Introductory Comments on Being Left Behind ⁽¹⁾

At the weekly study of the texts among local pastors (in 2001), the phenomenon of the Left Behind book series was raised. It piqued my curiosity to the point that I went out and bought a copy of the first book and did some substantial reading/browsing in it. Living a fairly sheltered life from Rapture theology, I admit that I need to resist not taking this book seriously. It says "Over 40,000,000 Sold in Series" on the front cover -- apparently before the ninth book in the series (in 2004 the twefth and final volume appeared). It wouldn't be fair for me to simply write it off as too divergent from my own view of Christian theology. It's a theology not typically popular among Lutherans, but I have had members encourage me to read them. And my colleagues said that they've encountered interest among their members such that they feel the need to address a rapture-sounding verse like the one in this Sunday's Gospel, Matthew 24:40: "Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left."

I would like to offer the Girardian anthropology as an alternative to the viewpoint of the Rapture. In the cross Jesus himself ultimately became the one left behind. All others had gotten swept up in the unanimous violence against him. He was the only one not caught up in the flood of violence as a perpetrator and instead became its victim for our sakes. He was taunted on the cross that the Messiah should expect some sort of miraculous Rapture, some sort of supernatural rescue mission on God's part: "He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to; for he said, 'I am God's Son'" (Matt. 27:43). Even the criminals hanged with him derided him so. He was cosmically alone as the scapegoat of all. There was no Rapture to save him from the cross. Instead, Jesus quoted the psalmist in crying out the forsakenness of the sacrificial victim, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46) A flood of collective violence had swept up everyone in its path. Jesus alone resisted it.

Yet it washed over him, and he did drown in it. But was the tomb also his ark? He remained sheltered for three days and then left it behind empty. He has arisen as the Forgiving Victim of all those others who were swept up in the flood. There was no Rapture that saved him from the cross, but the Resurrection did pull him from the clutches of death. What is needed is not so much a Rapture theology as a good baptismal theology: we are already baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ such that we can face the continuing rising tide of human violence with faith.

The New Testament -- I propose that Girard's anthropology of the cross helps to show -- does not so much describe a coming rapture as it describes an already come rupture in time and history. The endless cycles of rising tides of human violence has been interrupted with an incarnate, nonviolent word from God in Jesus Christ, a word that is unconditionally one of loving forgiveness. It is a rupture that begins creation again with a power of life from God that reveals itself as more powerful than our powers of violence and death. We who are already baptized into that promise of life need not hope in some future rapture. Our hope is in the coming fulfillment of what was already begun in the cross and resurrection.

Sermons

1. So what might we conclude as a reading of the Gospel Lesson that presents an alternative to one which would read it as a confirmation of the Rapture? Here is my attempt at such a reading in the sermon "Left Behind: Surviving the Floods of Violence." In 2001, I also ended up reprising these themes and extending it with reflections on our baptismal identities in a sermon "Baptized into Christ Jesus: Part Two of 'Surviving the Flood.'"

2. Tom Truby, member of Theology & Peace, used many of these Girardian insights to offer an excellent sermon in 2010, titled "I Would Rather Be Left Behind."

Isaiah 2:1-5

Reflections and Questions

1. Verse 2: "In days to come the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it." This is in marked contrast to next week's image quoted from Isaiah 40:3-4:

A voice cries out: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain."

This messianic prophecy in Isaiah 2 is in marked contrast to the leveling out depicted in Isaiah 40. The hills would seem to mark out a time of order and differentiation. But does this one "mountain of the Lord's house" mark out a true transcendence as a basis for differentiation, in contrast to all the other smaller hills, which represent the false transcendences of our human orders based on collective violence against the victim?

