“Behold, I am coming soon.” Because of the Resurrection, the earliest Christians came to understand that Jesus had triumphed over sin and death. There was nothing to fear. However, they still lived in a scary world so they anticipated the ultimate triumph of Christ in what we call today “the second coming.” At that point the effects of Easter will transform all of human history. One of the earliest prayers that we have from the first generation of Christians: “Come, Lord Jesus.” The expression was so foundational that even as the Jesus movement became more and more Greek-speaking, the Aramaic original was preserved, “Maranatha.” However, as that first generation of Christian began to die, the “coming soon” of Jesus began to be questioned. Several of the epistles deal with the matter. In St. Peter, for example we read With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day (2 Peter 3:8). At the remove of two thousand years we might not think that “soon” is the right adverb but we remain confident that our end is secure in God.
