Meet Jesus in the mire not the rapture...

White Respectable Hip Kids Get Raptured to Heaven

We hear talk about being lifted up on the last day. This hope that we will get to heaven with never having to feel the pain of death because we were following the right rules, thinking the right thoughts, and all that at the random magical moment in history when Jesus returns.

Without much trouble one can read books, and even watch movies that make one wonder what happened to the career of Nicolas Cage, that make heroes out of these select few. Those whose faith is so sure and unbending that they can take up actions that, in any other context, would be considers insensitive, problematic, if not right out mean. Luckily outside of one dimensional media most Christians who go about belief in a soon to be realized rapture maintain a sense of basic respect and care for those around them. Most of us, however, have experienced the exception.

The problem is that when Jesus speaks of being lifted up he is not speaking of some experience not requiring entering fully into death. This is not being lifted up on a painless journey to heaven for those who have kept themselves up to a standard of purity. This is being lifted up on a cross to be kept with those who have wandered away from every aspect of purity. To be lifted up is not to be the hero of the story but the one defeated. To be lifted up is not to be free from the stain of impropriety but to enter into the realm of the impious. To be lifted up is not to maintain the line between those who are in and those who are out but to stand solidly with those who are out.

You should read The Sixth Gun

The past weeks the news has been filled with those who have found themselves at the wrong end of the law as they fought to remain pure. We are in a time when bakers, wedding venues, and county officials are striving to remain pure so that they can be lifted up and never feel the pain of death. They are willing to loose their business, loose their job, go to jail for the sake of remaining pure in hopes of being lifted up and never encountering death. They live their lives in expectation that they will be in the right just in case that random moment of Jesus' return happens in the hear and now. That is their plan on how to meet Jesus.

When Jesus speaks of being lifted up, however, he is not speaking of the rapture. He is speaking of how he will be lifted up on the cross. His ultimate meeting with humanity is not in a pain free rapture to heaven but in a crippling death upon the cross. This is where, again and again, we are called to meet him in our lives. To note that when we encounter personal pain and suffering, Jesus meets us there, when we live with others in the midst of their personal pain and suffering, Jesus meets us there, when we place ourselves in solidarity with the pain and suffering of the world then we place ourselves in solidarity with Christ. That it is not by remaining pure that we will encounter Christ in the rapture but by descending into the mire and flotsam of the world around us that we will come to know and be with Jesus.

This is where the light of Christ is to be found, this is where we must search for it amidst the other searchers, this is how we become Children of the Light... not by seeking to remain a pure beacon above the world, some landing light for Jesus to spot as he descends back to earth but by gathering the lights of others in our midst, others we might construe at first cannot be light bearers themselves, and gathering with each other to create spaces of light... the light of Christ shining through the suffering of the world which he encountered on the cross.