I’ve been writing over the past couple of weeks about eschatology. As a reminder, “eschatology” is the “study of the ‘last things’ or the end of the world. Theological dimensions include the second coming of Jesus and the last judgment.” Eschatology is an essential aspect of the Christian faith that we polite Presbyterians seem to have given up years ago in embarrassment, ceding the topic to the loonies who claim that every natural disaster is the end or that they know the exact day when it will happen. But hope in Christ’s promised return goes back all the way to Jesus himself; it is a part of the gospel, the part that draws us forward. Dr. Thomas Long, a PC(USA) pastor who is a renowned preacher and professor of preaching at Candler School of Theology, writes, “If Jesus is Lord, if Jesus is raised from the dead, then this puts eschatological pressure on the present. All that damages human life is obsolete, passing away, and the preacher can stand up there bodly speaking in the future-perfect tense.” Just a friendly grammatical reminder: the future-perfect tense is the tense that indicates an action that will have been completed at some point in the future. For instance, if I was to say, “In January, 2013, Danielle and I will have been married 12 years.” It hasn’t happened yet, but our faith is that it will.Everything we do now as Christians is done in light of what will have happened in God’s future. We do everything drawn forward by this statement, “We live this way because through Jesus Christ all things will have been made new at some point in the future.” Again, Dr. Long writes, the “eschatological and apocalyptic language of the Bible is not about predicting the future; it is primarily a way of seeing the present in the light of hope.” Whether we’ve ever realized it or not, when we observe the Christian Calendar (also called liturgical or church year) the way it was designed, it points us toward Christ’s promised return in the “future-perfect” tense. It isn’t just about telling the story of what was; it is about telling the story of what is to come and living in response both to what has been done and what will have been done in the end, or more accurately the new beginning.
For instance, during my first Advent at my first church, I started talking about how the season of Advent is really about looking toward the Second Coming of Christ. It is not merely a retelling of the nativity story. One of my parishioners, a woman in her eighties who had been a faithful member of the church since birth, said, “Great, you’ve ruined Advent for me.” When I dug deeper I found out that she was scared to death of the idea of the Second Coming so she just plain ignored it. More often than fear, what I usually hear is embarrassment. We Presbyterians are too cultured and educated to believe in that stuff, right? Plus, we don’t want to be identified with the loonies I mentioned earlier. Trust me, I don’t want to be identified with the loonies either, but a Christian faith without an eschatological thrust to it is an incomplete and unbiblical Christian faith. That church member thought I’d ruined her favorite part of the church year, just because I’d talked about what it was actually pointing to. She’s probably not the only one who was thinking it, either. She was just the only one willing to say it. The same could go for Holy Week. So with all this in mind, on this our first Holy Week together, I want us to look briefly at Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday in terms of what they mean eschatologically.
Maundy Thursday, through reliving the event of Jesus’ Last Supper, marks a few different occurrences. The main three are the institution of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus’ act of service to his disciples by washing their feet, and Jesus’ final commandment (or mandatum from which the word Maundy comes) to his disciples, “Love one another. As I have love you love one another.” The Lord’s Supper is replete with eschatology. About the Lord's Supper our Book of Order states:“In this meal the Church celebrates the joyful feast of the people of God, and anticipates the great banquet and marriage supper of the Lamb. Brought by the Holy Spirit into Christ’s present, the Church eagerly expects and prays for the day when Christ shall come in glory and God be all in all. Nourished by this hope, the Church rises from the Table and is sent by the power of the Holy Spirit to participate in God’s mission to the world, to proclaim the gospel, to exercise compassion, to work for justice and peace until Christ’s Kingdom shall come at last”
Every bit of that is eschatology. That is all about living in the future-perfect tense, living now in the hope of something that will have been accomplished by God in Jesus Christ in the future. I would also say that the only way we can truly “love one another” as Jesus has commanded is by doing so in eschatological hope. So, you see, Maundy Thursday has a great deal of eschatology in it. We are not just remembering the Last Supper, just as we are not just looking forward to the Messianic banquet of the future. Those two meals may be at each end of the long table, but this Thursday night we sit in the middle of that table, communing in the present, in memory of the past, in the hope of the future.
I am always surprised when I hear that so many congregations do not hold a Good Friday service. To me, Good Friday is as important a day for us to mark by gathering to worship as Christmas Eve or Easter Sunday. I agree with Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton when he writes, “We cannot really appreciate Easter until we have been to the cross.” I also agree with PC(USA) pastor Dr. Scott Black Johnston that “Christians who skip over the events of the Passion--arcing from one celebratory Sunday to the next--will develop a warped faith.” Good Friday may be dark; it may be a downer; it may be tough to bring yourself to give up a Friday night after a hard week of work to hear about the crucifixion; Good Friday, however, is at the core of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As the Apostle Paul wrote, “We preach Christ crucified.”
There have been entire books written on the eschatology of the crucifixion of Jesus so this is not the venue (nor am I the person) to get too terribly in depth on seeing Good Friday in the future-perfect tense, but I do want to echo one point that Joan Chittister makes about it.
She writes, “Then, the darkness sets in; the quiet overwhelms us; the waiting—the interminable waiting—for the Second Coming descends into the middle of our souls too.” Good Friday isn’t just about how Jesus was crucified 2,000 years ago. It is about that, but not completely about that. It is also about how through the events of Good Friday God has “[torn] down the curtain that separated humanity from God.” Through the cross, “[Jesus] offered us, by his death, reconciliation and atonement with God.” (Adam Hamilton) In other words, we wouldn’t have a future hope if it wasn’t for the cross. 
There haven’t just been books written about the eschatology of Easter; there have been many multi-volume sets of the longest books you’ve ever seen written about it. Of the three days discussed in this post, Easter should be the easiest one for us to see in the future-perfect tense. The resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of the new creation, the first fruits. Dr. Ted Wardlaw, president of Austin Seminary used to say, “The resurrection of Jesus is the ‘hinge’ of history.” The resurrection is when the scales tipped toward the victory over evil, sin, and death. Easter is filled with the eschatological promise of the resurrection of Jesus that through being “in Christ” or “putting on Christ” we will get to participate through being raised ourselves, as will heaven and earth. In essence, through the cross God has built a bridge for us to cross to God and through the resurrection God has thrown open the gates for us to remain with God and to live in God’s future. So as we worship together on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday let us do it in the future-perfect tense in light of our hope that in God’s future “all things will have been made new through Jesus Christ.” But let us not only worship on those three days in that hope; let us live every day of our lives in that hope.
