This Sunday, the last Sunday after Epiphany, is the Feast of the Transfiguration.  The gospel for this day is Matthew 17:1-9 (see the parallels in Mark 9:2-9 and Luke 9:28-36):

Six days later Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and brought them to the top of a very high mountain.  He was transformed in front of them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light.

Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Jesus. Peter reacted to all of this by saying to Jesus, “Lord, it’s good that we’re here. If you want, I’ll make three shrines: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

While he was still speaking, look, a bright cloud overshadowed them. A voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son whom I dearly love. I am very pleased with him. Listen to him!”

Hearing this, the disciples fell on their faces, filled with awe.

 But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Don’t tell anybody about the vision until the Human One is raised from the dead.”

This potent and mysterious scene is also full of danger–for us, as for Peter, James, and John, its first witnesses.  This, we want to say, is at last the real Jesus, with his humble peasant disguise stripped away.  Jesus glorified [“transformed” in the CEB, “transfigured” in the KJV and NRSVue]; Jesus the god; Jesus the warrior king, who will surely force this world to follow him–and since we are his earthly representatives after all, that means the world must follow us.  Like Peter, we want to stay on the mountain, to stay with this image of power and glory, which makes us feel powerful, and glorious.

But, no.  The Voice of God from heaven does not endorse either Peter’s grandiose designs, or ours.  There will be no shrines erected here.  Instead, they–and we–are directed to listen to Jesus’ words.  And Jesus forbids them even to talk about this experience, which Matthew calls to orama (“the vision”), “until the Human One [NRSVue, like KJV, reads “the Son of Man”] is raised from the dead” (Matt 17:9).  In other words, we cannot understand what the vision means apart from  Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

After this revelation of his glory, Jesus leads them–and us–off of the mountain and back into the world, for only there will we discover who Jesus truly is.  After all, Jesus was not God sometimes (say, on the Mount of Transfiguration) and human sometimes (say, in the manger–or on the cross).  Certainly, Jesus’ humanity was not a disguise; he was not God pretending to be human, God in a people mask.  Nor was he a charlatan–a human pretending to be a god.  Jesus was, always and everywhere, himself.  So, yes: the Jesus they saw every day–laughing, crying, hungry, angry, dusty and weary from the road, Jesus in all his fleshiness–was indeed the real Jesus.  They could not always see his glory, but his glory was always present, and inseparable from his humanity–indeed, from his suffering.

Consider the image of the returning, glorified Jesus in Revelation 19:11–16:

Then I saw heaven opened, and there was a white horse. Its rider was called Faithful and True, and he judges and makes war justly. His eyes were like a fiery flame, and on his head were many royal crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself.  He wore a robe dyed with blood, and his name was called the Word of God. Heaven’s armies, wearing fine linen that was white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword that he will use to strike down the nations. He is the one who will rule them with an iron rod. And he is the one who will trample the winepress of the Almighty God’s passionate anger. He has a name written on his robe and on his thigh: King of kings and Lord of lords.

Notice that, in this passage, King Jesus’s robe is already stained with blood when he begins to descend from heaven (Rev. 19:13), so the blood cannot belong to his earthly enemies. So, whose blood is it? Given that the most common image for Christ in Revelation is the Lamb who was slain (twenty-six times; for example, Rev 5:6, 12; 12:11; 13:8), it seems that the blood staining his robes is his own! Further, the only weapon he bears is the sword that comes from his mouth, that is, his word (Rev. 19:15; see also Rev. 1:16; 2:16; Heb. 4:12; Eph. 6:17). The Old Testament imagery of the Divine Warrior to which John’s vision alludes (Isa. 63:1–3; Ps. 2:9) is transformed by the realization that the rider on the white horse is the one called The Word of God (Rev. 19:13), whose robe is stained with his own innocent blood, and who strikes down the nations by the power of his transforming Word (remember the command of the Voice on the mountain, that we listen to him!)–including the words of his Sermon on the Mount, and their rejection of violence (Matt. 5:38–48)!

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., gestures as he meets with reporters ahead of a key procedural vote to end the partial government shutdown, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

To turn to a contemporary example: recently, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson critiqued Pope Leo XIV’s call for kindness and respect for the immigrant on what he imagined to be biblical grounds.  Referring to Romans 13:1-2, the Speaker insisted that Christians must submit to the authority of the state, specifically with regard to borders, and concluded,

When someone comes into your country, comes into your nation, they do not have the right to change its laws or to change a society. They’re expected to assimilate. We haven’t had a lot of that going on.”

