As I’ve had quite a few people ask me about my thoughts on the Rapture, I thought it would be best to take a look at my exegesis of the important passages. For this post, we’ll be looking at Matthew 24:36-41.

36″No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

Those who believe in the Rapture see it clearly in verses 40 and 41. One is taken, the other is left. And given what is about to happen–the Great Tribulation–it’s far, far better to be taken. The one who is left must suffer the curse of enduring seven horrible years of persecution and torture. It will, quite literally, be hell on earth. So those who are taken are taken up to Heaven for this time; rescued, as it were, from this great period of suffering.

But a careful reading of the text reveals that Jesus is saying quite the opposite. Being taken away is the worse fate, and it is much better for those who are left behind. The key to interpreting this passage is Jesus’ retelling of the story of Noah.

“38For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away.” The flood waters, quite literally, took away, in judgment, all those wicked people. God exercised his judgment against humanity by taking away the overwhelming majority in the great flood, and leaving behind only a handful–Noah and his family. In the flood, it was far better to be left behind.

“That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.” As it was in the flood, so will it be at the return of Jesus. Those who are taken away are taken away in judgment. They are not transported to Heaven, rescued from the coming seven years of tribulation. No, they are taken away in the judgment of God. These are the goats that Jesus talks about just a chapter later, in Matthew 25:31-46.

The sheep, however, are left behind. Just like Noah and his family, those who are left are the ones who survived the judgment. They were not swept away by the flood waters. They remained. Better to be like Noah than like the mocking, arrogant heathen that died in the ‘whelming flood.

Rather than giving an early teaching of the Rapture, Jesus is teaching that God’s judgment at his return will come upon us unawares. We don’t know when it’s going to happen. But it will happen. And just like in the days of Noah, you will want to be left behind. Being taken away means that you are taken away in judgment. Those who are taken away are the goats, and those who are left behind are the sheep. Live in such a way that you will be left behind.

C. S. Lewis had a bus. Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof had a plane. The Great Divorce and LOST are essentially about the same thing: Learning to let go, to forgive, and to be forgiven. If Lewis were alive today, I’m sure he would have been the first to spot the story arc of LOST and the last to get bogged down by the details. The weird, scientific wonders of the Island were ultimately nothing but context. Only the characters mattered. It was always the characters.

Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke–all of them had to learn to let go before they could move on. They had to learn to forgive and to receive forgiveness before they could enter Heaven. (If you watched the finale, don’t get caught up in the multi-religious stained glass windows. The risen Christ is by far the dominant religious imagery.) The “alternate dimension”, or “sideways-flashes” were a sort of purgatory (much like the setting of Lewis’ The Great Divorce), probably constructed by Hurley and Desmond to bring them together so that they could move on as a community. The reunion in the church was joyous because they had learned to let go, to forgive and to be forgiven. The sins and scars of the past were forgotten and healed in the church, all overseen by the risen Christ.

Unlike the Great Divorce, LOST is a happy ending. Through their travails on the Island, the characters learned that they needed to let go of the pain of their past. They needed to forgive those who had sinned against them. And they needed forgiveness for their own sins. The “sideways-flashes” were simply the consummation of what they experienced on the Island.

The funny thing about LOST is that it never needed an Island or a Smoke Monster or electro-magnetism or time travel to tell its story. It’s a universal story. We live the story of LOST not on an Island full of unexplained phenomena but in the mundane reality of our work and home. And then God comes along and brings something impossible, something incomprehensible and unimaginable into our lives to teach us to let go of the past, to forgive, and to be forgiven.

LOST is a brilliant sermon, an epic exposition of Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:14-15. “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Forgiveness is the door to eternal life. The rest (the Numbers, Dharma, the Mythology) is just details.

This is another excerpt from my sermon on Consumerism that I’ll be giving at dia•spora this coming Sunday. I cut this bit from the message, but am looking forward to exploring these themes more fully in the future.

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You know one of the greatest temptations of power is to treat people like functions and not like people. Have you ever worked somewhere that you knew management, or the person at the top, couldn’t care less about you as a person? All that matters is your productivity and you are only as valuable as the function you serve. Have you ever gotten that message?

This is, I think, the greatest evil of consumerism. In our hot pursuit of productivity and profitability, people become positions. You are not an image-bearer of the living, Creator God. You are simply a part of the machine. It doesn’t matter who you are, just get the job done.

This is satanic. Anything that dehumanizes people is straight from the pit of hell. And the worst part of all is that this kind of crap goes on in our churches all the time.

A friend of mine was a pastor at a big church that had multiple services, and part of his job was to preach about once a month. And, without fail, every time he spoke the senior pastor would come to him between services and just criticize every little thing he did, from the way he prayed to the way he read the Bible to how he phrased some random sentence from the sermon. And then my friend would have to get right back up and preach again in a half hour, and if he didn’t make every change the senior pastor demanded you better believe he got an earful Monday morning. After years of this he just couldn’t take it anymore and quit.

This was a gifted person who was driven away by a man who could only see him as a function. He got chewed up and spit out because the senior pastor could only see him as a function and not as an image-bearer of the living, Creator God. And this kind of thing happens all of the time at churches all over the country.

Big churches. Little churches. It doesn’t seem to matter. Churches consume people. Sometimes the senior pastor is a megalomaniac. Sometimes the congregation is incessantly demanding of their pastor’s time. Sometimes we place too heavy a burden on our volunteers. Churches are notorious for burning out sound guys. We chew people up and we spit them out, and all too often people leave a church so hurt that they even give up on God.

