Second Coming Over Coffee: Wild Advent

The Second Coming

by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

    Chapter one of scholar Elaine Pagels' new book, Miracles and Wonder, is a wilderness, and I love it! It's treacherous territory, for sure. In it, Pagels explores Jesus' conception and birth from both a historical and theological perspective, offering a fascinating (and potentially disturbing) investigation into the truth of our beloved Christmas story. While she is not the first academic to venture down this provocative and perilous path, Pagels makes a thorough and compelling case for the possible paternity of Jesus of Nazareth. 

Reading Pagels' scandalous proposition over coffee prompted a morning reflection on the famous William Butler Yeats poem, "The Second Coming." Written in 1919, after the First World War and the devastating flu pandemic, Yeats' poem ponders the possibilities of the Second Coming. I wonder if Yeats, writing during a perilous time in history, was seeking truth similar to Pagels. What if the Second Coming of Christ was a truth bomb of epic proportions? 

Personally, this does not trouble me at all. It actually excites me. It makes scripture all the more interesting. One example: Pagels notes the genealogy in Matthew's Gospel that lists some unlikely women, such as Tamar, Ruth, and Rahab, alongside the men. (You'll want to look into this, trust me!) 

There's a saying in the little-known apocryphal text, the Gospel of Thomas, about which Elaine Pagels has also written:  

Jeshua says, If you are searching, you must not stop until you find.

When you find, however, you will become troubled. Your confusion will give way to wonder. In wonder you will reign over all things. Your sovereignty will be your rest.

What if there's more mystery in the history of the Jesus story than we've been previously told? What if the second coming turns out to be a devastating revelation for the ages? 

I think I would only love Jesus more. If that's even possible.