There is much that could be said in response to this contextless misreading of Scripture (for example, that Paul himself would be repeatedly arrested and ultimately executed for refusing to submit to Roman authority).  But perhaps the best response I have seen comes from Episcopal priest Michael DeLashmutt, who insists that we read this passage in terms of power and powerlessness:

Paul is writing to fragile house churches living under imperial surveillance, not to Christians wielding state power, and his concern is pastoral and pragmatic: how believers survive under empire without inviting unnecessary repression. It is not a blueprint for Christian governance, nor a timeless endorsement of every policy enacted in the name of law and order.

To lift Romans wholesale into a contemporary political theology — particularly one that treats the state as the primary moral agent — is to ask the text to bear more weight than it can sustain. Romans (along with the rest of Christian Scripture) must be read alongside Israel’s long experience of exile, Jesus’ execution by the state and the New Testament’s recurring suspicion of imperial power. The Bible offers no simple equation between God’s purposes and the interests of any given government, even one that claims Christian privilege.

In the face of the current American heresies of Christian nationalism and Dominionism—the claim that Evangelical Christians ought to impose their faith and morality through political power—it is vital that, as Jesus insists, we view his Transfiguration through his Cross. Otherwise, the image of Christ glorified too readily becomes an excuse for our own claims to political dominance, and a justification for violence against those outside our small circle.

Next week, with Ash Wednesday, Lent begins.  Friends, let us follow Jesus off the mountain and into the wilderness, and learn from him in his weakness what strength truly means.  This prayer for Transfiguration Sunday (from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers, © 2002 Consultation on Common Texts [Augsburg Fortress]) invites us to ask God for a transfiguration of our own:

Holy God, mighty and immortal,
you are beyond our knowing,
yet we see your glory in the face of Jesus Christ,
whose compassion illumines the world.
Transform us into the likeness of the love of Christ,
who renewed our humanity so that we may share in his divinity,
through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In this season after Epiphany (in the Christian West, January 6–the first day after the twelve days of Christmastide), I have been thinking about the translation of Matthew 2:1-12, and especially, about its opening verses:

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the territory of Judea during the rule of King Herod, magi came from the east to Jerusalem. They asked, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We’ve seen his star in the east, and we’ve come to honor him” (Matt 2:1-2, CEB).

In the CEB and the NIV, Jesus’ foreign visitors are called “magi.”  Likewise, in the newly updated edition of the NRSV, one of the 12,000 substantive changes made to that translation was changing the NRSV’s “wise men” to “magi.”  The old NRSV had left the translation “wise men” in place from its predecessor, the RSV, which had taken the rendering over from the old King James Version–part of the RSV’s commitment to preserve the familiar rhythms and language of the KJV as much as possible “in the light of our present knowledge of the Hebrew and Greek texts and their meaning on the one hand, and our present understanding of English on the other” (from the preface to the RSV).

Unquestionably, “magi” is more accurate and specific than “wise men.”  The Greek text has magoi (singular magos), a loan word from Old Persian, where it describes a clan of Zoroastrian priests and astrologers.  The word appears six times in our New Testament: four, all plural, in Matthew’s Christmas story (Matt 2:1, 7, 16 [two times]) and twice in the singular for the sorcerer Bar-Jesus (also called Elymas), an adversary of Paul and Barnabas who was stricken blind by the apostle (Acts 13:6, 8).

Evidently related to magos are the Greek noun mageia (“magic”) and verb mageuo (“practice magic”), found only once each in our New Testament; both are used for Simon (called in later tradition Simon Magus), a Samaritan magician converted under Philip, who is harshly rebuked for trying to buy the gifts of miracles and healing from Peter (Acts 8:9, 11).  Our English words “magic” and “magician” likewise come from this Old Persian root, by way of Greek and Latin (it is the Latin Vulgate which renders magoi as magi.)

The CEB and the NIV alike use modern colloquial English: the NIV assumes a high school reading level, while the CEB is aimed at a seventh grade reading level.  So, their decision to use “magi” is an interesting one.  Evidently, those translators believed that most modern readers would have no trouble identifying who the Magi are.  Certainly, “magi” has entered into broad English usage, specifically for Jesus’ foreign visitors.

