MARANATHA
I am a forward-looking person. My favorite word/concept/prayer-word is MARANATHA. The word is derived from Aramaic, a language closely related to Hebrew, and is composed of “Maran” (our Lord) and “Atha” (come or has come).
When I was still a regular runner along Highway 37 north of Tweed, my running mantra was ‘Maranatha’. Now that I no longer run, I walk every day, but still cling to this word to give me rhythm in my movement. When I wake up at night, this expression too pops up automatically, almost.
This gazing into the future really influences my thinking and my outlook on life. It, I confess, determines my being, my prayer life, my eating, drinking, physical behavior: in short, my totality.
That’s why the coming-again of the Lord is part of my make-up. Each day I scan the news for signs that give an indication of THE DAY approaching, and, given this attitude, and the openness to this frame of mind, I see plenty of indications out there.
However, this ‘Maranatha’ concept is not popular anymore.
It is no longer ‘fashionable’ to have this notion of Parousia, the return of the Lord, even though Acts 2 tells a different story. There the new converts were so convinced that the Lord’s Return – Parousia – was imminent, so sure that it could happen at any moment, that they cashed in all their belongings and put them to use for the benefit of all community members. That desire, that longing for the Lord’s return, was foremost in the minds of all the new converts 2,000 years ago.
Why my preoccupation?
For decades now I start my day with the lectionary, published each November a year ahead, listing 365 Bible readings, featuring an Old Testament passage, a Psalm or a portion thereof, and a Newer Testament reading. When the Upper Room Publications issued a Journal in 1985, based on this lectionary, I used it daily to handwrite 400 words in the spaces provided, 800 on Sundays, based on this Bible journey. When this Journal was no longer available, I duplicated the lectionary – easily obtained from the web – and now write it on my word processor, first thing each morning. I can recommend this discipline.
This past week my lectionary reading was drawn to Amos 4. It relays how God punished Israel through natural disasters, and by this, I mean exactly what i write: through acts of the weather. Nature features prominently in the Older Testament. Both the eminent prophets Elijah and Elisha proclaimed God’s punishments through meteorological means: 7 years of drought. Time and again God uses God’s own creation as punishment. The 10 plagues in Egypt were mostly climate related. If that is true, and I think it is, then a ‘sin against creation’ is a sin against God. That ‘sin’ was the cause for the Ten Tribes of Israel disappearing without a trace. They were beyond reforming. Have we now reached that state also?
Bonhoeffer, my favorite ‘theologian’, equates God with Nature. In his ETHICS he writes, “I never experience the reality of God without the reality of the world or the reality of the world without the reality of God. Dr. Sabine Dramm, in her book, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an introduction to his thought, summarizes her findings as follows: “What Bonhoeffer presents as specific to the Christian faith is the perception of God and the world as one.”
The story about Daniel and his friends are recorded in the Bible for a purpose: exile makes the heart grow fonder. I believe that, in a way, Christians today also are in exile. Our entire society is conspiring to exploit creation. Rather than regarding creation as holy, we keep on abusing it, and we now have reached the point where there is no way anymore to live pure, to honor God through his work of art. Take Bach, Shakespeare, Rembrandt as examples: suppose that we praise these great artists, while simultaneously despoiling their handiwork: but that’s how we treat God!
Now, our problems are so complicated and so wrongly formulated that they really are simply beyond remedy. We cannot expect the church to heal creation: the work of the church is to bring the call to conversion, to believe in the love of God in Christ, to prepare for Christ’ second coming and look for the future Kingdom of God, which always is imminent.
Today we are being judged, just as was the case in the Old Testament. Our current judgements, witness Climate Change, are cosmic in character, increasingly affecting us, as masters of the universe. The book of Revelation makes plain that humanity will be hit where it imagines itself to be strongest: in its technical know-how and its dominance over nature: Think AI. We already see how this is playing out: nature already is breaking all constraints, and these are just the opening salvos.
That’s why my prayer increasingly is MARANATHA, Lord, Come.