Everyone is welcome: church should not be a place that inspires fear in us (Archive photo)
I recently saw, hanging on the wall, a painting entitled The Coming of the Lord. The painting depicted Jesus hovering above a cityscape. People’s souls floated upward as their cars crashed, caught fire, and unmanned planes collided with skyscrapers.
The implication was that those “left behind” would die a horrible death. It was abhorrent, disgusting and totally “un-Christian”, but unfortunately the idea of ”rapture” (a word that does not exist in the Bible) is shared by some Christians, including, presumably, the owner of the painting.
Between 1995 and 2007, the Left over A series of books about the second coming of Christ, written by fundamentalists Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, sold millions of copies and was even made into a 2014 film starring Nicholas Cage.
Unfortunately, the fictional series was only about making money and had nothing to do with reality. Yet people bought them, read them, and believed every word. When I was serving at a church in 2004, a couple wrote letters explaining why they disappeared when the “rapture” happened and their unbelieving family members were left behind. Yes, surprisingly, people actually do that.
And worse, I have attended funerals where pastors told the congregation that they would suffer the same fate if they did not turn to Christ and make Jesus their own personal savior.
Before I continue, let me be clear: God is love, God loves the world, and God loves you. If I could underline, circle and highlight that last sentence and post it in the sky, I would, because the opposite of love is fear. We do not have a God of fear, and as Christians we should not live in fear.
Jesus did not come into the world to scare us into believing and trusting Him, and paintings and pastors should not scare us into turning to Christ. Faith is not an insurance policy against being left behind or anywhere else! The purpose of believing and trusting in Jesus Christ is not, as some pastors claim, to avoid going to hell (another word not found in the original Greek or Hebrew scriptures).
This week I was approached online by a young Christian man in his twenties, a member of a conservative congregation in the United States. She shared that in the eyes of her church, she had “sinned” and was afraid of the consequences because it would result in excommunication and rejection from everyone close to her.
The red flag in his testimony was the word “fear.” There he was, rearing his ugly head. Fear. The church scared him. The Church, bride of Christ – called to announce the good news of Jesus Christ and to be witness to the love of God – made a young person experience the opposite of love, and my response, apart from listening to him and accept it? Find a church where she could be herself and live without fear.
That same week, before the funeral I was presiding over, I was approached by a woman who asked me if God was going to send unbelievers to hell. Without getting into a theological discussion about the nature of Hell (I sense another article coming), I asked her if she had children. She replied, “Yes.” I asked her if she loved her children and again she said, “Yes.” So I asked her if – even if they rejected her or committed a heinous crime – she would send her children to a place of eternal torment and punishment. The woman looked horrified: “No. Never!” so I kindly asked, “Is God more or less loving than you?
God was, is and must come. Jesus came and comes and comes. We can meet Jesus here and now. But what happens when we die? What will happen to us? Will our souls fly away? Allow me to share this powerful prayer, prayed at the edge of every grave at every Anglican funeral.
We have entrusted our brother/sister to the mercy of God,
and we now engage his body on the ground:
earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust:
in the sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life
through our Lord Jesus Christ,
which will transform our fragile bodies
that they may be conformed to his glorious body,
who died, was buried and rose again for us.
To him be the glory forever. Amen.
My friends, we will be resurrected to life and life means creation. The “glorious body” to which we will be conformed is a physical body, because Jesus was resurrected with a physical body.
A colleague of mine said it beautifully when she was talking about her recently deceased mother. She said: “I’m already with her. I just haven’t caught up with her yet. For those who have died, resurrection has already taken place. For the rest of us, well, we have a job to do, don’t we? Proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ and be witnesses of God’s love. I will end with this passage from John’s first letter.
“God is love, and those who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. Through Jesus, the love of God has been perfected among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like Him. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear is about punishment, and he who fears has not yet fully understood the love of God. (1 John 16b-18)
This week, may you know that you are loved by God more than you can imagine. May you live not in fear but in the knowledge of God’s perfect love – a love that will bring you home.
Amen.
• Rev. Gavin Tyte is the pastor of St. Mark’s Church. Visitstmarks.bm
