2 before Advent, Year C
OT Lesson : Malachi 4.1-2a
Gospel: Luke 21.5-19
Both our readings this morning were extracts from troubling prophecies about the future. In the concluding words of the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Malachi foresees a day of all-consuming fire, and as Jesus stands in the temple at the start of what he probably knew or at least sensed might well turn out to be the last week of his life, he delivers an apocalyptic discourse, a sermon which anticipates a cataclysmic disaster for Jerusalem and all its people.
Such prophecies of doom are not uncommon, and they could be replicated to-day. Do you worry about the risk that an unpredictable President in the White House and a coldly calculating ex-spymaster in the Kremlin could at some point miscalculate and unleash a nuclear-powered confrontation? I hope that’s fanciful. But what about the slower-burning prospect of climate change, with warming air and warming seas gradually making some parts of the earth virtually uninhabitable, driving unpredictable movements of population, melting or at least shrinking the polar ice-caps and perhaps slowing or even stopping the Gulf Stream. I’m not by nature a worrier, but there is plenty of cause for concern about the world we are leaving to our children and grandchildren and the reluctance of some politicians to accept the evidence and take steps to do something about it.
Doom and gloom is not the message I want to share or you want to receive, but it is there in the world we inhabit, and it is there in the Bible, so we need to pay attention to it, and more particularly to see what Jesus has to say about it. The clouds are very real, but there is a silver lining. Both our readings this morning were prophecies of doom, but both conclude with promises of deliverance. In the concluding verses of the Hebrew Bible the prophet Malachi foresees a day of all-consuming fire, but ‘for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings’. And in our gospel reading, after foretelling a period of doom and destruction, Jesus promises his disciples that ‘not a hair of your head will perish; by your endurance you will gain your souls’. As our own patron saint St John has it in the prologue to his gospel, ‘the light shines in the darkness’ (John 1.5).
So how are we to find the proper balance between fear and hope?
There were three strands to the future crisis for which Jesus wanted to prepare his disciples. The first strand was probably his intuitive, prophetic sense that Jerusalem and the temple itself would be utterly laid waste, as it was in AD 70 by a Roman army under the command of the future emperor Titus. The days will come, he says, when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down, as it is to this day. This historic strand will doubtless have been particularly clear to St Luke, who wrote his gospel some ten or twenty years after that historical event. The second strand of the multiple crisis that Jesus could see coming was the personal persecution that his disciples would face, not just in Jerusalem, but wherever the Christian church became established around the Greco-Roman world, challenging the existing faith systems. Jesus’ followers would need to stand firm in the face of such persecution, following his own steady example.
But the third strand of Jesus’ apocalyptic teaching was his conviction that the final act of the great drama would see the fulfilment of the deeply entrenched Biblical expectation that life on earth would end with the coming of the Son of Man in great power and glory – the rising of Malachi’s sun of righteousness, with healing in its wings. This would signal the triumphant outcome of the heavenly, existential, battle between the forces of good and evil of which we catch visionary glimpses in such books as Daniel and Revelation.
There are some interesting variations too in how we should respond to these different strands of crisis – national and political, personal, and apocalyptic. At the national level, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, Jesus says, you should flee for your life (vv 20-24). At the personal level of persecution on grounds of faith, Jesus calls his disciples to follow his own patient example. By your endurance you will gain your souls (v 19). At the apocalyptic level, Luke records Jesus as warning his disciples not to follow those who might claim to know that the end of the world is nigh (v 8); but when the Son of Man does finally come again, with power and great glory (v 27) we are to stand up and raise our heads, because our redemption is drawing near (v.28).
In common with the rest of the early church, and perhaps Jesus himself in his humanity, St Luke probably believed that the end of the worldwould occur sooner rather than later. Terrifying as it might be to be caught up in such an awesome event, we should greet it with the same joy as we feel when the trees sprout fresh green leaves, and we know that summer is coming. When that great day comes, it will after all signify Our Lord’s final triumph, and there could be no greater cause of celebration.
After two thousand years, we may wonder whether we have misunderstood the Bible’s visionary language about the end of the world. What is certain is that there is an end for all of us, one by one, in death, and none of us knows when that day will come. In heaven there will be nowhere to hide from the truth about ourselves, and that’s a scary prospect to contemplate – or it would be if it were not for the assurance we have that the love of our Lord Jesus Christ will be present at the right hand of the God of Truth and Judgment. If we have come to know him and love him in our life on earth, His love will meet us in heaven, so that each one of us may finally attain our unique destiny as his beloved children.
According to St Luke, Jesus concluded his apocalyptic discourse with these words:
Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with … the worries of this world, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly…. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man. (Luke 21.34-36)
In the words that conclude the Book of Revelation:
Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus (Revelation 22.20).