Let Behind: Best Left Behind
October 13, 2002
Ralph DiBiasio-Snyder
Luke 14:16-24 and Matthew 22:5-7, 11-14
Introduction to the Scriptures:
In the first three Gospels - Matthew, Mark, and Luke - a good number of the stories about Jesus, and his teachings, are recorded twice, sometimes three times - each of the three Gospel writers using a given section for his own purposes. Problem is, very often the stories are altered a bit. Sometimes exact wording is reproduced; sometimes just a word is exchanged for another word with a similar meaning. Other times whole sentences are included by one writer, and omitted by another. And sometimes sentences or paragraphs are added to embellish or explain a story.
Today Karen will read Luke's and Matthew's treatment of the parable of the wedding banquet. I want you to hear them both, because while they have the same basic message, their differences are important.
In the first reading we have a man throwing a party, probably a wedding feast. As was the custom, he had issued invitations sometime earlier to his friends - the people you would expect him to invite. So they knew the feast was coming, but didn?t know exactly when it would be. That seems odd to us, but that was the accepted practice in Jesus' time. So when all is finally ready - and this was a big affair, several days long - a second announcement was given: All is ready, it's time to come!
That's the background to the parable. Let's listen now to the reading from Luke. [Luke 14:16-24]
Now let's hear from Matthew. Here it is a king who is hosting a wedding feast. The story is the same as Luke's until we come to the part where the invitees refuse to come. Listen to Matthew's version. [Matthew 22:5-7]
Luke's host was "angry;" Matthew's king is enraged! Talk about needing an anger management program! He burns down their city! But in Matthew we have another addition to the story. Just as in Luke, the king has his servants fill the wedding hall with guests who had not originally been invited ? "both good and bad," says Matthew. But one poor fellow finds himself in trouble. Listen to how Matthew ends the parable. [Matthew 22:11-14]
No wonder our king in the parable is teed off when his guests don't show. Of course, in Matthew those who are invited but don?t come also have the bad manners to murder the king's messengers. So we can understand him being upset . . . "enraged," while Luke's dinner host is merely "angry." His banquet no-shows are really rather polite in declining to come, distracted by the concerns of business and family. After all, if you just bought some oxen you'd need to take them for a spin.
Well, Jesus' parable in Luke and in Matthew both carry the same overall teaching. First, both warn us about presumption. Both remind us that in religious matters - in faith - it is a mistake to presume that one has by tradition or race or status an inside track with God. Don't make the mistake, says Jesus (and he says this lots of other places too), of thinking that of course you can go or not to the banquet - that if you miss this dinner, well, there will be more, and of course you'll be invited again because we, you see, are the chosen few, and we know God quite well, and so don't need to show up all the time. In Jesus' time it was the religious leaders who, said Jesus, displayed a certain religious arrogance - the presumption of chosen-ness - that he found repugnant.
And the parable both in Luke and in Matthew includes the open invitation of God to all people - not just the religious or the well-off or the healthy or the attractive and talented. Everyone - "the good and the bad," to use Matthew?s terms - is invited in.
But there are important differences in the two stories as well, and this is what I find challenging and timely. I already mentioned that in Luke those who decline to come make excuses, but at least they don?t murder the messengers as in Matthew. Matthew paints a much more ominous, evil portrait of those who refuse to come. And while Luke's dinner host is "angry," Matthew's king is "enraged," violently so. So we have in Matthew both a lower view of humanity and an angrier, punitive God.
Likewise in the Lukan version all those who do attend the banquet are welcomed and fed, and get to stay for the cake. The owner laments that "none of those invited [originally] will taste my dinner." But in Matthew we learn even if you do accept the invitation you still may not be good enough. See the example of the man with the wrong clothes thrown out into darkness to weep and gnash his teeth.
The writers of Luke and Matthew see God very differently. Both care about humanity. Both invite all to come, especially those who are marginalized ? "the poor, the lame, the blind and the crippled," "the good and the bad." But one of these Gods is more of grace, and the other is more of demand. One is more of patience, the other more of ?standards.? One of these Gods has forgiveness, the other punishment. One God wins by love, the other by power. One seeks to win others by understanding, the other by shear force.
These two competing ways of understanding, of feeling who God is has always been present in our faith. And that is surely true today. In 1995 two evangelical authors, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins teamed up to write the first of what are now ten novels in the series known as the Left Behind series ? books whose God is far more like Matthew?s than Luke?s; indeed they can make Matthew?s angry king look mild. Over 50 million copies have been sold world-wide. In 2001 the ninth book in the series, titled, Desecration, was the number-one best-selling hardcover fiction title, replacing John Grisham in the position he had held since 1994. Book 10 ? The Remnant ? was No. 1 for four weeks; it was No. 7 on last Sunday's list. It is the fourth straight Left Behind Series title to debut at No. 1 on the best-seller lists for "The New York Times," "USA Today," and "Wall Street Journal."
If you go to leftbehind.com you will find a world of products available, from CD?s, video and audio tapes, T-shirts, chat rooms, children?s versions (described as "four kids with faith face the last days as a team") and board games ("Players band together and use Deception cards to defeat the Antichrist.") You can even sign up to receive by daily inspirational thoughts with a Bible verse and a quote from one of the series? heroes.
