Who’s Left Behind?
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Matthew 25:1-13
Amos 5:18-24
I saw one of those bumper stickers the other day that read, “In case of Rapture, this vehicle will be unmanned.” It is a confident statement about that great, end-of-the-world event in which the righteous are whisked up into the heavens and the unfaithful will be left behind to fend for themselves in a godless world of terrible violence and destruction.
This expectation of a Rapture sounds plausible because whenever the Bible deals with the end of times, it does so in two ways. It delivers hope, and it delivers warnings, and it often does those things side by side. Hope for the people who are struggling, and hurting, and despairing--that great times are coming. Warnings for those who ignore God and the laws of justice that there are consequences to bad behavior.
The Rapture scenario delivers both. Hope for the faithful who will be beamed up to be with God. Warnings for those who ignore God and will be left behind to suffer the fate they deserve.
But is the Rapture real and is it Biblical?
As an example of how seriously they take this doctrine at Luther Seminary, one of my professors expressed a preference for this bumper sticker: “In case of Rapture, can I have your SUV?”
Have you ever played a game where a roomful of people are given sheets of paper and are told to write down the beginning of a story? Each person then folds the paper to cover up what they have written and passes it on to the next person. They then add the second line of the story to the new sheet of paper; fold it, and pass it on, and keep repeating.
What you end up with are a series of spectacularly disjointed and often hilarious stories.
That’s similar to how the current popular notion of the Rapture, which had not occurred to anyone in the first 1800 years of the Christian church, sprang into being. Rapture theology is a result of mixing randomly selected Bible verses with the ever-popular doomsday scenario.
Consider that the Rapture is always associated with the book of Revelation yet there is not one single mention of it in Revelation.
Today’s reading from 1st Thessalonians is the only place in the entire Bible where anything like a rapture is mentioned, where it speaks of Christians being taken up into the clouds.
The only way you can find anything like the popularly acclaimed Rapture doctrine is to take a small piece of 1st Thessalonians 4, splice it into a statement Jesus that made in Luke 17 about two people working in a field or sleeping in bed and one will be taken and the other left, and then dub in some Last Days imagery from Revelation.
Only if you mix all that together, and let your imagination run wild, can you come up with a story about Christians being snatched up all at once into heaven, and the unbelieving heathens being left behind.
But if we actually read what the Bible says about the issue of who is left behind, we find something altogether different. All three of our readings today have to do with who gets left behind and why. Yes, it does have to do with warnings and hope. But not in the way that pop religion would lead us to believe.
Let’s start with the Thessalonians passage. Who does Thessalonians say are the ones who are left behind? Unbelievers and evil people? No, it says, “Then we who are alive, the ones who are left behind.” It says that twice, and makes clear that those left behind are those of the contemporary, living Christian community.
Nowhere in this entire passage will you find any separation between the good guys and the bad guys. The separation is between those who are living and those who have died. The rapture that is described is not something that pulls those two groups apart; it is an event that brings them together:
“We who are left behind will be caught up in the clouds together with them.”
Paul is writing as a pastor to a congregation that is worried about a theological issue. They fully expect Jesus to return to earth in their lifetime. That believe that Jesus is coming and all those on earth will be joined with him and live in peace and prosperity with him forever.
What they want to know is, what will happen to those who have already died? Did those people miss out on this great event? Are they going to be with us? Are they gone forever? Are we ever going to see them? When we enter into the joy of the Second Coming, are they going to be left behind?
Paul is dealing with fears and anxieties about the future. And he responds the way Christians have always responded to those fears. Trust in the promises of God and your soul will find rest.
We found when we traveled overseas that foreigners are so much more educated about our country than we are about theirs. In St. Petersburg, Russia, we took a subway tour, a fascinating adventure that is not for the timid. We descended on escalators 160 feet down into the subway tube, surrounded by unspeaking, stone-faced Russians on their way to work.
There was no way that our group could all board a crowded train as a group, and so our guide gave us careful instructions, including what to do if we missed getting on or off when we were supposed to. Then, when our train arrived, at his signal, we split up and dashed through whatever opening was available to board the train. We held our positions as people pushed in and out at various stops, and then got off at our assigned stop.
After all this chaos, our group reassembled off to the side, where our Russian guide carefully counted and double-counted to make sure we were all present. “You know our goal,” he said. “No child left behind.”
The reference, of course, was to an American education policy. It describes a principle that we don’t leave behind those who are struggling to fend for themselves. While the policy is controversial, the goal is not.
The slogan of No Child Left Behind is actually a spin-off of the policy of the U.S. Marines, who make it a top priority that when they go into battle, they are accountable to each other, and they promise they will go to extraordinary lengths to make sure that no one is left behind on the battlefield.
