Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25:1-9
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36
Jesus in Luke presents us with some pretty disturbing,
even frightening, images of a time yet to come: “There will be signs in the
sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused
by the roaring of the sea and the waves.
People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the
world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” (Luke 21:25-26) And while I mentioned last week that Jesus’
way of things was not necessarily the way of conventional apocalyptic – end
time – theology, it was in its context that he lived and in which the Gospels
were written. He would have been – and
the Gospels certainly were – influenced by it.
Yet the apocalyptic language and images on the lips of Jesus in the
Gospels seem to point not so much to the end, but rather seem to talk about how
to live until the end and how to
trust in God’s promises, how to live in hope.
As you may remember, I alluded last week to the political and
social conditions under which Jesus lived, and under which the Gospels were
written. It was a time of crisis, and
since from about the 2nd century BC the increasingly popular
theological response to crisis had been apocalypticism – the belief that God
would eventually directly intervene in human affairs to punish the “wicked” –
for wicked read “our enemies” – and reward the “just”, that is, us For some, what was called for until that
“terrible day” was a complete separation from the world, from the wicked and
unclean. Thanks to the discovery of the
Dead Sea Scrolls, we know a good deal about one such group, the Essenes. This Jewish sect retreated into the
wilderness of Qumran, living in caves and adhering to a strict rule of prayer
and purity in preparation for God’s vindication. John the Baptist is believed by some to have
been influenced by their theology and practices.
However, the picture presented of Jesus’ message in the
Gospel is different, more nuanced; and certainly by the time the Gospels were
being written Christians were already learning that the apocalyptic perspective
was not helpful if they were going to learn to live well until Jesus’ return –
which appeared hardly imminent; and if they were going to make manifest the
Good News of the kingdom right here and right now. Let’s face it, the idea that we are just
waiting around until God intervenes to dispense punishments and rewards is not
the most exciting or attractive of messages.
There had to be something different, something more helpful to say. There had to be a more positive way to live
in the world; and so our early Christian
ancestors looked back to the prophetic traditions of Israel in order inform
their thinking, to find inspiration and insight. Look for a moment at today’s passage from the
prophet Jeremiah. Certainly there is
talk of God’s justice and righteousness, but how gently it is announced: “The
days are surely coming…when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of
Israel and the house of Judah.” (Jeremiah 33:14) It is in the language of covenant. Equally, the day’s eventual coming is
described in the subtle imagery of natural growth, imagery which Jesus himself
considerably made use of: “In those days and at that time I will cause a
righteous Branch to spring up for David.” (Jeremiah 33:15) When the prophets do speak of God’s judgment
and anger, it is the never directed to the enemies of the Jewish people as in
the apocalyptic tradition, but to the Jewish people themselves for abandoning
the covenant, particularly the covenant call to care for the poor and the
stranger. The Gospels and the Jesus
tradition, hearken back to the witness of Israel’s ancient prophets in order to
discern into the future the reality of Jesus and of the kingdom. They looked back in order to learn how to
live now, how to live until all things are resolved in God’s time and according
to God’s righteousness.
Central to this kind of living is hope, the sort of hope which,
even when things may seem bleak, while conditions may appear grim, still not
only points us to the truth of God’s sustaining spirit and ultimate revelation,
but also teaches us and enables us to live in and through the difficulties of
our times, and do so without retreating
from the world but instead engaging more fully with it. So Jesus says to his followers: “Be on guard
so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and
the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a
trap.” (Luke 21:34-35a) Dissipation,
drunkeness, constant worry – all these are symptoms of hopelessnes. We know that as we see the hopelessness among
the poorest and most disadvantaged in our towns and cities, as we see it among
many younger people. The difficulties of
life and the sometimes frightening events of our day, can make us lose
hope. They can leave people confused
about the present, and feeling bleak about the future. They can drive us to retreat from the world,
or to seek extreme and violent solutions to the world’s problems and injustices. It was so in Jesus’ day, and seems
particularly so in our own. Living in
hope, however, holds out to the world the possibility that things are not
exactly as they seem, and that we make that possibility manifest by our
lives. We light a candle in the dark, or
feed people in the midst of hunger, or volunteer to help in response to a
natural disaster or to human tragedy. In
the midst of what seems unconquerable evil and dis-order, we witness to hope by
– as Paul counsels the Thessalonians – increasing and abounding “in love for
one another and for all” in order that our hearts may be strengthened in
holiness and that we may be “blameless before our God and Father at the coming
of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” (cf. 1 Thessalonians
3:12-13) We grow in love and engage in
the world in order that the hope inherent in the life, death and resurrection
of Jesus – and which is already in us – be more fully revealed in the world by
our own lives.
As we begin the season of
Advent, we know that it is fundamentally a season of hope – hope that light
will overtake darkness, hope that God is and will continue to make all things
new, hope that the child born in the stable will be born in us. In midst of crisis and difficult
circumstances the reponse of Jesus and of the early Church was also hope. Hope informed by their looking back to the
prophets, looking back beyond the contemporary climate of apocalypticism to an
older tradition of covenant and faithfulness expressed in care for the
destitute and in fellowship beyond the narrow bounds of one’s immediate
community. Looking at the signs of the
times, it is easy to give up without glimpsing anything beyond them. But the Advent invitation is to look back and
find our lives in the great drama of God’s call and providential care, and to
continue to hope. In a recent film Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the young
and inexperienced hotel owner is trying make a go of the old family business. Despite his lack of a real business
background and the dilapitated state of the building, he remains cheerfully
hopeful, saying to one of the patrons “It’ll be alright in the end; and if it’s
not alright it is not yet the end.” That
certainly is Christian hope, the sort of hope that enables us to look forward confidentally
as we allow ourselves to be inspired and molded by our communal history and
tradition. The end may surely be coming,
but it is not here yet, and until then we continue to do and strive in the hope
promised to us; we continue to live according to the covenant made long ago and
proclaimed and lived anew in Jesus. It
is a hope founded in the past, refreshed anew daily in the preset, and that
carries us into the future to engage with the world, while at the same time being
instruments of its transformation as we do await the “coming of the our Lord
Jesus with his saints.” (1 Thessalonians 3:13)
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