2. One commentary I read on this passage had this to say: "The first thing to say is that Isaiah is not making a prediction. Isaiah has a dream -- a dream that things can somehow be as they ought to be, and not as they are. ...Taking this passage literally 'invites silly questions.' Isaiah's point is that anything is possible for God, even this wildly, unrealistic dream of international concord." (Ralph Milton's "Rumors" newsletter for the week of November 29, 1998)

When Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream, was it wildly unrealistic? Is this dream from Isaiah wildly unrealistic? The passage that comes next week from Isaiah 11 makes this one look like a piece of cake: the lion lying down with the lamb, and a baby petting a snake. Yet I take even this passage as more than a wildly, unrealistic dream. If anything is possible for God, then how could it be wildly unrealistic?

Last week, we raised the question about the "Culture of Christ" (Christ the King C) being of a completely different nature. We can see this clearly through Girard's generative anthropology, by seeing how human culture and divine culture are generated in exactly opposite ways. If the divine culture which has already begun in Christ is so completely different, then doesn't the prophet have to paint it in terms that seem wildly unrealistic to us?

The bottom line for me to those who would see this passage as unrealistic is: what is the alternative? That God scrpas this experiment called Creation in favor of an otherworldly 'heaven'? Which is more unreal? I would maintain that the Jewish-Christian faith in one true God who created this universe is realistic by being faithful to the fulfillment of the Creation. If Christ's peace doesn't someday finally rule this world, so that even the lion lays down with the lamb, then aren't we giving up the claim that Christ's victory will someday be complete -- precisely by bringing this Creation to its fulfillment?

Resources

1. Robert Hamerton-Kelly, sermon from December 2, 2001 (Woodside Village Church).

Matthew 24:36-44

Exegetical Notes

1. Matthew 24:38-39: "For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man." The Greek word for "swept away," airo, more generally means "take up," "carry away," or "remove." It occurs 19 times in Matthew. In other words, it has a similar meaning as that of being taken up in the rapture, though it does often have more violent connotations. In other words, couldn't we say that according to this verse those in the flood experience a kind of rapture, being carried away in it? Which would mean that it was only Noah and his family who were left behind after the flood waters receded.

2. The Greek word for "the coming" of the Son of Man in 24:39 is parousia.

3. Matthew 24:40-41: "Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left." The Greek word for "taken" in these two verses is paralambano (16 occurrences in Matt.). The word for "left" is aphiemi, the meaning of which the Friborg Lexicon says:

(1) send off or away, let go (MT 27.50); (2) as a legal technical term divorce (1C 7.11); (3) abandon, leave behind (MT 26.56); (4) of duty and obligation reject, set aside, neglect (MK 7.8); (5) of toleration let go, leave in peace, allow (MK 11.6); (6) of sins or debts forgive, pardon, cancel (LU 7.47); (7) give or utter a loud cry (MK 15.37).

4. So what might we make from combining the two images, the "swept away" of vs. 39 and the being left in vs. 41? Rapture theology assumes that it's best to be carried away and undesirable to be left behind. But if one takes the reference to Noah seriously, isn't it the opposite here in these verses? In the days of Noah everyone else was swept away except for Noah and his family. They were the only ones left behind by the flood. They were forgiven, left in peace. Against Rapture theologians who see the "left behind" as an image in support of their portrait, I would maintain that these verses, when read carefully, actually portray the opposite of their version of a rapture. Being swept away is to be caught up in the rising tide of violence -- to join in and suffer its consequences. Those who are left behind, forgiven, are those who resist joining in and ultimately survive the violence.

As I suggest in the opening comments, this is the picture of Jesus in the Gospel story. He is the only one not to get caught up in the violence as a perpetrator of it. He is its victim, but one who, in the 'ark' of the tomb, ultimately survives it. We are called to follow in the footsteps of his faithfulness. Baptized, we are those who die and rise with him so that we might also be left behind when the next rising tide of human violence rolls our way. We are those who resist joining in. Living in faith, we do not get carried away.

Resources

1. During Easter 2004, I used Barbara Rossing's wonderful book, The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation, to subvert Rapture theology, especially of the newly published twelfth and final book in the Left Behind series, Glorious Appearing (see, for example, Easter 7C). In the Epilogue Rossing directly addresses the exegesis of passages such as Matthew 24:38-41. I highly recommend her book in being able to present a Gospel alternative to Rapture theology.

