Seeing Jesus for the Last Time

My cousin Teri died when she was 26.  I was 24.

Teri and I were not close as in ‘best of friends’ or ‘inseparable’ etc.  We would play around my grandparent's farm when my family would visit, and I looked forward to seeing her.  But, of my cousins, I would say she and I were closest.  Especially in the last years of her life, as we started having some deep conversations about life and faith and growing into adulthood from adolescence.

 And then she died.  And now she’s gone.

I recently saw her son, now approaching his 20s.  He looked strikingly like her in his face.

I found in seeing him, I saw her.  In seeing him, I remembered whom I had lost in my cousin and my friend.

 
Shortly after her death, I made a comment from the pulpit about how my life was continuing on and hers was not.  I mentioned that I would miss her and I alluded to the pain I felt at knowing I would never see her again.

After church I was verbally accosted by a woman who told me I would see her again in heaven and that my faith must be shallow indeed to have that sadness and belief of permanent absence.

I would later find out that this woman had lost her sister some months earlier and my words had not sat well with her.

I didn’t intend for them to sit well with anyone.  I was expressing where I was emotionally.  A dangerous thing to do in church, I have found.

I do believe in an afterlife, though of what that might consist, I have only speculation.  Spiritual bodies, resurrected bodies, new bodies, or just spirit – the Bible is not consistent or always clear as to these terms.  I do believe we go to God.  Beyond that, I do not know.

Perhaps I will see Teri.

But in this life I will not.

She is gone from here.

One of the Christian doctrines is the Second Coming.  Defined as “the future return of Christ in glory to judge the living and the dead, and to terminate the present world order,” by the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, the Parousia (later called the Second Coming) was an event looked forward to by the Christian believers.

 In the earliest church, Christ’s return was expected at any moment – the apostle Paul thinking that Christ would likely return before his death.  We have now moved into approximately the two-thousandth year of that expectation.

That’s a long time to wait.

For some, it has been a time of reflection.  Perhaps the idea of Christ’s return isn’t what we thought.  As I have posted before, sometimes the Bible doesn’t always mean what it says.  Perhaps the second coming was an idea not from Jesus, but placed into the words of Jesus by the early Church.  It wouldn’t be the first instance. 

If it was an idea of the early church, then perhaps we should investigate what they believed and why they believed it. 

For others, as it is still a doctrine of the church, re-evaluation is in order.  What does it mean to live in expectation of the return of Christ?  For what are we looking?  A repeat of the initial Advent story?  Or is the second coming more spiritual in that we learn to demonstrate the presence of Christ in our hearts and, in so doing, we bring Christ again into the world. 

For others, it is a time of dogged determination.  The Bible said it, they believe it, and that settles it.  No hesitation, no doubt, no pondering. 

May God bless. 

Unfortunately, what we run into with that point of view is similar to the same question posed by the re-evaluation.  What are we expecting?  For many, the answer lies in the book of Revelation.  That becomes problematic.  Revelation is about as clear as Rorschach.  Jesus only appears by name about seven times, and then it seems a bit different from the Gospel Jesus.  Less grace, more wrath.

 

And for yet others, the idea of the Second Coming is affirmed in much the same way as the concept of the Trinity.  It is affirmed.  It isn’t necessarily understood.  But it is a part of the larger church tradition of which Christians belong.

However, I find that for many, this expectation leads to inaction.  “We’re saved, so now we wait for the end and for Jesus to come back.”

While that may be your belief, I would think that Christ would be more interested in what we did with our faith and our understanding of God’s grace exemplified in Christ.

To that end, I would propose the idea that we have seen Jesus for the last time.

He isn’t here.  He is risen.

That is part of our faith tradition.  He’s gone.  And not only is he gone, he ascended.  He isn’t on this plane of existence at all anymore.

I would also point out that those who did encounter him after the resurrection did not recognize him, at least not initially.  There is something fundamentally different about Jesus after the resurrection – something that makes him hard to recognize.  I don’t know what it is, but if we did see him, we might not know him.  But as the book of Acts points out, after the ascension he isn’t here. 

Gone.

With Jesus gone, the Christian faith turns its guidance and reliance upon the Holy Spirit which will “bring to our remembrance” all that Jesus taught.

And there comes the idea I would validate with my proposal.

If all we are doing is finding ourselves waiting on Jesus to return, we aren’t really living by his example.  We aren’t pointing towards the Kingdom of God so much as we are pointing to Jesus whom we await.  We can point to Christ and the expectation of his return, but in the meantime, we have to act as if we have seen Jesus for the last time and, therefore, live in such a way as to demonstrate what the person of Jesus means to us.

The story of the Ascension is secondary to the story of the Resurrection.  Without it, the ascension story is hardly going to matter.  The Resurrection carries with it, as Marcus Borg wrote, “the conviction that God had vindicated Jesus.  Easter is not simply about people experiencing a person who has died. […] Rather, they are stories of vindication, of God’s “yes” to Jesus.  God has exalted Jesus, raised him to God’s right hand, made him Lord.”[1]  God’s “yes” to Jesus is also a “no” to the empire and the violence that killed him.  As such, those who would seek to follow Jesus must take the example of Christ to be the model on which our character and interactions with others are based.  We should seek not to wait for Christ, but to reflect Christ in our living.

My cousin’s son is not Teri.  He certainly looks like her, though.  Enough to call her instantly to mind and, in so doing, remind me of who she was, how she lived, and how much she still remains in my heart.

Christ has died.  Christ has risen.  Christ will come again.

In the meantime between the second and third sentence of that affirmation of faith, we have to live in such a way as to bear Christ to those who see us.  We have to become the likeness of the one whom has gone from here. 

 

At the end of the service of marraige in the United Methodist Book of Worship, these closing words are offered:

"Bear witness to the love of God in this world, so that those to whom love is a stranger will find in you generous friends.  The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all."

 

For those who haven't seen Christ, may he be made visible in those who seek to follow him, and in so doing, may we be generous to those who, as of yet, have never seen him.

 

 

 

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[1]  Marcus Borg Jesus p.289