on Luke 21:25-36, 1 December 2024, “The Kingdom of God is near”
The church year begins with the Season of Advent, looking forward to celebrating the coming of Christ. Personally I have found the language that speaks of the birth of Jesus as if it were a future event troublesome. That’s how the pagan religions spoke of the annual rebirths of their gods, who were nature deities, who having been dead during the winter sprang back to life in spring. Maybe by speaking of Jesus’ birth as if it is yet to happen, the intention is to refresh an ancient story by presenting it as a current one, thus instilling within us the excitement of anticipation by allowing us to count down to the coming of the Messiah. While the nativity looks back in time, the readings for the first Sunday in Advent always include a reading about the Second Coming of Christ, which is an event that truly does belong to the future.
Apocalyptic literature began to be written during the last centuries before the current era (i.e. before Christ), and foretells of a time of judgment and restoration, known in the prophets as The Day of the Lord, which will be heralded by great signs and wonders. The apocalyptic content in the Protestant Bible includes the Book of Daniel, the Book of Revelation, and the coming of the Son of Man prophecies of Jesus in the synoptic gospels. There is also an apocalyptic flavour to some of the epistles, like Paul’s first letter to the Christians at Thessalonica.
Apocalyptic literature was intended to be a literature of hope. It told the persecuted faithful that God knew of and was concerned about their suffering and would intervene in human affairs on their behalf (be they Jews or Christians or both), while their tormentors would get their comeuppance. Apocalyptic literature exhorted believers to remain faithful and wait, even if the waiting was for a very long time. As the author of the second letter attributed to Peter writes, “Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance… [So] in accordance with his promises we wait for new heavens and a new earth where righteousness is at home.”[1]
Luke’s version of Jesus’ mini apocalypse, known as the Olivet prophecy from having been delivered while Jesus was sitting with his disciples on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple,[2] seems to be as much about the end of the Jewish nation as about the end of the current age of human mismanagement. Some scholars suggest Luke edited Mark’s version of the prophecy to reflect the outcome of the Roman-Jewish war. However, Jesus may have had the destruction of Jerusalem on his mind, as he looked down upon the holy city with its magnificent temple, which in forty years would be no more. It is possible that Jesus envisaged a connection between the Day of the Lord and the conflict he perceived to be looming between Jerusalem and Rome. He did say his generation would not pass away until all the things he had spoken about had taken place.[3]
Today’s gospel reading is full of allusions to Old Testament writings. For example, Jesus’ reference to signs in the sun, moon, and stars that will herald the coming of the Son of Man, brings to mind what Joel wrote: “I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes,”[4] and from Isaiah, “For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light.”[5]
“Son of man” is a self-designation Jesus often used, that could mean either a human being or the divine figure in Daniel. However, there is nothing ambiguous about Jesus’ use of the “Son of Man” in the context of the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. That is a reference to the celestial being in Daniel who appears like a man, who comes with the clouds of heaven and to whom is “given dominion and glory and kingship that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.”[6]
Recently an old friend of mine, a Baptist, asked if I agreed with those who say we are living in the end times. That seems to me to be pointless speculation. Jesus said the Day of the Lord will come when least expected like a thief in the night,[7] and not according to the expectations of folk who attempt to ascertain whether current events indicate the imminence of the Second Coming of Christ. I said to my friend that since the first generation of Christians, there have been believers who thought that Jesus was about to return in a visible not just spiritual sense, so the current anticipation of some Christians isn’t new. However, irrespective of where we are in God’s timetable, we are all in our individual “end times”. Being mortal we have a very limited time to carry out the work that God assigns us to do.
I recall a story my grandmother told against herself. She was a teenage trainee nurse in Melbourne in the first decade of the twentieth century. A full eclipse of the sun was expected, and people were speculating that this was a sign of the end of the world. After all, hadn’t Joel said the sun would go dark? My grandmother had been given the chore of scrubbing the ward floor and objected to doing this task when the world was about to end. Grandmother never said, but I suspect she was simply using the prevailing hysteria to get out of hard work rather than actually believing that the end was nigh. Her nursing superior didn’t fall for her stratagem, however, and told her in no uncertain terms to get on with the job. In fact that is a good parable of what we should be doing – getting on with the job.
Throughout scripture, God promises that a time of renewal is coming. Currently, renewal is not something divinely imposed upon us but is a Spirit-directed activity in which we can fully participate. Jesus began his ministry by proclaiming, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the good news.”[8] The kingdom Jesus spoke of is not fully here but it is near. The promised renewal has begun, and advances when the self-giving ways of Jesus prevail and retreats when the self-serving and often violent proclivities of humanity get in the way.
The Roman Empire into which Jesus was born was brutal. Might was right, and the conquered deserved to be despised and subjugated simply for having been conquered. Often those who weren’t slaughtered were enslaved and joined the immense, exploited workforce underpinning the economy of the Roman Empire. This led to a huge unemployed citizen population, needing to be fed with bread baked from the vast amount of grain imported from northern Africa, and entertained at the local colosseum by the spectacle of people being killed. The Romans had no sense of the sanctity of human life nor of the importance of human dignity and freedom.
Our world is different today because through the centuries brave people, having embraced the teachings of Jesus and the ethics of the early church, have resisted evil and brought about change. Although the job is far from finished, and will indeed require the Second Coming of Jesus to complete, society has been gradually reformed by the influence of Christianity and the societal struggles and personal sacrifices of Christians. While might is still right in the minds of too many powerful people, many more people reject the premise that the powerful should be able to do whatever they desire irrespective of the cost to other people and the planet.
Recently I read that Richard Dawkins, the proselytising atheist, has proclaimed himself a “cultural Christian”. Clearly Dawkins does not want to go back to the brutality of paganism, nor does he want to lose the great works of art, music, and literature that arose from the Christian hope of the believing artists. Unfortunately for you Richard, you can’t have one and not the other. It was God’s Spirit working through God’s people who over time created the “Christian culture” you admire, and it will be the same Spirit working through God’s current people who will sustain that culture. Advent reminds us that God began to renew the world when a vulnerable peasant baby was born in a borrowed room and that three decades later at the cross it was the crucified, not the executors who had the real power. In a sense, Jesus does come again each Christmas reminding us of the hope we have that transformation is within reach, because the kingdom of God has come near through the human birth and eternal reign of its heavenly king.
[1] 2 Peter 2:8-9, 13
[2] Mark 13:3
[3] Luke 21:32
[4] Joel 2:30-31
[5] Isaiah 13:10
[6] Daniel 7:13-14
[7] 2 Peter 3:10 and Matthew 23:42-44
[8] Mark 1:14