The Triumphal Entry--November 21, 2018
"Then we who are
alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet
the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever." [1 Thessalonians 4:17]
On some days during the week, if I get home first
before my wife, when I hear her car pulling into the driveway, I will come
outside to the driveway, meet her at her car to see if she's got anything to
bring in--groceries or shopping bags or school work or the like--and will walk
with her back into
our house together. Even though it might look
at first like I am walking out of the house to
leave, the whole ritual is really about welcoming her
back in. When she pulls into the driveway, I
don't walk out the back door to get in the car with her and then leave our
house behind, usually, but rather I go out to meet her to walk alongside her as
she comes home for the day. She may not have been at the house for the whole
day, but of course, it was her house already--she has just been at work.
When she comes home and I meet her in the driveway, it is to come back--with a
certain sense of victory at having made it through another day--to the place
that we share together.
You'll have your own particulars, of course, but
I'm betting that kind of scene is pretty familiar to you. Whether you are
more frequently on the welcoming side or the being-welcomed side, I'm willing
to be that at least the meaning of that moment makes sense to
you, and that it is clear when I walk out the back door, it is not for my wife
to whisk me off to some other location (unless we are, say,
going out to eat straight from work), but for her to come home
to the place that was already hers. Well, keep that picture in mind to
consider one other scene before we jump into the verse for today.
In the
ancient world, especially in the practice of the Roman empire, when the emperor
was coming to visit a Roman city or colony, a very similar ceremony of welcome
unfolded. Citizens from the city--who understood the emperor to be their
ruler--would go out through the city gates and walls and stand waiting to greet
the emperor, who would then be escorted with this entourage back into
the city. The city was understood to already belong to the emperor, and
he was the rightful ruler. He was simply being welcomed back into what
was his own, perhaps as he returned from some far off military campaign, or as
he toured his territory. But what always happened was that the
loyal citizens of that city would gather outside the city so
that they could meet
the emperor and accompany
him back
into the city--the city, mind you, from which they had
just left, in order immediately
to come back in as part of a triumphal procession. There was never a scene
where the emperor would come near to one of his own cities, and then have the
citizens standing outside like they were waiting for a bus to be picked up and
taken somewhere else. The emperor didn't take his own citizens out of
their various cities (which were all under Roman rule) to
bring them all to Rome. No, the scene was always the other way
around--the emperor is met by loyal crowds who welcome him into their city,
which they all agree is under his authority already. So this scene, which
was played out again and again across the empire, was both a moment of
celebration, but it was also a statement of allegiance. Those
who welcomed the emperor into their city were, in effect, saying that he was
the rightful ruler of their city and that he was coming back to a place that
was his own already.
Well, both of these scenes help make sense of
what's going on in this passage from 1 Thessalonians (as well as some of what
is going on in the triumphal entry in all four Gospels when Jesus comes into
Jerusalem riding on a donkey on the day we call Palm Sunday--a day when the
people of the city "took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him"
(John 12:13) before escorting him back into Jerusalem. On
both Palm Sunday and here in 1 Thessalonians, the idea is that Jesus is being
escorted into
a place, and that people have come to welcome
him--and by doing that, they are pledging their allegiance to his
authority and lordship. It turned out to be rather fickle allegiance on
Palm Sunday, but the idea is the same. Just as the emperor or other
imperial dignitaries would have triumphal entries to Jerusalem as shows of
their power, Jesus has a parallel entry, and it was a statement of a different
reign than Caesar's.
This is the way Paul talks about what will happen
at Jesus' return. The whole scene here is of a triumphal entry, or a
homecoming celebration--not a rescue mission to retrieve people and whisk them away
somewhere else. The same word Paul uses for "meeting" Jesus in
the air is the same technical word used in Greek for that political procession
of welcome when the emperor came to a Roman city. The idea is that Jesus, when
he comes, will be met by his people, who will then accompany him back into
the world that is rightfully his--the place that he shares with us, and where
we will dwell together. This idea of meeting Jesus in the air is all
about a triumphal return
to
the world, not a secret rescue or rapture out
of
the world.
That's because ultimately, God is not going to give
up on his claim over this world. Sure, now it looks like the world is not
interested in God's rule, but that will not stop God. To borrow one more
image, when the Allies liberated France in the D-Day campaign to win World War
II, the goal of the mission was not just to cut their losses, gather as many
displaced French citizens and settle for rescuing them out
of occupied France to give them new lives in England permanently. The
mission was to liberate
and to restore
the rightful rule of the country, because the Allies never gave up on the
conviction that France did not really belong to the Nazis, but to the
French. The Allied invasion was, in many ways, about the rightful rulers
returning to their own places. This is the way Paul talks about Jesus'
coming--except, for him, the victory is already won. In Jesus' death and
resurrection, the battle is fought, won, and over, and now what remains is for
Jesus to be welcomed back home in triumphal procession back to what is his
already.
What does any of this mean today for us? For
one, it means that God does not think this world is disposable or something he
will give up on. Jesus still claims this world of ours as his own rightful
property. Second, it means that our hope is not to be beamed out
of trouble so that we do not have to face trials or suffering in this life--our
hope is to welcome Jesus back to this world that has been his all along.
We are not only missing the point of this Bible passage if we insist that it is
about a "secret rapture" where true Christians will disappear while
the world goes to hell in a handbasket, but we are also settling for less than
God is apparently willing to settle for. The Allies would not give up on
France and leave it to Nazi occupation--and God will not give up on the world
and leave it to the rebellious, idolatrous emperors and Caesars of human
arrogance. God will not settle for plucking a few good people out of the
world and then letting it fall apart--God is committed to restoring,
reclaiming, and redeeming the whole thing. That is what we wait
for. That is why we live our lives now with an eye out the window and on
the driveway. We are waiting to pledge our allegiance to our Lord in
celebration of his triumphant homecoming. We are waiting to welcome home our Beloved to
the place where we will dwell together.
Come, Lord Jesus. Reclaim, restore, and redeem,
and keep our eyes watching to greet you and welcome you home in the mean time
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