So what are these incredibly popular books all about? "[They] offer readers a vivid, violent and utterly detailed description of just what happens to those who are left behind on earth to fight the Antichrist after Jesus raptures, or lifts, the faithful up to heaven. At the start of Book 1, on a 747 bound for Heathrow from Chicago, the flight attendants suddenly find about half the seats empty, except for the clothes and wedding rings and dental fillings of the believers who have suddenly been swept up to heaven. Down on the ground, cars are crashing, husbands are waking up to find only a nightgown in bed next to them, and all children under 12 have disappeared as well. The next nine books chronicle the tribulations suffered by those left behind and their struggle to be saved." [Time, July 1, 2002]
Now, I should say here, as a matter of presenting my credentials to talk about all this, that I was born and raised in a church where the ?end of the world? scheme presented in Left Behind was taught and believed. As a little boy every New Year?s Eve I would go to church for what was called the "Watch Night" service. And I mistakenly thought that what we were watching for ? at midnight ? was nothing less than the Second Coming of Christ, right there on Brown Street in Akron, Ohio! I later found out that no, we were just there to see in the New Year.
And in seminary I remember a fellow student giving a carefully researched and impassioned report on how the ten toes on the image in the book of Daniel were the ten nations of the coming evil European Union ? there are fifteen, with another ten approved just this week; so much for the toe theory. It seemed pretty weak to me even in 1975. So this business of antichrist, and the rapture, and the great tribulation and the battle of Armagedden, the end of the world are not new ideas to me. They are just bad ideas.
They are first bad biblical interpretation. It?s important to know that the prophetic theories the Left Behind books assume were unknown until 150 years ago. "An Anglican priest turned traveling evangelical preacher named John Nelson Darby arrived in the U.S. in 1862 [bringing with him a new interpretation of the book of Revelation.] His ideas got into the margin notes of the most popular version of the Bible in the 20th century, the Scofield Reference Bible, for many in the evangelical community Darby?s grim vision of a world that would get worse and worse became the standard view of the end times. But the vast majority of Christians ? ordinary believers and scholars and pastors ? in the 2000 year history of the faith and in our day as well did not and do not believe what Left Behind is built on. Marva Dawn, herself an evangelical scholar, says that "Too many get duped when Left Behind books take Scripture verses out of context and string them together with imagination for an electrifying effect." [Jeffrey MacDonald, Religious News Service, October 4, 2002. www.ucc.org/news/r100402f.htm]
Bad interpretation leads to bad theology. The books speak of the grace of God, but in my reading of The Remnant there is far more of fear than of love. Evil is overcome not, as St. Paul says it should be with good [Romans 12:21], but by force, by violence. "The Tribulation Force" as the good guys are called are soldiers in the fight against evil. And these Christians take no prisoners. One passage in The Remnant records the thoughts of one of the true believers facing danger: "When his end would come, he wanted to be sure to take one or two [of the unbelievers] with him into eternity. He knew from their marks [the ?mark of the beast?] they wouldn?t be going where he was [heaven, of course]. But they?d get to their destination sooner than they thought." [The Remnant, p. 51] And another place in the book, one of the Trib Force heroes preparing for an assault heaves his Uzi "up against his chest, and says, "Time to go to work, big boy." This is heroic Christian faith? Whatever happened to "Blessed are the peacemakers?" What of Jesus? example of choosing to die rather than attack his attackers?
Randall Balmer of Barnard College says that what we are talking about is "one of the narrowest and most inward-turned strands in American religious belief . . . a theology of despair." Why, then, is the series so wildly popular? It is significant that after 9/11, sales of the Left Behind books soared by 60%. People are worried. People want to know what the future holds. They are afraid, and they want to know what will happen next, even if that means embracing a dubious scenario sanctioned with the label "biblical." A TIME/CNN poll found that fully 59% of the people they talked to "believe the events in Revelation are going to come true."
But of course we cannot know the future. If God does, God has chosen not to tell us ? the Bible?s so-called "prophecy" notwithstanding. Apparently we don?t NEED to know what will happen. We only need to know that whatever happens God will be there, and not just for us but for all people.
For as we learned in the parable of the wedding feast, the invitation is open to all. And so is the invitation ? no, the command of Christ ? to love even our enemy, to overcome evil not with more evil but with good. God in Christ calls us ? no, commands us ? to live counter-culturally. When the world says that violence will stop violence, God in Christ says if you live by the sword you will die by the sword. When the prevailing wisdom of the age says that intimidation of others will be our salvation, God in Christ says that the greatest among you is the one who humbly serves. When leaders use fear to motivate their people, God in Christ says that fear will in the end only divide. When expediency replaces morality, God in Christ says goodness and understanding, mutual respect and humility are the only things that can unite even bitter enemies, be they people or nations. Christians have always been called to be counter-cultural, today perhaps more than ever. And so . . .
Left Behind would be best left behind. In its place, let us put grace and charity, trust in God ? not trust in our power. Then God?s future can break into our needy world.
