Is it just me, or does it feel as though our world is falling down around us?
Full disclosure: I am not an alarmist, a conspiracy theorist, or an eschatological-narrative binge-er. In fact, I have no stomach for such talk—which always strikes me as historically naive—and am enough of a coward that I generally seek to avoid conversation with … well … alarmists, conspiracy theorists, and eschatological-narrative binge-ers.
This is probably not a virtue.
Still, recent massacres perpetrated to the echo of ‘Allahu Akbar!’, the desperation of Syrian refugees on their self-described ‘Journey of Death’ towards Europe, the reflexive move of otherwise steady state governors in my country to bar these bedraggled people from entry into our states and cities …
Addiction stomping all over family and friends.
My rudderless people shuffling toward electing the loudest shouter in the field.
Well, I could go on, but the news and the palpably frightened look in the eyes of people whom I’m not accustomed to seeing afraid make me doubly aware in these days that our world is badly broken. And, therefore, in need of radical repair.
Soon, please.
Then, there’s the Book of James.
Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. (James 5:7–8 ESV)
The incrementalist side of my heart—which prevails in most arguments—hopes that healing for our bleeding world does not require the radical solution abbreviated by the New Testament’s ἡ παρουσία τοῦ κυρίου (the coming/appearance of the Lord). If history’s course were up to me, I’d prefer a steady permeation of human experience with the leavening power of Jesus’ love, a smooth entrance ramp to an even better highway if you please.
Reunion with our Lord would be the slightest tweak of an upward trending. Most would see it coming. Most would welcome him.
Alas, I fear things may not be up to me.
Maranatha! (μαράνα θά: ‘Our Lord, come!’) became a familiar phrase on early Christian lips, both in jubilation and in trembling, when martyrdom’s harsh whip made it a more complex matter to jubilate. This cry of early Syriac Christians must have resonated with deep poignance, for it finds its way untranslated into the New Testament’s Greek record. It is not the only time in the New Testament record that a profoundly moving moment was remembered in the language in which human beings first heard it articulated (Aramaic/Syriac), even though the language of record was Greek. Some of Jesus’ most signature moments were remembered in just this way, as they were experienced.
The times were neither convenient nor abstract then.
Nor, it feels to me, are they convenient or abstract this morning.
So does this morning’s reading from the New Testament book of James find its path without friction into my heart.
Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient.
The farmer’s fruit is, oh, so welcome, when it finally comes to harvest.
But the waiting, the doubting, the patience, the inscrutable mysteries of germination and maturation, of rains early and late. These things are a holy torture, in a farmer’s field and in a weeping world where evil swarms like locusts and confusion suffocates like a leaden sky.
It comes to one as something like gentle rain, this realization that our earliest sisters and brothers needed both the urging toward patience and the permission to cry ‘Our Lord, come!’
As I do, this unsettled morning.
μαράνα θά.
Canter Bridge 