I do enjoy the Madpriest. Here is his liturgical suggestion for the First Sunday of Advent:
Priest enters
Priest proclaims the bidding:
Jesus is coming soon.
To which the congregation responds in unison:
He'll be coming round the mountain when he comes. Amen.
First hymn
If you are tired of waiting for for Jesus to come, just be patient and remind yourself that he will be here Adventually.
ReplyDelete:)
One of my favorite bumper stickers:
ReplyDeleteJESUS IS COMING.
LOOK BUSY.
The "Jesus is Coming" thing drives me nutz.
ReplyDeletePerhaps one day the Fundi will realize that if Jesus isn't with them now, they've learned nothing from Him.
I have the feeling he'll show up wearing Groucho glasses (complete with fake eyebrows & nose), hoping that the fundies don't recognize him. They probably wouldn't anyway.
ReplyDeleteBut, guys, all Christians affirm together the Nicene Creed of the church, across all of our mainline denominations.
ReplyDelete"He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end."
So, why is this just considered a fundamentalist thing?
I can't speak for anyone else who's commented, but I think the fundamentalist issue comes up with what we do and don't believe about what will happen.
ReplyDeleteDispensational premillennialism (think Left Behind) is usually associated with fundamentalism, but not all fundamentalists believe in dispensational premillennialism. Basically, rapture happens (which is Second Coming Part A), tribulation begins, tribulation ends (Second Coming Part B), 1000-year reign of Christ, then last judgment. You have to use a pretty tortured reading of Revelation to get here.
Another scary development is the Christian Reconstructionist movement, which is postmillenial. Postmillennialism (which Calvinists have historically been open to) says that after the 1000-year golden age of the church, Christ will return AND perform the last judgment at that time. The reconstructionists think that they have to cause the Second Coming by turning the world into a Christian state that enforces Biblical laws, beginning at home (the US). Again, all reconstructionists are postmillenialists, but not all postmillenialists are reconstructionist. Similarly, all reconstructionists are fundamentalists but not v.v. And certainly all postmillenialists are not fundamentalist.
The PC(USA)'s outlook was once framed in a phrase I really like: eschatological agnosticism. We hold that we don't know all the details about how or when Christ will return, but he has given us very clear instructions in the meantime: Love God, Love Neighbor, and wait with hope. We trust that a sovereign God has this all worked out.
I agree with the last paragraph, too, Flycandler. I agree that sometimes Christians can really fall off the plantation when it comes to the second coming of the Lord. If you've ever looked at some of these religious tracts, it looks like we're all about ready to rocket off into outer space like superman or something, a pretty ridiculous caricature. (Although, I realize that these folks mean well.)
ReplyDeleteBut, on the other hand, we don't want to ditch the baby with the bathwater, and be afraid to even open our mouths about the return of Christ, or the reality we express in the Nicene Creed of the church, in my denomination every Sun.
**I think the fundamentalist issue comes up with what we do and don't believe about what will happen.**
ReplyDeleteI'm more of the mindset that if Jesus comes again, no one's going to recognize the manner in which it occurs. For all we know, the second coming has already occured, and we just need to see that. After all, the Messiah in the NT didn't match expectations. Why should the second coming?