In the Epilogue, "Debunking the Rapture by Verse," Rossing examines some of the passages used by dispensationalists to 'prooftext' Rapture theology. Matthew 24:39-42 is one of the passages she considers, drawing on N. T. Wright to make the point:

In the verses immediately preceding this passage, Jesus says that his coming will be like the flood at the time of Noah, when people were “swept away” in judgment. If being “taken” is analogous to being “swept away” in the flood, then it is not a positive fate. That is the argument of New Testament scholar and Anglican bishop N. T. Wright:

It should be noted that being “taken” in this context means being taken in judgment. There is no hint here of a “rapture,” a sudden “supernatural” event that would remove individuals from terra firma . . . It is a matter, rather, of secret police coming in the night, or of enemies sweeping through a village or city and seizing all they can. (N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, vol. 1 of Christian Origins and the Question of God [London: SPCK; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996], 366)

If Wright is correct, this means that being “left behind” is actually the desired fate for Christians, whereas being “taken” would mean being carried off by forces of judgment like a death squad. For people living under severe Roman occupation, being taken away in such a way by secret police would probably be a constant fear. (p. 178)

Ten-year-old “Josh” came home from school to an empty house. His mother, normally at home to greet him, was nowhere to be found. She might have been at the store or at a neighbor’s, but Josh was terrified. His immediate response was a terrible fear that all his family had been “Raptured” without him. Josh was sure he had been left behind.

Now a grown-up in my seminary class on the book of Revelation, Josh told this story of his boyhood experience. Others consistently echo his story of childhood fear of the Rapture. These bornagain Christian children were exhorted to be good so that they would be sure to be snatched up to heaven with Jesus when he returned. Raised on a daily diet of fear, their view of God resembled the song about Santa Claus coming to town: “You’d better watch out, you’d better not cry.” Only it was Jesus, not Santa, who was “coming to town” at an unexpected hour: “He knows when you’ve been sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.” (p. 19)

Finally, I have also crafted a page of excerpts from three sources -- the twelfth and final book in the Left Behind series itself, Glorious Appearing; an interview with the authors; and Rossing's book -- under the title "Re-Sacralizing Violence in the Left Behind Books."

2. René Girard, Things Hidden. It would be helpful to begin with Girard's take on the mythology of floods. Water and drowning is a common image for disorder of violence that needs to be transformed once again into order. The Creation story in Genesis 1 begins with such images: order must be brought to the chaos of the Deep. There is nothing but a vast, dark sea, which God's word begins to shape into Creation. What's behind such mythological images is the chaos of a community in crisis that needs order imposed on it.

How is that done in conventional human culture? Through the collective murder of a scapegoat. Psalm 69, for example, expresses the victim's experience of this:

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. (Psalm 69:1-2)

Since the single victim brings reconciliation and safety by restoring life to the community, it is not difficult to appreciate that a sole survivor in a world where all others perish can, thematically, amount to the same thing as a single victim extracted from a group in which no one, save the victim, perishes. Noah's Ark, which alone is spared by the Flood, guarantees that the world will begin all over again. It is Lot and his family who are the sole survivors of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot's wife, who is changed into a pillar of salt, brings back into this story the motif of the single victim. (p. 143)

3. James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, elaborates on Girard's treatment of the Noah story by linking it to the New Testament passage 1 Peter 3:17-22:

For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God's will, than to suffer for doing evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you-- not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

