c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

UNDATED _ Keeping alert isn’t an easy task on this first full day home after three weeks in Europe.

I do fine until late afternoon _ which by my confused internal clock might actually be midnight _ when a palpable cloud of fatigue settles over me. In mid-paragraph of a novel, I am gone.

Staying alert is important, however, because our 19-year-old son returns from a church retreat tonight and needs to be driven back to college. When he does drag in looking haggard and sleep-deprived, we wonder if anyone is fit to travel.”Do you feel as tired as you look?”I ask. He nods. It was a great weekend.

We set forth in a driving rainstorm. Suddenly, alertness returns. We start to talk _ about his weekend, family life, college, the Thanksgiving weekend. It is one of those golden moments when years of cuddling, walking hand in hand, bedtime reading, dinner table check-ins, late-night talks and e-mail bear glorious fruit. Who could have known this would happen?

The Second Coming of Jesus, which Christian traditions anticipate in the Advent season (which this year begins Nov. 28), can be viewed as an ominous event. Scripture tells of a time of destruction, when”large buildings”will be”thrown down,””nation will rise against nation,”believers will be betrayed and persecuted,”false messiahs and false prophets will appear,”and creation”will be shaken.” Based on what Jesus foretold, the first disciples expected this to happen in their lifetimes. Many abandoned former lives and fled to mountaintops to await deliverance.

But what if Jesus was wrong? What if Jesus went to his death expecting that one thing would happen, but in fact something else happened? Jesus knew he couldn’t name the”day or hour”of his return. What if he misunderstood the very nature of that return?

For 2,000 years, the Christian movement has hung its hat on an expectation of imminent destruction. When events didn’t unfold as expected, leaders of the movement backpedaled from the apocalyptic brink and began tortuous maneuverings to keep the faithful committed even as the prize receded from view.

They began to teach exotic doctrines of heaven and hell. They declared Christ’s triumph as an assured victory for the righteous flock, or as an individual victory won by obedient living.

Even today _ or especially today as the millennial clock prepares to chime _ hungry believers gather on mountaintops to claim the prize for righteous living.

Meanwhile, down in the valley, the arguers who seem to dominate public religion continue to debate commas and to proclaim impassioned doctrines about this and that _ always with the serene assertion that any other belief is demonic and those who hold that view will suffer horribly for all eternity.

But what if Jesus was wrong? Not wrong in the sense of deliberately leading people astray, but caught in the same limited awareness that plagues all humanity? What if the church put words in his mouth in order to deal with persecution and to prosper its own cause?

I look at how these 2,000 years have played out _ at the non-happening of apocalypse, at the enormous brutality that righteous warriors felt justified in visiting upon humanity in the name of their theories, at how Christ-like compassion has been shown by self-effacing believers moved by a spirit of love, not by the super-pious chasing a prize _ and I wonder if we have missed the point.

I wonder if the real advent of Jesus happens in moments like a rain-swept drive to college, when seeds sown in love bear glorious fruit, because we were faithful in small moments and because God redeemed those moments when we fell short.

I wonder if Jesus’ call to alertness doesn’t have to do with chariots of fire sweeping down on hapless humanity, but rather is a call to hold a baby, to take the hand of a child, to get outside ourselves, to see the tears glistening in another’s eyes, to bind up the brokenhearted, to set free those who are captive, to give sight to the blind, to proclaim good news to the poor _ to do, in other words, what Jesus did, namely, to walk in love.

IR END EHRICH