The Day of the Lord

by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

Scripture: Amos 5:18-24; Matthew 25:1-13

"Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why would you have the day of the Lord? It is darkness not light; as if a man fled from a lion and a bear met him..."

-- Amos 5:18

One of the more interesting phenomena of our current culture is the immense popularity of the “Left Behind” series of novels. “Left Behind” refers to the basic theme of the series, that when Christ returns to judge the world the true believers will be snatched up to heaven while the sinners will be left behind to bear the brunt of the divine anger and endure the terror of the divine indignation at a corrupt world. 55 million copies of these novels by Tim Le Haye have been sold, so they must represent a widely shared view of the world. It is a worldview that we in the theology trade call apocalyptic.

The story the apocalypticists tell sees the world as a system of stark contrasts:  black and white, evil and good, guilty and innocent, in-group and out-group, and there is no doubt that the tellers of the story not out, not guilty, not evil, and (double entendre intended) not black. There is no gray middle ground, because the scene is the final judgment, or “the day of the Lord,” and so there can be no relativity about the status of each group. This is the binary logic of the final judgment, the middle is excluded, there is no third option. The story is therefore hyper-dramatic, and it deals in vast generalizations, with protagonists that are groups rather than individuals, monsters rather than ordinary people. The current home of such dramaturgy is the action channel on deep cable, where you can find Robocop or the Terminator as its flag bearers and Star Wars or the Fellowship of the Ring series as its current hits, along of course with their literary counterpart, the “Left Behind” novels. Need I add that this worldview is steeped in violence, suffused with cruelty, and pulsating with rage?

Need I also say that it is the view of what we call, perhaps too smugly, the “Christian Right?” The readers of “Left Behind” are mostly those who share its apocalyptic view, which they get from the Bible. This alone should warn us that the Bible is an extremely dangerous cultural presence that should not be interpreted without proper guidance. These Christians read the Bible “prophetically,” which is just another way of saying they interpret it as of uniform authority throughout, and infallible in what it seems to say. Prophetically the Bible foretells what will happen at the end of time, and these foretellings can be understood and used to prepare ourselves for the judgment. By this mode of interpretation the Christian Right concluded that the Zionist movement is one of the signs of the end of time, and that they should collaborate with God to ensure that the Jews re-occupy the holy land, because when that re-occupation is complete the final battle, of Armageddon, will take place and the believers will be snatched up to heaven to be with Christ while he brings to bear the full weight of his punishing power on unbelievers and sinners.

There are several things wrong with this picture, not least of which is that the NT, while it does have violent apocalypticism on its fringes has the non-violent kind at its heart. The first coming of God to judge and to save the world took the form of the birth of a baby whose refusal to resort to violence led to his being crucified eventually, and when God comes again his presence will be the same as this first time, gentle, loving and non-violent. We are at present at the end of the church year, where the lectionary directs our attention to the second coming in judgment, conveyed in these parables and pictures at the end of Matthew’s gospel. We reflect on the second coming and prepare again for the first, for Advent, which begins in three weeks, and for Christmas. We must hold these two advents together if we are to understand what the gospels are saying, namely, that the one who comes to judge is the same as the one who came to die; the baby Jesus does not suddenly change into the barbarian Christ, the one who turns the other cheek does not suddenly become a virtuoso of vengeance.

With this in mind we listen first to Amos and then to Jesus, and we discover that their themes converge. Both attack what we call complacency, the self-satisfaction of what Mark Twain called “a Christian holding four aces,” (his least favorite kind of person).  Who are the people Amos tells not to look forward to the “day of the Lord?” They are those who believe that they will be coddled and congratulated on that day and have the great satisfaction of seeing their enemies tortured by none other than God Himself. That day will be the great day of the divine vengeance on God’s enemies, who are, of course, precisely the same as my enemies. God will do the dirty work of revenge for us and we will walk away doubly blessed. Not only will we have succeeded, but they also will have failed - no room for both to succeed. Amos, however, puts it vividly; that  that day will be for us not light but darkness; we might think that then will be better for us than now because we shall have escaped the lion of our present enemies, but on that day we shall meet the bear of our own sinfulness, we shall discover that the one to blame is not the other but myself, that instead of complacency I should have been contrite. - “I have met the enemy and he is I, God be merciful to me, a sinner.”

The source of Amos’ hearers’ complacency is their meticulous observance of the practices of their religion: feasts, solemn assemblies, “peace offerings of fatted beasts,” burnt offerings, cereal offerings, singing and harping (which God describes as noise). All that observance is a mere irritation to the Lord; what God wants is that “justice roll down like waters and righteousness as an ever-flowing stream (5:24).” I cannot spend time today exploring what doing justice and righteousness might mean; I believe we all know what that is even if we do not know how to bring it about more effectively in our society. Rather let us stick with the hazards of complacency.

Jesus tells us a parable of ten virgins, five wise and five complacent. The complacent ones assume that they will be included when the bridegroom comes. They do not need to pay careful attention, to plan for unexpected delays, sudden changes of plan. They are bridesmaids and so are automatically included. But they discover that the complacency is fatal, and furthermore that in these ultimate things nobody can help you; you cannot borrow from those who have been prepared. You stand or fall on your own; no one else can make up your shortfall. Therefore Jesus says, “Pay attention, for you know neither the day nor the hour (25:13).”  So we must be attentive not complacent, if, as one of the unconscious humorists of my profession put it, we do not want to end up in the dark with five foolish virgins.

Paying attention means several things: here are some of them. Firstly, it must always be clear to us that sooner or later we shall have to give account of ourselves before our heavenly Father. We are His beloved children to be sure but we must not presume on that love to justify moral carelessness or spiritual presumption. Imagine the people Amos has in mind: they are the solid folk in the temple congregation whom Amos bothers by standing at the temple door and crying out that they should not be totally immersed in their rituals and ceremonies but should also be zealous for justice towards the poor and oppressed. The work of God is not comprised totally of the work of liturgy; there is a whole world in which we must work God’s work. Honesty, integrity, justice and compassion, in our business and professions, our homes and our clubs, those also are the work of God. Charity and generosity to the poor, those also are the work of God. So we must be clear that doing God’s work does not mean doing only church work; that is one and only one way of doing it, and it might not be the most important; although let me not suggest that it is unimportant! Please we need your help here too.

Secondly, we must never assume that life can be coded as stark binary opposites. Everything in this world takes place in the gray in between. We have no grounds and no right to identify whom God will condemn, the out-group so to speak. This binary element in religions is one of their most dangerous features and the root cause of the well-known war provoking capacity of religion. If we pay attention we shall see first our own sins, and that view will humble us enough beneath the divine grace to fill us with thanksgiving for our own faith rather than anger at those who do not share it.

Contrition not complacency is what we need, and a decent reticence before the prospect of the divine presence, even as we are assured of His love and of our status as His children.

Amen.