Actually, that principle existed long before the Marines. Paul reminds the Thessalonians of the absolute reliability and faithfulness of God. That Christ came to save the world, and that God will never forsake you, will never leave you or anyone behind, will never shut anyone out of the joys of new life in the kingdom.
Contrary to Rapture theology, Thessalonians is not about separating the sheep from the goats; in fact, its message is the opposite. It is about assuring anxious people that God is faithful, and that as far as the future goes, those who put their trust in God have nothing to worry about. And so Paul presents this brilliant image of all the saints, past and present, meeting in the sky.
No, the dead are not going to be left behind; in fact they’re going to get to the Promised Land before we do. Paul describes an emotional scene where Christ comes, and we are all reunited with our loved ones forever.
That is the hope part of Last Times theology.
Thessalonians doesn’t even discuss the flip side of Last Times theology: warning. For that, we can go to various parts of Revelation, or, as in today’s text, to Matthew and to Amos.
In our Matthew reading, Jesus tells a strange story of a wedding party. Ten women are waiting for the groom to arrive so the party can start. They all have lamps. Five women bring extra oil for their lamps, five do not. The groom was delayed so long that they all fall asleep waiting.
When the groom arrives, the five foolish bridesmaids find they have run out of oil. Frantically, they try to get some, but fail. As a result, their lamps go out, and they can’t get into the party. The moral at the end of this story is, “Keep awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”
As a pure narrative, it makes little sense. Why is the moral, “Keep awake” when that wasn’t even an issue in the story? Both the wise and the foolish women fell asleep, and it didn’t hurt the wise women at all.
Why do they need lamps to get into a party? Why are invited guests turned away at the door just because they failed to anticipate needing extra oil on the off-chance that the groom would fail to arrive at his own party until midnight?
Worse yet, where is the Gospel here? The story seems directly opposed to everything Jesus teaches. The situation is the groom’s fault, yet all the blame falls on the “foolish” women. No apologies from the groom, and no compassion. People who refuse to share with those in need are called wise. Invited guests are shut out, left behind.
What is going on here?
This is not meant to be a realistic situation. End time warnings seldom are. They are usually strange, even bizarre. They are that way because their purpose is to jolt the listeners so that they will pay attention to the danger they are in.
What is the only difference between the wise women and the foolish in the story? Oil. Oil is what this story is about. In modern terms, oil is a natural resource, and that’s a good way to view it here. Oil is a resource. What resources do you have in dealing with the unexpected, with disaster?
It is a plain fact that pastors see all the time: in times of stress, trouble, disaster, illness, tragedy, death—those who have accumulated the resources of faith over the years usually survive. Those who have not, usually panic, despair, fall apart. Those who have made the faith community a part of their lives, who have been fed by the Word of God, and who live in the light of the Gospel, find they can cope. It may not be easy, but they can cope. Those who have not, find themselves flailing around for anything that even resembles a faith anchor.
But you can’t get these resources at the last minute. When tragedy strikes, you can’t suddenly go out and buy faith resources. It’s there or it’s not. And if you don’t have any faith resources, you’re completely in the dark as to what life is all about. That’s what it means to be left behind in this story. It’s not something that happens to you. It’s not something God does to you. It’s a choice you make to ignore the resources God brings to you.
The Amos reading shines a further light on the issue of being left behind. In this famous passage, God seems to be leaving an entire people behind. “I hate, I despise your services and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. I will not accept your offerings. Take away from me the noise of your hymns and your praise songs.”
What he says next is often taken as a glorious promise, but it is also a dire warning. Justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everlasting stream.
In the end times, a tidal wave is coming that will wash away all injustice. Righteousness will pour down in a stream that purges creation of sin. Evil will be washed away and only that which is good will be left behind.
According to Amos, there will be separation between those who practice justice and those who do not. But it will occur not because God leaves people behind to suffer their own fate. No, it is an event that will occur precisely because God cannot stand to leave people behind.
Injustice leaves people behind. Injustice denies people access to life. It leaves them behind in misery and squalor.
That’s not going to happen in God’s world. As Martin Luther King said, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
We can choose to stay behind, by choosing to ignore the spiritual resources available to us. But no one is left behind in God’s world.
That is word of warning to the world’s indifference. When we leave others behind in our world, we run the risk of being washed away in the flood of justice that God sends to save his children from getting left behind.
But it is ultimately a word of hope; a promise that no one is left behind in God world. That all of us who desire to be with God, those who have gone ahead of us, those who are alive today, and those who are to come, will be with the Lord, forever.