Consider O. Henry’s famous short story for the Christmas season, “The Gift of the Magi,” in which a poor couple each sell the most precious thing they own to buy a gift for the other: he, his pocket watch to buy combs for her hair; she, her hair, to buy him a golden watch chain.  The story concludes:

None of this, of course, is found in Matthew’s account.  Matthew does not tell us how many Magi came–the traditional number three comes from their three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh (Matt 2:11-12). The idea that they were kings from distant lands and races comes from Isaiah 60:1-6, traditionally read as fulfilled in the visit of the Magi:

Still, there is an appropriateness to the tradition’s reading of the Magi as representing the whole outside world.  After all, they come to baby Jesus as the ultimate outsiders.  They come not only from outside of Judea, but from outside the Roman empire itself–from the land of the feared Parthians, an armed and unstable threat on the empire’s eastern frontier. They are not Jews, either ethnically or religiously; while nothing is said of their religious heritage by Matthew, they would have been Zoroastrians.  Yet it is Matthew who tells their story: Matthew, the most Jewish of the gospel writers, is the one who records a visit to the Christ child from foreigners and unbelievers, who come, not as enemies to threaten the Child, but as pilgrims to honor him.

Herod’s religious experts also see the Magi’s star, and rightly interpret the Scriptures that witness to the coming king:

As for you, Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
    though you are the least significant of Judah’s forces,
        one who is to be a ruler in Israel on my behalf will come out from you.
    His origin is from remote times, from ancient days.
 Therefore, he will give them up
        until the time when she who is in labor gives birth.
        The rest of his kin will return to the people of Israel.
He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord,
        in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
        They will dwell secure,
        because he will surely become great throughout the earth;
        he will become one of peace (Micah 5:2-5; see Matt 2:4-6)

But these faithful, patriotic citizens stay in the false security of Herod’s walled palace, and never see the miracle.  Instead, in Matthew it is the foreign Magi who become the first, faithful witnesses to the new thing God is doing–breaking into our world as one us in Bethlehem.

Epiphany celebrates the light of God shining into the entire world with the birth of Christ, and indeed, the light of God’s revelation shining into all our lives yesterday, today, and forever!  May we learn from the wise men to be “wise guys” ourselves: to be ready to receive God’s blessing from the hands, and to hear God’s word in the voice, of a stranger.  May we say to all hatred, racism, and fearmongering a firm and unequivocal “No.”

AFTERWORD:

The photo of the Three Kings reliquary is from astropelusa / Atlas Obscura User.  The quilt above, “Star of Bethlehem With Pomegranate Trees,” was made by an anonymous quilter in 1850, and is at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.  This image comes from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56278 [retrieved January 30, 2023]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Star_of_Bethlehem_with_Pomegranate_Trees,_New_York,_c._1850_-_Museum_of_Fine_Arts,_Boston_-_DSC02710.JPG.

This year, St. Paul’s minister of music Dr. Mark A. Boyle led us in a Christmas Cantata by David von Kampen, setting texts by Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676), as well as selected passages of Scripture.  It was the best expression of the meaning and power of Christ’s Incarnation that I have encountered.  I am sharing here the words of that cantata as my Christmas greeting to all.  God bless you, friends–and Merry Christmas!

MOVEMENT 1:  “Oh Jesus Christ, Thy Manger Is”

O Jesus Christ, Thy manger is

My Paradise, at which my soul reclineth.

For there, O Lord, Doth lie the Word of God made flesh for us;

Here-in Thy grace forth shineth

MOVEMENT 2: “A Great Light”

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light:

they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death,

upon them hath the light shined.

For unto us a child is born,

unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder:

and his name shall be called Wonderful,

Counsellor, The mighty God,

The everlasting Father,

The Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:2, 6 KJV).

MOVEMENT 3: “He Whom the Wind and Sea Obey”

He whom the sea and wind obey

Doth come to serve the sinner in great meekness.

Thou God’s own Son, with us are one,

Dost join us and our children in our weakness.

MOVEMENT 4: “The Word was Made Flesh”

And the Word was made flesh,

and dwelt among us,

and we beheld his glory,

the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,

full of grace and truth.

MOVEMENT 5: “How Greatly God Must Love Thee”

Thou Christian heart, Whoe’er thou art,

Be of good cheer and let no sorrow move thee!

For God’s own Child, In mercy mild,

Joins thee to Him; How greatly God must love thee!

The world may hold Her wealth and gold;

But thou, my heart, keep Christ as thy true treasure.

