Second, I am all for free speech. That does add to the tension, but its the confusing persecution (so-called) and the “taking Jesus out” with defending simply free speech that concerns me….defend free speech (on public property?–we should have an occupy Christmas on the Public Square!), but stop sweating that people not liking religious symbols on public property…that’s all.

It is a cliche to observe that this is a complex issue. But there is no question that a kind of censorship has been driving religion from the public square (literally and figuratively) for years now and activists are using the courts to their full advantage in this endeavor. Now, when these tokens of religion (like a creche) are removed from our public places, there are both negative and positive results: On the negative side, it stifles free speech and short-circuits a kind of pre-evangelism (“Mom, what’s up with the baby in the hay-basket?”). On the positive side, we have less people that imagine they are Christians because of the presence of these cultural tokens. We also have less people who are “offended” – though being offended has become something of a cottage-industry in recent years.

By the way, this year in my region it is almost impossible to hear religiously-themed Christmas songs on the airwaves. (So would you like a white Christmas? And tell me again about the story of Rudolf!) We are censoring ourselves out of habit now.

As for the “biblically inaccurate” thing, I don’t have a problem with creches conflating elements from different gospels or telescoping together elements of Jesus’ infancy narratives that are actually a year or two apart. A creche is like a play that has been reduced to a single shot. No big deal to me.

It is interesting to consider the factors that may go into the divine timing of Jesus’ two advents – the first being the one we celebrate at Christmas and the second still future to us.

Part of the answer to the timing of his first advent must have to do with God’s work in Israel and among the nations. The timing was somehow right in God’s dealings with Israel to send to them the Messiah Jesus, the messiah who would then become the light to the nations. We even see that this timing seems to extend to the exact moment (year? month?) that Jesus was to be crucified. John 12:20-28 recounts what turns out to be a pivotal moment: non-Jews (Gentiles) have now come and want to see Jesus. Jesus’ response? “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” by which Jesus means his voluntary death as he goes on “Unless a kernal of wheat falls to the ground and dies…” etc. His death and resurrection is necessary to open the door for full inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God. And so the presence of Gentiles wanting to see him is a sign to Jesus “now is the time.”

The factors you suggest relating to Jesus’ future second coming may well be right but I am less confident that these signs are still future to us. That would mean that Jesus could come any time. Specifically, to your two points:

1) On Matt 24:14, we have to ask “What does it mean to reach the whole world with the gospel?” Are we saying that Jesus cannot return yet? And therefore the general faith of our Christian brothers and sisters throughout the centuries (that Jesus could come back at any time) was misplaced?

2) In Matt. 24:21-22, are we sure this distress has not been fulfilled already? As you know, some scholars have argued that this particular section in the Olivet Discourse relates to the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. If they are right in this interpretation, it was part of Jesus’ prediction of that momentous event and something now in our past.

It just seems to me more in keeping with the tenor of the New Testament that we live wisely and productively (of course), but with the thought that – basically – Jesus could return in power at any time.

Thanks again, Ray

I like the poetic verse you have written very much, though at least in your re-presentation here someone might get the mistaken impression that it was God the Father that took on human flesh. Of course it was God the Son, the second person of the one Triune God. But here I am lapsing into prose when you were soaring into beautiful poetry!