The story of Noah is less obviously a story of origins than either that of Adam and Eve or Cain and Abel, yet since it, too, is subjected to a christological re-reading in the apostolic witness, I beg indulgence for a quick glimpse at this story too [cites Girard's reading above as "a slightly different but entirely compatible vision of the Noah story"]. In the first letter of Peter it is pointed out that in the days of Noah "a few, that is eight persons, were saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you" (1 Peter 3:20-21) That is to say, the water of Baptism corresponds to the water of the flood. Yet Baptism, we know from Paul, is being immersed in the death of Christ, so as to be able to share in his resurrection, and that it is he, and after him, the Church, which the Ark prefigured. This implies a rather particular Christological re-reading of the Noah story: the implication is that the Ark actually went under the flood rather than escaping it miraculously! In this re-reading, we would have all the violence abounding on the face of the earth, and, at a time of particular mimetic crisis of indifferentiation, symbolized by the Flood, the collective putting to death of someone (Noah) or a group (Noah and his family). It was this putting to death which brought about peace, permitting the re-establishment of order, the categorization of animals, and the setting up of a new, peaceful tribal system. There are of course many myths of this sort whereby a more or less hidden collective expulsion or murder is seen as producing a new social order, where fruit, or animals, or foodstuffs, start to abound as the result of a mysterious visitation in which it can either be the collectivity which perishes at the hand of a god, or a god which perishes at the hand of a collectivity, and as a prize, leaves behind the basis for the new culture. The Noah story as we have it could very well be a Jewish demythologization of just such a story in the light of their experience of salvation from out of Egypt leading to the setting up of the Covenant. Here, Noah is saved from out of the flood, and God makes a covenant with him never more to destroy all flesh.

The Jewish re-reading already shows the Jewish tendency to tell the story from the point of view of the victim, the tendency which we have already seen with relation to their flight from Egypt. The partial de-mythologization has God rescue Noah and his family from out of the hands of violent men, so as to establish a new peaceful sociality. The Christological re-reading merely takes this tendency one vital step further back, by revealing the founding murder, and indicating that those who are prepared to share in the self-giving towards the founding death are those who will be brought to everlasting life. The new sociality is made possible because of the self-giving up to death, not a sociality derived from self-deceit following a collective murder, as in the myth behind the Noah story. Once again, the christological re-reading, already implicit in the use of the Noah story in 1 Peter, points to an originating murder at the base of human sociality. (JBW, pp. 250-251)

We could multiply passages like these. Let us concentrate only on those which refer to the day as coming like a thief in the night, for it is clear that this comparison of the coming with a thief goes right back to Jesus. It is to be found in the Gospels of Matthew (24:42-44) and Luke (12:39-40). We have seen that Paul refers to the phrase as already known to his audience, presumably because it was a word of the Lord. It is also to be found in 2 Peter (3:10), and even in Revelation (16:15), where it also appears as a word of the Lord. Now it is quite clear that the concept of 'that day' is transformed during the first century...." [Raising Abel, pp. 120-121, with a parallel version and argument in The Joy of Being Wrong, pp. 214ff.]

This point is brought out beautifully in the passage from which Raising Abel gets it title, "The Time of Abel, or the Inhabitability of Time," pp.132-137. He creates a wonderful tale of Abel being raised, only to sneak up on his brother Cain's hut like a thief in the night. Here is a relevant portion:

What I wanted to suggest is that, in this, very exactly, does the Christian faith consist: in the return of Abel as forgiveness for Cain, and the return of Abel not only as a decree of forgiveness for Cain, but as an insistent presence which gives Cain time to recover his story, and, with the years which remain to him, which may only be days, who knows, to begin to construct another story. This he will manage to do in the degree to which, at every step of that painful process of calling to mind, he manages to stand loose from what he was doing, driven on by his poorly hidden flight in shame, and to build another story in which he has ceased to swing between playing the role of hero, who has to face up to a senseless life, or that of the victim, against whom all whisper, and who must protect himself against them all; to build a story that is 'other', somewhere between forgotten and unimagined, the story of the broken-hearted fratricide to whom his brother has come back in peace, naked of threat. However the story is to finish, between this arrival of his brother like a thief in the night, and the end of his days, Cain will be hard at work in the construction of the story of one who can look into his brother's eyes neither with pride nor with shame. He will look instead with the gratitude of a man who has received himself back at the hands of the one he himself killed, killed so as to fill the vacuum of the feeling that, before that other, he, Cain, had no 'himself' to give, no 'himself' with whom to love. This is the story of which we are talking when we speak of the human story in its working out starting from the resurrection. It is what I call the time of Abel. The time in which the innocent victim is made present to us as forgiveness, and thus, little by little, allows us to let go of all the sacred mechanisms of which we lay hold so as to fortify ourselves against our own truth." [RA, pp. 134-135] (This metaphorical tale is returned to briefly on p. 178.)