To Him hold fast, Until at last

A crown be thine and honor in full measure.

AFTERWORD:  You may better know hymnist Paul Gerhardt for his translation from Latin of “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” (No. 286 in the United Methodist Hymnal).  John Wesley himself translated some of Gerhardt’s hymns from their German originals (for example, “Give to the Winds Thy Fears,” No. 129; and “Jesu, Thy Boundless Love to Me,” No. 183).  If you care to hear our choir’s presentation of the von Kampen cantata in worship, you can watch and listen here.

In my last post, I spoke briefly about All-Saints Day by way of claiming Hallowe’en as a legitimate Christian celebration.  As a celebration of all the saints who lack a feast of their own, All-Saints was declared an official holy day of the church by Pope Gregory IV in 837.  The feast was later moved to November 1 in response to the European (specifically Celtic) holiday of Samhain on October 31, which thus became for Christians All-Hallows Eve, or Hallowe’en.

All Saints Day was John Wesley’s favorite Christian celebration.  Joe Iovino writes:

John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, enjoyed and celebrated All Saints Day. In a journal entry from November 1, 1767, Wesley calls it “a festival I truly love.” On the same day in 1788, he writes, “I always find this a comfortable day.” The following year he calls it “a day that I peculiarly love.”

Like Wesley, I have long loved All-Saints Day, regarding it as a fitting celebration and memorial of all the faithful dead.  This is my favorite All-Saint’s Day hymn, composed by William Walsham How, Bishop of Wakefield, and usually sung, with a crashing opening chord, to Ralph Vaughn Williams’ stirring tune!

I must confess, though, that I long thought that All Souls Day was just another name for All-Saints, and that Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead) was likewise the same day, in Spanish.  I have learned, though, that these are actually three different, although related, festivals.

All Souls Day is a separate, specifically Roman Catholic celebration on November 2.  Odilo, abbot of Cluny (who died in 1048) thought it fitting that, having honored all the saints in heaven on All-Saints Day, we spend the following day remembering all the other faithful dead, praying for their release from purgatory.  This picture from Encyclopedia Britannica (© kristo74/Fotolia) shows candlelit graves in a Catholic cemetery–the candles left as a sign of the prayers going up for each departed soul.

As a rule, Protestants aren’t much on purgatory–after all, didn’t Jesus tell the bandit crucified with him, “I assure you that today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43)?  But the Christian hope has not been, traditionally, that our disembodied souls will be absorbed into the changeless, timeless eternity of the Godhead.  In Scripture and in the tradition, the hope for a life beyond this life has been joined to our personality continuing, in an embodied existence: everlasting, then, rather than timelessly eternal.

The earliest explicit statement about a life beyond death in the Bible is Daniel 12:2, a text that in its final form dates to the second century BCE: “Many of those who sleep in the dusty land will wake up—some to eternal life, others to shame and eternal disgrace.”  Notice that this passage is not about the assured immortality of the soul, but rather about the hoped-for future resurrection of the body.    Indeed, the resurrection of the body at the end of the age is the teaching of the rabbis in the Mishnah, and is assumed throughout the Christian New Testament (for example, Luke 14:14; John 5:29; 11:24; 1 Corinthians 15:20-28).  The creeds of Christianity, too, confess the resurrection of the body, not the immortality of the soul.

Most importantly, the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection everywhere emphasize the empty tomb (Matthew 28:11-15; Mark 16:6) and the physical, tangible nature of the risen Jesus, who displays in his body the wounds of crucifixion, invites his friends to touch him, and even shares a meal with them (for example, Luke 24:36-43; John 20:26-29). The risen Jesus is not Jesus’ ghost, but Jesus himself: the same Jesus who was crucified.

So–what does all this mean?  What do I believe happens when we die?  When I was a young Christian, I could have told you, with all the confidence of youthful arrogance.  But now, I am an old Christian, and no longer quite so glib or blithe.  I believe in the resurrection of the dead, friends.  And that means, first of all, that I believe that the dead really do die.  One day soon (although I hope, not too soon), I too will really die.  But I am also certain that the last word belongs to the Lord of life.  The God who raised Jesus can, and will, raise us up at the end of the age, in the world to come.

Christian theologian Jurgen Moltmann put it this way: “The immortality of the soul is an opinion – the resurrection of the dead is a hope.”  Christian hope is not Pollyanna optimism–a saccharine denial of the hard realities of life, and of death.  It is rather the confidence that we may place ourselves, our world, our future, and even our mourned and beloved dead into the hands of God, trusting that the power at the heart of all things is indeed just and loving and kind, and that nothing beautiful will be lost.

