What are we waiting for? Or are we waiting? Are we preaching the Good News of a victory still to come, a victory already achieved, or a victory in progress? In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus began his ministry by proclaiming the decisive time, the kairos, when the Kingdom of God is ‘at hand’. The Greek word engiken can also be translated as ‘has drawn near.’ Either way, the reign of God had already drawn near with the ministry of Jesus and its later fulfilment is ‘at hand’ with the future coming of the Son of Man. But has that fulfilment already been accomplished by the death and resurrection of Jesus, or would it have to wait for the parousia, the final return of Christ? This question has preoccupied Christian theologians and exegetes. It also provides challenges and opportunities for the preacher.

SOME RIVAL ESCHATOLOGIES

In nineteenth-century Liberal Protestant scholarship, the historically critical approach to scripture exhibited a sceptical approach both to the miraculous elements in the Gospels and towards traditional Christian doctrine. For Liberal Protestant theologians’ eschatology was largely reduced to the fulfilment of earthly progress. However, belief in the inevitable progress of civilisation was to be decisively challenged by the horror of the First World War.

Within Protestantism other approaches had already developed. In America in 1910, large numbers of Evangelical Christians had already asserted a literal interpretation of scripture, but their ‘Fundamentalist’ movement began to really take off in the 1920s. Among these conservative Evangelicals there are some millions of dispensationalists who believe in a literal 1,000-year reign of Christ on earth and interpret the setting up of the modern State of Israel as presaging the rapture of the ‘born again’ to escape the final conflict between Israel and Babylon. Interpreting biblical prophecy as predicative of modern events, this movement has had a powerful influence on American foreign policy and can be seen as promoting apocalyptic fantasies over considerations of peace and justice.

CONSISTENT ESCHATOLOGY

Meanwhile in the realm of serious academic scholarship, another form of futuristic, or consistent, eschatology had been advanced by Johannes Weiss (1863-1914) in his Jesus of Nazareth, Myth or History? and developed by Albert Schweitzer (1875 -1965). Their conclusion was that the historical Jesus was mistakenly convinced that the kingdom represented an apocalyptic end to human history. When this did not occur, Paul and others developed the message of Jesus into an ethical and mystical Christian message. Influenced by this approach, the Catholic modernist Alfred Loisy (1857-1940), famously suggested in his L’Evangile et l’Eglise (1902) that ‘Jesus foretold the Kingdom, and it was the Church that came.’

REALISED ESCHATOLOGY

By contrast, New Testament scholar, C. H. Dodd (1884-1973), was a pioneer of realised eschatology - that the ‘last things’ had already happened. Thus, for Dodd the idea of a second coming (Greek: parousia) as a future event, did not represent the teaching of Jesus or of the earliest Christians. Instead, the ‘last things’ had already taken place in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Through the Spirit, Christ comes again and, through his resurrection the Christian finds newness of life. Thus, the ‘last things’ are already realised in Christ and the Church.

CHRISTOLOGICAL ESCHATOLOGY

Meanwhile, Karl Barth (1886 –1968) emphasised the utter otherness of God. Rejecting Liberal Protestantism, Barth proposed an eschatology that saw the incarnation and the parousia as the coming of God in encounter, developing a ‘Christological Eschatology’ that emphasised the humanity of Christ, and saw his Incarnation, resurrection and second coming as real events in time.

This contrasted with the realised eschatology of Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) who argued for an extreme demythologising of the historicity of the Gospels. The parousia for Bultmann, was seen in existentialist terms as an event in the heart of everyone who responds to the call of God to radical personal authenticity.

‘INAUGURATED ESCHATOLOGY’

Combining the two opposing understandings of New Testament eschatology, Oscar Cullmann (1902-1999) developed an ‘Inaugurated Eschatology’ whereby Christ had already established the kingdom by his death and resurrection but that its fulfilment would only become apparent with the parousia. This ‘here and now but not yet’ approach is probably the approach taken by most preachers. However, Barth rejected the ‘not-yet’ parousia, on the grounds that eternity is breaking into every moment of time.

