Left Behind

It may be inappropriate, but I seem to have a secret passion to want to undermine the Left Behind series when ever possible.

I heard a recent comment on Jesus' healing on the Sabbath that blew my mind, and pushed this enveloped.

Jesus often intentionally healed people on the day set apart for rest. And often we read this as a spit in the face to the religous order of the day, or perhaps an undermining of the Jewish law given through Moses.

But Jesus' healings on the sabbath may have been--if possible--even more subversive than that. They proclaimed a new kind of future for the Jewish people. The assumption of the day, we might assume, was similiar to that held by many Jews today: God will vindicate us some day, some day God will show up, put down the foriegn nations, and we will enter our sabbath rest as a people.

Jesus' actions show that he is completely antagonistic to that perspective. The future is not about rest. When the Kingdom of God comes it will be a time of restoration when the blind are healed, the lame can walk, and the whole world is set to right. By healing on the Sabbath, Jesus is proclaiming what the future of God's people will look like. It is no longer about us putting up mirrors to gaze on our own fair beauty. It is about letting our light shine forth into a dark world.

The end times for Jesus are not about his return. The end of the world for Jesus comes when all the world's systems are put down by his own victory over sin and death, and he stands in the garden on Sunday: the first day of the new creation.

It is Christian mythology to think that we as Christians need to bunker down and protect ourselves from the elements until Jesus comes to snatch away his faithful. Rather, the call of Jesus is to go into the world where it hurts, to be salt and light, to be for the world what Jesus was and is for us.

Again the Left Behind series lives up to its name.