From What Vantage Point?
Zech 1:7-17; Rev 3:7-13; Matt 24:15-31
From what vantage point do you perceive the day? I have found myself chuckling often when I have heard people using the excuse for their poor attitude of, “I’m not a morning person.” Such things are used as a tool of permissiveness. While phrases such as these are fairly transparent, none of us is off the hook here. We all have our ways of giving ourselves excuse.
When a moment comes that, in simplicity and clarity, confronts our permission to these presupposed acceptable behaviors, peeling away our pride in holding to our right to behave as such, the excuses fall away. We might even feel naked in that moment, but not as shamed. More, we feel cleansed. The falseness of permissiveness we held right to is seen for what it is, rumor and presupposition.
So, too, is the day of the Lord. When Jesus comes again, there will be no doubt to anyone. The entire world will know. Any proclamation of his arrival that is not made known to all people is merely rumor. It is false news. We will all know the truth. In the meantime, we are to choose from what vantage point we wait. Do we watch for an approaching army that will destroy or do we yearn to see the salvation of the Lord, that which heals and makes free? So many of the prophecies of the Lord’s return use words that sound destructive, and so will it be. What is to be destroyed is those excuses that we each have believed to be our right to hold. Our presumptions will be put to death, and we will be left naked. This nakedness is not in that position of shame, it will be as beings who have been completely cleansed, no longer looking at nakedness as a condition of vulnerability, but of absolute safety.
From what vantage point do we wait? Is it that of fear, self-protection, pride, or dismissiveness, or do we allow ourselves to wait with the posture of Jesus himself. Consider God’s vulnerability in entering this world as a pauper’s adopted child, birthed with all societal assumptions of illegitimacy, and yet knowing that the nakedness of God was necessary for the clothing of righteousness to happen on fallen humanity. To wait in hope, in nakedness if you will, is a very vulnerable posture. And yet, that is the place of waiting that is closest to the Christ. Having already shed the garments of pride and judgment, our expectation is in joy for the cleansing to come.