Anglican priest, physicist, and theologian John Polkinghorne described the soul as “what expresses and carries the continuity of living personhood,” not only beyond this life, but within it, from the past to the present and into the future (The God of Hope and the End of the World [New Haven: Yale University, 2002], 105). Drawing on information theory, he proposed that “the carrier of continuity is the immensely complex ‘information-bearing pattern’ in which that matter is organized” (Polkinghorne 2002 105–6). That pattern, preserved as a “disembodied existence” in the mind of God after death, will ensure continuity of the self into the world to come, when God reembodies us in the new creation (Polkinghorne 2002, 107).

What will that waiting-time be like, I wonder?  Will I sleep, as Luther believed?  Will there be, as Catholic dogma holds, the opportunity to strive further toward perfection–something like purgatory?  And what will happen once we are resurrected?  Frankly, I do not know.  But like Paul, I believe that nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38), and so when I leave this life, I will be with him (Philippians 1:23).  Whatever else Jesus’ words to the thief on the cross may mean, they surely mean that we may trust him not to let us go.

Which bring us to Dia de los Muertos: the Day of the Dead. In its origins, this festival is neither European nor Middle Eastern but, as the Disney film Coco jubilantly recognizes, Mexican.  While it shows some influence from Celtic Spain (Samhain is called Samaín in Galicia), and from the Christian All Saints and All Souls Days, the pre-Christian roots of Dia de los Muertos go back to indigenous Meso-American cultures such as the Aztecs.  Significantly, while (much like Samhain) Dia de los Muertos involves belief in the dead crossing over to the world of the living, those dead are not feared: their families remember, celebrate, and welcome them.

According to tradition, the gates of heaven are opened at midnight on October 31 and the spirits of children can rejoin their families for 24 hours. The spirits of adults can do the same on November 2.

Latin Christians, not just south of the border but everywhere, rightly find in these days a celebration of new life in Christ defeating death.

Happy Hallowe’en, friends!  A joyous All Saints Day, All Souls Day, and Dia de los Muertos to you all.

The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.

This saying of Christian Reformer Martin Luther was used as the epigraph to C. S. Lewis’ famous Christian satire The Screwtape Letters: Letters From a Senior to a Junior Devil–letters of advice from the demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, on how Wormwood could tempt his “patient” into hell: an appropriately “Halloweeny” read, to be sure!  

The Screwtape Letters was published in book form in 1943, but began as a wartime serial in The Guardian between May and November of 1941–just after the Blitz, a terrible period during which England was under almost continual attack from Nazi Germany.   Indeed (spoiler alert!), Wormwood’s attempts to seduce his “patient” away from his faith fail decidedly when the man is killed by a German bomb, and taken into heaven:

One moment it seemed to be all our world; the scream of bombs, the fall of houses, the stink and taste of high explosive on the lips and in the lungs, the feet burning with weariness, the heart cold with horrors, the brain reeling, the legs aching; next moment all this was gone, gone like a bad dream. . . Did you mark how naturally–as if he’d been born for it–the earth-born vermin entered the new life? (The Screwtape Letters, letter 31).

I commend this book wholeheartedly, friends.  It is full of wisdom, and wit.  For example, Screwtape advises Wormwood to prevent his patient from attending worship by disillusioning him:

One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans.        . . . When he gets to his pew and looks around him he sees just that selection of his neighbors whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbors. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like “the body of Christ” and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy’s side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father below, is a fool. Provided that any of those neighbors sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous (The Screwtape Letters, letter 2).

The Screwtape Letters is dedicated to J. R. R. Tolkien, the Roman Catholic friend who led Lewis into the Christian faith. That connection is particularly interesting, as some of the same Christians who condemn Hallowe’en as a pagan holiday also mistrust the fantasies of both Lewis and Tolkien, fearful of their alleged “occult” influences–despite the explicitly Christian worldview evident in both the Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings.

Those well-meaning Christians are of course correct about Hallowe’en’s pagan origins.  The night before November 1 was once called Samhain, an old Celtic festival of the quarter-year (falling between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice). In Celtic culture, it was believed to be a night when the borders between this world and the next became particularly thin, so that the unquiet dead could cross over into this world and molest the living. Food offerings, lamps, and even the severed heads of enemies (grimly recalled, perhaps, by Jack o’lanterns) could be set out to appease or turn aside the ghosts.

