+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:
Lamentations 2:8-15, 1 Corinthians 15:51-58, Matthew 12:1-14

Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, F84 but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
“Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
1 Corinthians 15:51-55

You know, I read most of the Left Behind series. I pretty much had to: most of my family was reading them. If one wanted to participate in the discussion at Thanksgiving of Christmas (or even my Grandfather’s funeral service) one had to be familiar with them. In a theological sense it was the equivalent of suffering peer pressure to watch porn - and really, that’s what it was: theological porn. If you’re good, you get yanked away, then you get to watch the bad people suffer and ignore God… but we’re not writing about the Good People in Heaven. No we’re going to read about the bad people left on earth.

The whole thing starts with a non-literal reading of these verse here (and some in Thessalonians) I say “non-literal” because Corinthians makes it clear that this mortal flesh will put on immortality at the last trumpet: not seven years prior.

Still, the Rapture Idea - invented only in the late 1800s - is so powerful that it drives people to absolute distraction if you challenge it. Never mind that most of the time God not only doesn’t remove his People from persecution, sometimes he sends them right into harm’s way. It must be comforting, as you’re looking a Non-Christian in the eye, to think “I’m getting yanked out of here soon and you’re going to go through Hell On Earth.”

I stopped reading at the point where all the Christians get to kill everyone else and live for 1000 years. It got to be too much, and the authors were getting so verbose than each book was barely covering 24 hours of story. If you write more books, you’ll sell more, right? (Two side note: the traditional, orthodox understanding of that 1000 year reign is rather different from the pornographic reading; and the Rapture, along with the idea of “Accepting Jesus” are relatively new, western, Protestant inventions unknown to the vast majority of Christians throughout history)

But there is more to this passage than Rapture.

Paul doesn’t like death at all. And just when you think he means “spiritual” death, he goes on to refer to “this perishable, this mortal body”. This is an important Christian Doctrine: Physical Immortality. The Historic Orthodox opinion on this is that humans were never supposed to die. We now die - the spirit gets separated from the flesh - and this is unnatural. The ultimate joy of Christians is not that we shall be in heaven beholding the vision glorious. Rather, the ultimate joy of Christians is that we shall be in heaven beholding the vision glorious in our fleshly, but immortal bodies. The spirit is not supposed to depart from human flesh. We are, according to Orthodox, a different order of being: neither Angel (Spirit with no body) nor Animal (body with no Spirit) but rather a Spiritual-Flesh harmony. One Orthodox went so far as to tell me we’ll all be in our mid-30s in heaven because that’s when our bodies look the best.

Sigh.

This idea arises in Christianity from these (and other) Pauline texts. But It’s not the universal understanding “based on scripture” as I can find other texts that would seem to indicate otherwise. Also this is not the teaching of the Jews on the Resurrection, nor the understanding of most Protestants.

I don’t know, really. I’d always assumed a rather Taoist take on human life: it starts, it matures, it ends. And I can be quite ok with that. Human fear of death and demand for immortality brings up some pretty wacky stuff. Add to that eternity with God and it seems all hunkey-dorey. Not for the Orthodox, though, who want to say life as it is now is broken.

While for some the idea that our “souls” go to heaven and our bodies rot in the ground can be seen as Gnostic, I think the idea that our body - as it is - is broken can also be seen as Gnostic, as can a number of other E.O. doctrines that talk about the flesh passing away (and needing to be ignored) while the spirit lives for ever and needs to be tended to.

While not believing in a rapture, it seems the Orthodox are also only too happy to leave the world behind. Phrases like “Death to the World” are clearly spiritual and make a lot of sense. How, given the Orthodox assumption that things are broken, do you go out and enjoy the wind, the water, the earth? (As a point of order, some Orthodox monks refuse to bathe for it’s too indulgent.)

The Gospel, I think, clearly puts man - the physical, mortal person - above merely “spiritual” concerns. It does so even more if we read “Son of Man” in verse 8 to be a “John Doe” sort of construct. “For Anyman is lord of the Sabbath.” Or elsewhere, “The Sabbath is made for man and not man for the Sabbath.” This is our understanding, too, of why God became Man: uniting the Spiritual and the Physical, the Mortal and the Divine, not to the destruction of one and the victory of the other, but to the fulfilment of both. Likewise in the Talmud and among the E.O. Saints some have pointed out that it is more important how you treat your fellow than how you deal with Spiritual things - some, including even God and our prayers in the list of things not as important as our neighbour.

It seems to me that an Adult faith would avoid using such Pie in the Sky ideas as bait. Gregory of Nyssa in fact says we should seek to be God’s friend - not because, simply, of some future reward because that makes us greedy or fearful; rather just because we love God. It’s not about the future, it’s about now.

This is true perfection: not to avoid a wicked life because like slaves we fear punishment, nor to do good because we hope for rewards, as if cashing in on the virtuous life by some business-like arrangement. On the contrary, disregarding all those things of which we hope and which have been reserved by promise, we regard falling from God’s friendship as the only thing dreadful and we consider becoming God’s friend the only thing worthy of honor and desire. This, as I have said, is the perfection of life.

Much love,

Huw