5. James Alison, Raising Abel, pp. 150-151, elaborates on the Lukan version of some of the Q sayings found in this passage of Matthew's. Here is a relevant portion:

We saw, in Mark, that, owing to the self-referential nature of the text, what we have is an indication of the coming of the Son which occurs principally at his crucifixion: this is the coming of the Son, and it ushers in a period of time during which our living is to be fixed on just such 'comings' in our own lives. Luke takes care to distinguish the comings. He does not remove the coming on the Cross, which is for him the central watershed of history and opens the time of the nations, but he does begin to give clearer signs of a final coming in glory at the end of history, which is to be public and notorious, as a distinct happening. And this coming takes the form of the revelation, the disclosing, of the Son of man.

Let us read, for example, this passage:

The days will come when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it. And they shall say to you, See here; or, see there: go not after them, nor follow them. For like lightning, that flashes out of one end of heaven to the other, so shall also the Son of man be in his day. But first must he suffer many things and be rejected of this generation. (Lk 17:22-5 [Mt 24:23,26,27])

Here we see how Jesus explains that the victim, risen and seated at the right hand of God, will have his day: it will not be necessary to look for him in a special way, because the moment will come in which the risen victim will be the principle which illuminates all of human history and reality. And this illumination will be absolutely evident, and will happen in the midst of the most apparently normal life: the people surrounding Noah and Lot were just carrying on their entirely normal lives when, of a sudden, judgement came: "Even thus shall it be on the day when the Son of man is revealed." (Lk 17:31 [Mt 24:39]) We begin to understand that Jesus is talking about his final coming in glory as a brilliant revelation of what has really been going on throughout the whole of normal time and life. And the revelation will be the revelation from the new criterion which we have already seen to have been introduced into history, that is, the criterion of the victim. Thus, when Jesus describes to them how absolutely normal will be the time at which all this is going to happen, the disciples ask Jesus where this is to be, and Jesus' reply is at the same time humorous and to the heart of the matter: "Wheresoever the body is, there will the vultures be gathered. (Lk 17:37 [Mt 24:28]) That is to say, there is no 'where'; what there is instead is the criterion of the victim, and that can happen anywhere. The question is: how have I related to the body of the victim? Do I feed on his body and blood while seeking, quietly and discreetly to create the universality of the kingdom? Or, do I rather participate, maybe without realizing it, in the production of such corpses? (pp. 150-151)

6. René Girard, Things Hidden; the section "Apocalypse and Parable," pp. 185-190, features Matthew 24 and parallels in Luke 17. Link to an excerpt of "Apocalypse and Parable."

Reflections and Questions

1. So what might we conclude as a reading of the Gospel Lesson that presents an alternative to one which would read it as a confirmation of the Rapture? Here is my attempt at such a reading in the sermon "Left Behind: Surviving the Floods of Violence." In 2001, I also ended up reprising these themes and extending it with reflections on our baptismal identities in a sermon "Baptized into Christ Jesus: Part Two of 'Surviving the Flood.'"

2. Tom Truby, member of Theology & Peace, used many of these Girardian insights to offer an excellent sermon in 2010, titled "I Would Rather Be Left Behind."

Note

1. The series of twelve books fictionally depicting the "Rapture" of contemporary "born again" theology, authored by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, published by Tyndale (Wheaton, IL), 1995-2004.