We call October 31 not Samhain, but Hallowe’en (that is, “Hallow Even”), because October 31 is of course the night before November 1, All-Hallows Day–hence, All-Hallows Eve.  All-Hallows, or All-Saints, Day began in the days of Pope Boniface IV as a feast day for all martyrs, and was first celebrated on May 13, 609.  Pope Gregory III (731-741) shifted the focus from the martyrs to the celebration of all the saints who lack a feast of their own (and by extension, of all who have died in the Lord), and as such All-Saints was declared an official holy day of the church by Pope Gregory IV in 837.  The feast was shifted from May to November 1 in response to the European (specifically Celtic) holiday of Samhain.

When the Celts became Christians, this night was transformed by the realization that Jesus Christ had triumphed over death, hell, and the grave. Death, and the dead, no longer needed to be feared.  Those Celtic Christians now knew, as Ephesians 2:4-7 affirms,

God is rich in mercy. He brought us to life with Christ while we were dead as a result of those things that we did wrong. He did this because of the great love that he has for us. You are saved by God’s grace!  And God raised us up and seated us in the heavens with Christ Jesus.  God did this to show future generations the greatness of his grace by the goodness that God has shown us in Christ Jesus.

The association with All-Hallows Day made this a night of rejoicing! Hallowe’en, friends, is a celebration of life, and of Christ’s victory over death and the fear of death.  I think it is fitting that this night, which used to be a grim and grisly night of fear, has become a night of laughter and joy, when it is little children who come to our doors to receive our offerings of food.  Surely, as Luther and Lewis alike understood, there is no better medicine against fear and despair than joy and laughter!

These waning days of October prompt anticipation, not only of Hallowe’en, but also of Election Day on November 4.  In addition, October 18 saw “No Kings” rallies, held across the country, draw nearly seven million people (this picture is from Pittsburgh).  In response to Hallowe’en, the forthcoming election, and to these protests of injustice and inequality, the following item, allegedly from The Screwtape Letters, is once more making the rounds on social media:

The claim is clear: caring about politics, trying to fix a “broken system,” and particularly participating in protests like No Kings are demonic distractions from Christian faith and spiritual growth.  However, this is NOT a quote from The Screwtape Letters, or indeed from anything else by C. S. Lewis.  Further, it makes claims with which Lewis himself would have surely disagreed.

To be sure, in The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape does advise Wormwood to get his client thinking obsessively about politics–whether conservative or liberal (“Patriotism or Pacifism”, in Lewis’ World War II English context) doesn’t matter:

Let him begin by treating Patriotism or Pacifism as a part of his religion.  Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part,  Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which religion becomes merely part of the “cause” (The Screwtape Letters, letter 7).

However, this does not mean that Lewis believed we should be concerned simply for the salvation of our own souls.  First, while Lewis would certainly agree that sin and salvation are personal, he would certainly not agree that either sin or salvation is private. Second, Lewis would certainly not agree either that concern for a “broken system” is misplaced, or that trying to fix what is wrong in our world is futile.

Remember that The Screwtape Letters was born in the Nazi Blitz!  Lewis was well aware of the dangers posed by systemic, political evil, and of the responsibility owed by citizens to work for the common good.  Our Christian faith does not call us to quietism–indeed, loving what God loves will engage us positively and passionately with what God is doing in the world.

If you believe that your involvement cannot make a difference in the world, please don’t think to justify your passivity and cynicism by appeal to Lewis–though, come to think of it, Screwtape and his ilk likely are involved.  And should we despair in the face of the powers that be, our Christian faith also reminds us that we, together with all the saints who have gone before us, are part of something larger than politics: the Church of Jesus Christ, “spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners.”

AFTERWORD: October 31 is also my Dad’s 91st birthday, and October 3rd was my 69th.  So, happy birthday to US!

I was surprised to learn yesterday that thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands, of people had heard of a prediction unfamiliar to me–that the Rapture would occur September 23-24, 2025–and that many who heard this prediction believed it.

An article in the New York Times traced this prediction to a video posted by South African Christian Joshua Mhlakela:

In the video, he says that Jesus came to him in a dream in 2018 and told him, “On the 23rd and the 24th of September, 2025, I will come to take my church.”

