Memorial of Saint Martin of Tours, bishop

My niece and new nephew,
the night before their wedding

“The days will come when you will long to see
one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it.
There will be those who will say to you,
‘Look, there he is,’ or ‘Look, here he is.’
Do not go off, do not run in pursuit.

On October 22, 1844, all across America, after years of preparation, the Millerites sold their homes, shuttered their churches and closed out their bank accounts. Eagerly, expectantly they stood out in the weather watching the sky for His Coming. And the sun rose and set as it has done billions of times for millions of years.

The longing of which Jesus speaks is a kind of sickness. It is uncomfortable at best, and sometimes irritable. It runs deeply in our Christian tradition and perhaps more deeply in our American religion.

Many of our forebears came to North America hoping to find or found the New Jerusalem. They named their cities Providence and Harmony and Salem with the fond expectation that they could create what Europe had failed to produce. Waves of Protestant missionaries have swept across the land bringing Great Awakenings, each with an expectation that the Kingdom of God is about to break upon us.

That divine impatience infects our national discourse. We want results and we want them yesterday! If you’ve ever tried to plan a February event in December you know how hard it is to persuade Christians that next year will happen and we must plan for it. They are dazzled by the prospect of Christmas. Perhaps this year, at last, He Will Come!

I suspect our reluctance to pay the taxes to maintain our national infrastructure – highways, bridges, sewers, gas lines, flood walls etc – is based in a religious expectation that Christ will come soon and very soon.

The early church dealt with this same expectation and the wiser heads counseled, “Do not go off, do not run in pursuit.” They might have said to the Millerites, "Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? 

Fidelity to Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God, calls us to full responsibility as citizens of this earth. He has sent us here from Jerusalem, the holy city, to bring a holy zeal for mercy and justice. We have built schools, hospitals and churches wherever we go, prepared as we are for the long haul. As citizens we take responsibility even for national defense. (It is too dangerous to be left to non-believers.)

The End could come today; it could have come yesterday. But in the meanwhile, we prepare to do the right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with our God.