The Trumpet Child – 5

The trumpet child will banquet here
Until the lost are truly found
A thousand days, a thousand years
Nobody knows for sure how long

It is not hard to find any number of doom and gloom eschatologies floating around these days, both sacred and secular. Such eschatologies typically decry the current state of the world and assume accordingly that the world will end up as a heap of rubble. Fundamentalists and nihilists, ironically, are prone to remarkably similar eschatologies. This world is meaningless! Don’t look for meaning or significance here! You could have heard this from my youth pastor or from Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov. Now, of course, there are different reasons motivating this shared judgment, and each means something different by it, and there are lessons to be learned from both fundamentalists and nihilists, but nonetheless, such a judgment has tended to produce an eschatology that is less than satisfactory. In the case of nihilism, we are made to believe that the world is headed nowhere, that it has no telos, no meaning. The problems with this are fairly obvious. Just read Crime and Punishment! In the case of fundamentalism, we are made to believe that this world exists in order to be shunned. The point of being part of this world and its history, so they say, is to demonstrate that something other than the world is what reality is all about. The problem with this is that it does not take seriously enough the doctrine of creation; the world becomes a kind of façade.

Both nihilism and (certain types of) fundamentalism suffer from a thin (or non-existent) understanding of the goodness of the material world, which results in an inadequate view of where the world is headed. God made the universe in order to love it and perfect it, not to let it spiral into ultimate destruction or serve simply as a prelude to a hazy, non-material ‘heaven.’ Jesus’ resurrection shuts the door on both nihilism and muddled fundamentalism. History is certainly headed somewhere. Jesus’ resurrection is the appearance of the end of history right here in the middle of history. So what is our end? Where are we headed? Resurrection! Here is how one theologian, Angus Paddison puts it: “To believe in the narrative of the One who ‘died’ and then ‘rose’ is to believe that the world is now wrapped up in ‘the power of his resurrection’ (Phil. 3:10), that the world has no future, no place to return to, other than God. In Christ, the world now has a new boundary: not the day of our death, but the ‘day of the Lord’ when the world and God’s triumphant grace will gloriously converge.” And this future toward which we are headed? Will I simply be a soul with wings? Will I finally have escaped the wicked world? Will I fly up in the sky, leaving behind a nice, folded pair of clothes? Hardly. Eschatology is not about escape, but about renewal and perfection, not about our leaving, but about God’s coming. And with this, we turn to the song.

The trumpet child will banquet here
Until the lost are truly found

Where is the world headed? To a party! And where will this party be? Here! This is biblical eschatology. “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ” (Rev. 11:15). Christ will come, not to take us away, but to bring himself and his kingdom to this world. And a banquet or party is the right image (Lk. 14, Rev. 19). How could it be anything else? Quoting Robert Jenson again, “The life of God is just, as it were, one big excitement, a kind of explosion of excitement.” When God’s life envelops the world finally and totally the result will be anything but boring. There will be drink and dancing, and the Eucharistic appetizers we survive on now will give way to the “marriage feast of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:9). Christ himself will be the host. He will serve us. And, who knows, as the trumpet child, perhaps he will provide the music.

Who is invited to the party? Jet-setters only? The rich and famous? Will it simply be a Religious Right reunion? No way! This is Christ’s party, and he practices what he preaches: “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind…” (Lk. 14:12-13). When Jesus throws a party, it’s a revolution, it disturbs the neighbors, it wakes people up. What’s the difference between Jesus and (P) Diddy? (P) Diddy won’t invite you to his party unless you have a fat wallet or a skinny waist. Jesus won’t invite you to his party unless you are a nobody and have nothing to offer: “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Lk. 18: 17). That is why Jesus will keep on partying until the lost are truly found. Here the song has combined the banquet imagery in the New Testament with the three parables in Luke 15 about the undying persistence of God in his search for the lost. God is a shepherd who leaves the flock of ninety-nine to find the one lost sheep, God is a women who sweeps her house until she finds the one coin she lost, and God is a father who longs for the return of his prodigal son. God longs to show mercy. God loves to show mercy.

And when God finds the lost, they are truly found. There are a million ways to be found in this world, but most of them, as John Webster says, “trade away human worth with breathtaking ease.” God’s embrace is a truly humane embrace, for he embraces you with the flesh and blood of Jesus. When God finds you, he does not put you to work, exploiting you to his advantage. He instead throws a party, simply to celebrate. There are no hidden intentions behind God’s pursuit of the lost. God is not ultimately out for himself; he is, rather, for us. One of the church Fathers, Irenaeus, has a profound line about God’s intentions toward the world. “The glory of God,” he says, “is a human being fully alive.”

A thousand days, a thousand years
Nobody knows for sure how long

Here the song makes reference to ongoing debate about what in the world the book of Revelation is talking about with its reference to the thousand-year reign of Christ (Rev. 20). Even as a seminary student, I can do no better than they do here. Nobody knows for sure how long. Well said.