ESCHATOLOGY OF HOPE

Following a similar insight, Jurgen Moltmann (1926-2024) saw God’s present promise as the motive power of history. Like Barth, he rejected the ‘here and now not yet’ theory whereby the promised kingdom is partially present and partially future. It is instead, at the same time, both fully realised and fully in the future. His ‘Theology of Hope’ (1964) presented the Christian hope as in constant tension with present experience, challenging structures of domination and injustice, inspiring us to work for justice and freedom. Moltmann’s theology saw a literal resurrection and a literal parousia as catalysts for hope, inspiring Christians to engage in radical action in the present. Together with Catholic theologian, Johann Baptist Metz (1928-2019) both scholars developed a ‘Theology of Hope’ that engaged with history and significantly influenced the development of Liberation Theology in Latin America and elsewhere. Of particular relevance to the preacher is Metz’s idea of ‘dangerous memory’ (the anamnesis of the Eucharist) whereby the memory of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection brings us directly to the memory of past and present victims of violence and injustice.

MARRYING PERSPECTIVES

Steering their way through these and other eschatologies most preachers will preach as though the end is indeed imminent and at the same time that the kingdom is a present reality, that Christ is already there in the events and circumstances of our lives. Joseph Ratzinger’s (later Pope Benedict XVI) book Eschatology (1977.English translation 1988) saw the task of contemporary eschatology as being ‘to marry perspectives, so that person and community, present and future, are seen in their unity.’ This insight speaks directly to any preacher trying to make a direct connection between the historical message of the gospel and present reality of people’s lives.

THREE APPROACHES TO BIBLE TEXTS

Seeking to find a preaching application to this task, help comes with the approach of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005). He suggests that there are three approaches to any text: the world behind the text; the world of the text, and the world in front of the text.

The ‘world behind the text’ is a window into the past in its original context before it was recorded as text. Like Metz, with whom he engaged in a collaborative dialogue, Ricoeur affirmed the function of memory as an issue of justice. In the case of the New Testament, the ‘world of the text’ (or the ‘world within the text’) offers us a picture mediated through the perceptions of the human authors. Finally, the ‘world in front of the text ‘is a mirror that includes readers or hearers of the text, responding to it in the present as well as over previous centuries in the living tradition of the Church.

Reading the New Testament, it is possible to trace a movement from a more futuristic eschatology towards a more realised one. Thus, 1 and 2 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians are probably the earliest texts in the New Testament and they clearly envisage the immediate return of Christ. In the later Pauline literature this futuristic emphasis gives way to a focus on the present reality of the New Life in Christ. Meanwhile, the message of the kingdom and the coming of the Son of Man in the synoptic Gospels is replaced by a present experience of ‘eternal life’ in John’s Gospel.

Turning to the world behind the text, if we consider, against Bultmann, that the Gospels reproduce many of the actual words of Jesus, then the Son of Man was already present in front of his hearers, coming like a thief in the night, like a Master returning unexpectedly from a journey (Mark 13:35), or the Bridegroom for whom the foolish maidens had not prepared their lamps (Matthew 25:1-13).

Over the centuries, the parousia still figured in the Creed but became more remote to the imagination. Although plagues, famines and wars sometimes fuelled a revival of interest in prophecy and apocalyptic, the coming of the Son of Man became increasingly associated with the death of the individual and the immediate judgement.

Many people in our Western culture probably only give intellectual assent to the reality that the world will end or that they will die. Thus, a realised interpretation of the coming of the Son of Man may speak more directly to them. However, the pandemic, global warming, and a renewed threat of nuclear war may make a futuristic perspective increasingly more relevant. But both a future and a realised interpretation should be seen as kairos, a crisis time, coming when least expected.

THE COMING OF THE SON OF MAN

Mark 13:33 warns Christ’s hearers ‘Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come.’ With Luke 12:40 and Matthew 24:43-44, all see the Son of Man coming like a burglar breaking into a house. In these and similar verses elsewhere in the synoptic Gospels and in the epistles, in the world of the text, these crisis verses were taken to refer to the Second Coming of Jesus.

Embracing an inaugurated eschatology, the preacher can draw on different emphases tailored to the needs of the ‘world in front of the text’ in terms of the specific congregation listening to the sermon. However, those following the radical approach of Moltmann and Metz may want to steer their hearers away from ‘bourgeois individualism’ towards a greater awareness of the gospel as ‘good news for the poor.’

We are living between the first coming of Christ and the second coming at the end-time. The preacher should not neglect to warn the congregants to be ready for the final judgement and for the immediate judgement at death. More immediately, the need to be made aware of the many ways in which Christ is present to us already is evident: in Word and Sacrament; in other people; in our joys and sorrows and in the circumstances and situations in which we find ourselves. Moreover, the gospel we preach is a ‘dangerous memory’ that prompts us to be advocates for the poor and the oppressed.

The Kingdom of God is ‘at hand’ but it has already ‘drawn near.’ We must stand ready because ‘the Son of Man is coming at an hour we do not expect.’