This is an excerpt from a sermon I’m writing on Consumerism. I’ve decided to cut it out of the sermon, but I didn’t want to just erase it forever, so here it is on the blog.

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Consumerism isn’t altogether evil. We are consumers by nature. We have to consume food and water in order to survive. We have to have clothes and shelter. And I think that having the freedom to make economic choices has spurred innovation, which has led to safer transportation, improved medical treatment, and the longer lasting light bulb. And without consumer choice we’d all be stuck with MySpace accounts. Gross!

But as with most things, there is a shadow side of consumerism—a side with which we are all too familiar. Greed. Debt. Theft. Oppression. Waste. Pollution. Reality Television. The list could go on and on.

We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have, and for what? To have an iPad that will be out of date in less than a year? To drive a car that you’ll still be paying for long after it dies? Why? To impress your friends? Or your enemies? Or your frenemies?

We buy stuff. We use it up. And then we throw it away when it’s no longer useful to us. I have 3 iPods! I have one of the original white ones, then I got a black video iPod, and now I have an iPod touch. All three work just fine. The music sounds the same coming out of each one. But I just had to have that iPod Touch because it has…Apps! That I spend money on and stop using in less than a week.

I am a consumer. I buy. I use up. I throw away. Why? Because I need. I need. I need to know that I’m not white trash. I need to know that, despite working in fulltime ministry, I’m still a success. And I think my iPod or my new computer will tell the world I’m a success, or more importantly, they will tell me that I’m a success.

I need, therefore I consume. Why do you consume? What is your need? I used to buy DVDs until I had, quite possibly, the best collection of films on the face of the earth. But buying the DVDs was nothing more than an attempt to medicate myself in the darkest time of my life. And watching those movies, incredible though they were, was just a way to escape the pain of my circumstances.

What about you? What is your need? Do you over eat or starve yourself because eating is the only thing in your life you can control? Do you disappear into video games because you’re afraid of growing up? Do you spend money you don’t have because you’re trying to be someone you’re not? Behind our consumerism lie two simple words: I need. But consuming things is no way to address those needs.

Food should be about nourishment, not about control. Video games should be enjoyed with friends, not used as a way to stave off adulthood. iPods are meant as a way to enjoy music anywhere, not as symbols of success.

I’ve been invited by a group of students at Otterbein College to participate in their series Mythbusters, which, like the show of the same name, is an exploration of urban legends and old wives’ tales. The myths that I’ll be busting, however, are Christian ones, and my myth is the Rapture. As I’ve never believed in the Rapture, I’m quite excited to bust this pervasive and insidious false teaching. Below is an excerpt from my sermon where I deal with the “Rapture” passage from 1 Thessalonians.

Those who believe in the Rapture see here a clear reference to that event. “We who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” What else could this possibly mean? Rapture!

But maybe it’s not so clear cut as that. This passage is first and foremost about resurrection, not rapture. Look at the very beginning of this section: “We want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died….” Paul is addressing the concerns that Christians in Thessalonica had about their fellow believers who have died. If you interpret the teachings of Jesus ultra-literally, you would think that no one who trusts in him will ever die. And yet, Christians were dying (and have been dying ever since). How could this be?

Paul’s answer is resurrection. “…When Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died.” The resurrection of the dead goes hand in hand with the return of Christ. Resurrection, not Rapture, is the first and most important thing that happens when Jesus comes back.

But what about those believers who are still alive when Jesus comes back? Well they will meet Jesus in the air! So what does that mean?

If you’ve ever read the first chapter of the book of Acts, you know about the Ascension of Jesus. That’s when Jesus was lifted off the earth and enveloped in the clouds right in front of his disciples. And then they just stood there staring at the sky like idiots. I mean, I would too. Jesus just freaking flew into the sky!

But then some angels come along and say, “Dudes, why are you staring at the sky? Don’t worry about it. Jesus will come back, and when he does he’ll come the same way he left.” So that’s where Paul, and we today, get the idea that Jesus is going to come back from the heavens. And when he does we’re going to meet him in the air.

Sounds like the Rapture, right? But it doesn’t say that Jesus is going to come halfway then turn around. It doesn’t say that he’s going to come down and say, “Attention world, I’m back! Okay you, you, you, you and you come up here. Peace out! See you in seven years, suckers!” That’s just not here. That’s not Jesus.

But what’s even more damning for the case for the Rapture is what you discover when you learn a little bit of history. If the President of the United States were coming to your house, would you make him ring your doorbell? You probably wouldn’t say, “C’mon on in, it’s open” to the President. No, you and all your neighbors would line the street and wait for him. You would go out to meet him.

In ancient Roman culture this same sort of thing happened, but on a grander scale. When the emperor or an important dignitary came to your town, all the people of the town would go out to meet him while he was still a long way off. They would go out to meet him and then walk with him, usher him, back into their town.

Now that you’re armed with that bit of knowledge, what do you think is happening in this passage? A Rapture, or a royal welcome? This is a royal welcome for the one who comes to our home not from some distant land but from Heaven itself, the one who comes to take his rightful place as the King of kings. This passage is not about being snatched away to heaven. It’s about resurrection and showing Jesus proper respect when he returns.