical. John, for instance, would not die a martyr's death but would, rather, glorify God through a life of abiding faith that would become an extension of the very life of Christ (“If it is my will that he abide until I come, what is that to you?”). Yet, all who follow Christ are called to hold back nothing, including life itself, from the service of his kingdom.