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Every Sunday and Wednesday, I’m on YouTube posting our services online for all to see. When you login to YouTube, there are a lot of other videos that come up. Since our church YouTube is used solely for posting, not watching, these videos are typically a random assortment of various religious and religious type channels.
There was one that popped up at the beginning of the month, promising to let me find out why millions of Christians were fasting in May. My first thought was, “well you’re a little late since Lent ended last month”, and I put it out of my mind.
Yet this video kept popping up each time I had services to post. Normally I would keep ignoring this sort of thing, except then I saw a news article this past week about a church where fasting was taken too far and people got hurt and died. I thought maybe I should check this out to make sure this wasn’t something dangerous out there.
After a bit of research, I learned this video wasn’t connected to the news story, but instead came out of a group in Kansas City looking towards the end-of-times. Their belief is that as many Christians as possible need to come together and pray for the conversion of the Jewish people in Israel. Only then, they believe, will Jesus return to this world.
There’s a lot to unpack here, nevermind the insult to our Jewish brethren, the very people God chose out of Egypt to become a nation, the very people God was born into in the form of Jesus. What these Kansas City so-called prophets are saying flies in the face of everything Jesus says and who we are called to be as followers of His Way.
You see, first of all, Jesus is very clear that we can do nothing to quicken His Second Coming in this world. We see this in our reading from Acts today. Like these folks in Kansas City, the Apostles have their own thoughts and understanding about what Jesus is going to do. Even after 40 days of being taught directly by Jesus after His Resurrection, they still have their own thoughts in mind about Jesus’ mission. They still think He is coming to “restore the kingdom to Israel.” They still think that Jesus is getting ready to do that as they are talking to Him.
What Jesus says to them is very different. He tells them plainly that “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by His own authority.” It is not for the Apostles to know when Jesus will return. It is not for them to know when the world will come to an end.
This is seconded by the mysterious men who appear in white robes after the Ascension that ask the Apostles why they continue to look up to Heaven. Jesus, they are told, will come back to earth the same way He ascended into Heaven. In the meantime, there is work for them to do, for they do not know when Jesus will return.
What instead it is for them to know is that soon the Holy Spirit will come upon them, as we will celebrate next week. Soon they will be called to share all that they know and all that they have seen in their time with Jesus to all they meet in the world.
This is the exact same message Jesus gave to the Disciples as He looks up to Heaven in the Gospel according to John. Jesus is calling on the Disciples to spread the Good News of God, “the Only True God,” and Jesus whom God has sent.
There are some things we just aren’t called on to know, like when and how the world will end. There are just some things we aren’t called to understand, like how Jesus ascended or why. What we do know is that the world will end at some point and that Jesus will return in the same manner He ascended, however it is that’s supposed to work.
We also know that in the meanwhile we have work to do. We are still called, as the Apostles before us, to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ to the ends of the Earth. We are still called to share the message of God’s love for us through the Son, Jesus Christ. We are called to help bring people closer in relationship to our Lord. We are called to spread the Gospel for however long we are able to do so.
Don’t get bogged down in details or mute points that are not necessary for us to parse out. People have been saying the end’s coming for centuries. Maybe it’ll be today. Maybe it’ll be tomorrow. But until it comes, we are called to keep on keeping on spreading the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ to all those we may meet.