The context, as Mr. Mhlakela understood it, was the 2026 FIFA World Cup. “He was telling me that by June 2026, the world is gearing up toward the World Cup,” he said, but because chaos would descend after the Rapture, “there will be no World Cup in 2026.”

According to Google Trends, searches for “rapture” and “the rapture Tuesday” started to climb around Sept. 20.  The hashtag #rapturenow leads to over 311,000 videos.

Sadly there is nothing new about this kind of end-time hype.  The Rapture did not occur yesterday, obviously, and although this day is not yet over, I am writing confidently to predict that it will not happen today, either.  In fact, the Rapture will not happen at all.

How can I say that?  And why do I say it so forcefully?  A bit of personal history, friends.  Over fifty years ago, when I was fifteen, I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit at a prayer meeting in my family’s living room.  I have no doubt about the reality of that experience, or of its profound effect on my life.  Although I had grown up in the church, I now felt an increased zeal for the Lord.  I always wore (as in this picture) a cross around my neck.  I carried my Bible–for which I had a renewed and passionate hunger–with me everywhere, and was always careful that it was on top of my pile of schoolbooks.  I told everyone about Jesus: in study hall, in the lunch line, on the school bus–whether they wanted to hear or not.  I covered my notebook with Christian slogans: “One Way,” “PTL” (Praise the Lord), and of course, “In case of Rapture, this notebook will be abandoned.”

You see, one of the cornerstones of my young, passionate faith was the certainty that I would one day, very soon, be taken up out of the world in the Rapture.  I never expected that I would ever grow up and marry, that I would ever have children, or a career.  I knew–I knew–that the world was going to end very soon.  Curiously, for all my love for Scripture and my passionate study of God’s Word, I never realized that the Rapture was not in the Bible.

If you search any Bible concordance for the term “Rapture,” you will not find it (for a little about where the notion of the Rapture originated, see this blog). Not only do neither Matthew 24:40-41 nor 1 Thessalonians 4:13, the two passages commonly alleged to describe the Rapture, use that term, but neither describes a miraculous end-time escape from the world.

Matthew 24:40-41 reads,

At that time there will be two men in the field. One will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding at the mill. One will be taken and the other left. 

For many readers, the one “taken” is Raptured, taken up to glory. The one left is, as Timothy LaHaye’s series title has it, “Left Behind,” to suffer the torments and tortures of Tribulation.  But I am not at all persuaded that this is the best reading of that verse.

Matthew 24 is Matthew’s version of the Synoptic apocalypse: a description of the end of time (compare Mark 13 and Luke 21) that offers warnings of coming persecution and trial, not instruction on how to escape them.  Indeed, Jesus tells his followers, “They will arrest you, abuse you, and they will kill you. All nations will hate you on account of my name” (Matt 24:9).  Jesus compares those days to “the time of Noah,” when devastation came suddenly upon a people unprepared:

In those days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark. They didn’t know what was happening until the flood came and swept them all away (Matt 24:37-39).

Likely, then, the “one taken” is not saved, but lost: perhaps metaphorically taken by death or disaster, or perhaps quite literally taken–arrested by the Roman authorities, and hauled away to prison or forced labor.

Matthew 24 is not after all about us “going up,”  but about Jesus “coming down”!  The return of Jesus, the Human One (literally “Son of Man”), will be unexpected, and unpredictable:  “But nobody knows when that day or hour will come, not the heavenly angels and not the Son. Only the Father knows” (Matt 24:36; emphasis mine).  Jesus himself does not know when this will be!  He compares himself to a thief:

But you understand that if the head of the house knew at what time the thief would come, he would keep alert and wouldn’t allow the thief to break into his house.  Therefore, you also should be prepared, because the Human One will come at a time you don’t know (Matt 24:43-44).

The point, then, is to be ready–whenever his coming might be–so that we will not be taken unawares.

1 Thessalonians, Paul’s first letter, is the oldest book  in the New Testament (dating to around 50 CE).  Paul writes to offer reassurance to a struggling church: the first he had established in Europe (see Acts 17:1-10).

The Christians of Thessalonica were concerned because some of their members had died: perhaps from persecution, but perhaps too from illness or old age (1 Thes 4:13-14).  Believing, as Paul had taught them, that Christ’s second coming was imminent, they feared that those faithful dead would have no share in Christ’s kingdom.  Paul, however, assured them that, far from being left behind, those believers who had died would have the inside track in the world to come: