Sermon from April 8, 2007
Have you caught up with the recent stories about Jesus' final resting place in a Jerusalem bone box? Some Jewish families 2000 years ago collected the bones of their loved one and put them in an ossuary, a bone box.

In 1980 Professor Amos Kloner of Bar-Ilan University discovered a tomb with ossuaries in it. The names of the bone boxes in it were: Mary (on two boxes), Jesus son of Joseph, Jacob son of Joseph, Judah son of Jesus, Joses and Matthew. In print and documentaries some have concluded that this discovery marked the final resting place of the Jesus of the gospels, and it proves that He did not rise from the dead.

Professor Kloner, an Israeli archeologist, oversaw the work at the tomb in 1980 and has published detailed findings on its contents. Six weeks ago, he said this to The Jerusalem Post about the idea that the Jesus of the gospels was buried there: "It makes a great story for a TV film. But it's impossible. It's nonsense."

He also pointed out two stubborn facts that call the anti-Christ conclusion into question. First, "'Jesus son of Joseph' inscriptions had been found on several other ossuaries over the years." Jesus was the sixth most common name for boys during the 300 years before and 100 years after Jesus of Nazareth.

Second, "'There is no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb. They were a Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The ... tomb belonged to a middle-class family from the 1st century CE.'" (You can read Mr. Horovitz's entire piece by visiting this website.)

In other words, accepting the negative conclusion about Jesus is like seeing Elvis at a Phillies game. Advocates for this theory about Jesus will have their 15 minutes of fame, maybe make a few bucks, and then, like other skeptics before them, fade from memory with what little influence they had.

Meanwhile, today millions of pastors around the world say to their congregations, "Christ is risen!" and a third of the human family responds, "Christ is risen indeed!" I thank God that we in this gathering take our place among those more than two billion souls and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

At the resurrection God conferred on Him all authority in heaven and on earth – Matthew 28:18. For 2000 years He has been exercising that authority, and today, astonishingly, the Church has become a global phenomenon, growing by tens of millions just during the past 50 years and without coercion.

We Christians also believe that Jesus Christ will come again into human history. As we say in the Apostles' Creed, "He will come again to judge the living and the dead." The Bible says: God has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead – Acts 17:31.

No biblical writing presents the Second Coming more memorably than the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation. If you have your Bible, would you turn with me to Revelation 19:11? If you don't have a Bible with you, I hope you will look on with someone near you.

The Second Coming and Truth
I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. I will come back to this notion of making war. First, I want to focus on three words in verse eleven: faithful, true and justice. The Second Coming of Jesus Christ to judge the living and the dead with justice will be marked by truth.

Let me show you how John presents this central idea. Verse twelve describes Christ, the rider on the white horse, this way: His eyes are like blazing fire. That suggests that His piercing gaze can discern the thoughts and intentions of human hearts.

Verse 15 begins with another suggestive image. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. The sword comes from His mouth. His sword is what He says. His words will have an authority that other people have only with a lethal weapon in their hand. By His word, which is truth, "he will rule them (the nations of the earth) with an iron scepter." Such is the power of truth.

Next, look at verse 20 and the distortions of truth it highlights. The beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who had performed the miraculous signs on his behalf. With these signs he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped his image.

And English writer whom I admire, Charles Williams, once said simply, "Hell is inaccurate." We are also right to say that hell is deliberately inaccurate. It means to deceive. You can see this theme unfold further in Revelation 20:3: The angel threw him (the devil) into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations any more. His deception is global in scope.

The final image of truth calls us from our ignorance and frivolous ways. Revelation 20:11-12: Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.

We will all stand before God. We will answer for our lives. The lies we tell ourselves will disappear like morning mist. Are you ready to meet God face to face?

Do you remember the scandal last fall involving Pastor Ted Haggard? Haggard pastored a church of 14,000 people in Colorado Springs. He was also president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) with access to the President. In a few shattering days he was exposed as having a liaison with a homosexual prostitute in Denver. That moment of truth changed his and his family's life and the life of many others permanently. Such is the power of truth.

In 1995 Rober McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, wrote a book called In Retrospect. In the preface he set the tone for the book when he said about U.S. policy in Vietnam, "We were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why," (p. xvi). Such is the power of truth.

In 1856 the U.S. Supreme Court by a 7-2 majority ruled that Dred Scott was not an American citizen. Chief Justice Roger Taney did not say the decision was just. He did say that according to the U.S. Constitution, no person descended from black Africans, whether slave or free, could be a citizen of the United States. Five years later, we fought a Civil War to reinterpret the Constitution; and a century later we had a civil rights movement to get it right at last. Such is the power of truth.

How much truth can humanity bear at any one time? How much justice can humanity bear at any one time? The Second Coming will deliver both.

The Second Coming, War and Final Judgment
We must now tackle the last statement of Revelation 19:11. With justice he judges and makes war. We in this congregation have been reading through Revelation together since the first of the year. Several guideposts have helped us to navigate our way through this most unusual writing. One guidepost will help us now.

Here it is. Revelation often uses the language of warfare, and at times it is gory and graphic. It uses the language of warfare, because from age to age a spiritual war rages between Christ and the Church on one hand and the forces of evil on the other.

But in this warfare the weapons of Christ are suffering, patient endurance, and faithful witness even to the point of death. Unlikely as it seems, Christ conquered with these non-violent weapons. Unlikely as it seems, the Church is to conquer with these same non-violent weapons. The language is often military, but the actual behavior of Christ and His people is lamblike.

Of course, that is not the whole story. Serious consequences follow for those who distort the truth and delude others with their lies. The end of verse 15 says of Christ at the Second Coming: He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. God will use force, but Revelation gives surprisingly little detail about it.

For example, Revelation's vision of the Second Coming pictures two battle scenes. Revelation 19:19 gives the first. Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against the rider on the horse and his army. Verse 20 says: But the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who had performed the miraculous signs on his behalf.

That's it! It's not much of a battle scene. The second battle scene doesn't improve much. Revelation 20:7-9a pictures this second battle. When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth – Gog and Magog – to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God's people, the city he loves.

The rest of verse nine describes the outcome: But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. That's it! That's even less of a battle scene. John is not interested in force. He acknowledges its reality, but he is far more interested in non-violent, faithful witness even to the point of martyrdom as God's strategy for conquering the world.

Closely related to the theme of warfare is the theme of final judgment. Revelation 20:10 says: And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. Verse 15 widens the circle of liability for this final judgment: If anyone's name was not found wirtten in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

You might ask me, "Do you believe that hell is a lake of fire?" I would answer in two ways. First, why is that so hard for us to believe, us who live in a world of Hiroshima, Auschwitz, and September 11? We even refer to them and to lesser events as hell on earth. Second, I would say that I don't insist that hell is a lake of fire. The opening verses of Revelation 21 suggest another image of final judgment.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Verses 3-4 tells what will truly make it new. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

Would it not be hell to know that the dwelling of God is with men and to know that you can't have it? Hell may or may not be a lake of fire, but being excluded from the presence of God forever expresses very well the torment of losing permanently life's greatest prize.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Why do we Christians care about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ? Let me count the ways. Here are two of them. First, we care about it, because it is true. Human life, the many-peopled, many-centuried mix of birth and death, rise and fall, triumph and tragedy, is not, as the great Asian religions suggest, a wheel that goes round and round forever. It travels a path that moves humanity on a collision course with its final destination. Because it is true, we believe it and proclaim it, and it shapes our experience from our deepest sub-conscious to our estimates of earthly political power.

Second, the Second Coming will answer the Church's prayer: "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven!" The Lord's Prayer is not an incantation we mutter to ward off things that go bump in the night. It expresses our deep belief that this world is not all there is to human life. All that we know about this world, especially its suffering, suggests a work of art that needs to be finished.

A dozen years ago, I heard Pat Robertson call the United States "the last best hope of earth." As great as this nation is, several hundred million people around the world would find his statement arrogant. But for the sake of discussion, let's suppose Robertson was right. Where would that leave us?

The number of children aborted in this country since 1973 is approaching the population of France. Our glorification of youth stops short of despising the elderly, a dishonor that horrifies billions of people around the world. We produce, consume, and export so much pornography as to turn part of the Internet into a worldwide sewer. Half our marriages end in divorce. Human embryonic stem cell research threatens to turn human life at its most elemental and vulnerable into a commodity. Far more citizens in our country will die this year from firearms than will die in the entire Iraq war, even if it lasts a decade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States). A dark gravity is pulling us toward some unthinkable abyss.

Of course, this does not tell the whole story of the United States. But if this country is "the last best hope of earth" and if many other nations are in greater disarray, are we not right to hope for the Second Coming of Christ? Earth needs outside help.

This hope doesn't mean that we stick our heads in the sand and ignore the world around us. Among this congregation you will find people engaged in the politics of Delaware, Katrina relief efforts, public and private education at every level, creating wealth that lifts people out of poverty, and much more. But we all pray, "Thy kingdom come," because we know that human effort alone will not save the world from violence, poverty, disease, ignorance, and spiritual darkness.

The Church alone keeps the Second Coming of Christ as a live option for human hope. Many of you grew up in the Church, and you drifted away. Come back to the Church. Come back to Christ. The power that resurrected Christ is at work here.