Luke 21:25-36
[Jesus said:] “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” He told them this parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees. When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”
That’s a difficult passage, isn’t it? I’m not sure it would have been my first choice as we turn towards Christmas, had it not been the gospel reading from the lectionary, the set of readings that many churches follow and which we are also picking up in this season. Sit with it for a while however, and you realise that the selection is not arbitrary or mistaken, as this text has much to say to us at the beginning of Advent, this time of waiting and preparing for Christ who has come and is coming.
It’s difficult to know how to handle these kinds of apocalyptic texts, not least because there is something quite alarming about them. There can be a tendency to read them at face value and get caught up in trying to spot the signs in order to determine the time they foretell, but while passages like this are certainly telling us something about what is to come, it is not so clear that they are intended to be simple or accurate predictors of the future. The fact of the matter is that the generation Jesus spoke these words to did pass away before the events described occurred, if we assume that the events described relate to the end of the world as we know it, an end we are still waiting for, so it would seem that the vision he outlines is not to be taken literally. He is talking about times of trial and harbingers of hope, and those occur at all times in many forms, so they don’t need to be linked to specific historic or future events in order to be meaningful for us.
A second difficulty with this passage is that placing it at the beginning of Advent messes with our sense of time. We expect to look forwards to an event which happened two thousand years ago, and yet we are drawn backwards to a scene which occurs thirty years after that event and seems to point beyond where we are now to the end times. It’s all a bit disorientating, but give our heads a moment to stop spinning, and it reminds us that Christmas is part of a bigger picture. One podcast I listened to this week spoke of three arrivals - Christ in the manger in Bethlehem, Christ in our own hearts, and Christ in glory at the coming of the new heaven and new earth - all of them bundled up together by the juxtaposition of this text and the Advent season we are now entering.
The passage we have heard is situated firmly between those first and final comings, in a time fraught with tension but shot through with hope. We also live between those first and final comings, in a time fraught with tension but shot through with hope. Jesus is speaking to us as much as to the crowds before him. So if we are not to take him literally, if we are not being told to watch the skies for figures descending on clouds, what is that we are meant to come away with? We might be drawn to reflect on the second arrival, the coming of Christ in our own hearts, but I think we have already heard the key word, which is hope.
There will be signs in the heavens, the world will be in anguish, people will be scared to death...but stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. What seem to be signs of doom turn out to be signs of hope because the kingdom is coming. I think we have to be careful here, because it would be easy to think from this that we should be looking for tragedy as a sign of blessing, but I don’t think that’s what Jesus is saying here. Devastation and despair may in some way herald the coming of the kingdom, they may even bring it closer because they point to our need of it, but that doesn’t mean they are necessary for our redemption, or that we must suffer in order to be saved.
Of course there are passages of scripture which do present God as causing suffering in order to bring about salvation, with the story of the flood a prime example, and many of the prophets interpreting the exile as a divine corrective, and we have to reckon with those. I suspect that the understanding of divine action which we find in those texts comes from a desire to maintain the sovereignty of God above all things, but actually I think the more consistent witness of scripture and history is to the love and faithfulness of God in a broken world, and so I believe that God can use terrible situations to bring about good things but does not cause those terrible situations in the first place.
I think that is an important distinction to make because there is a danger that believing signs of doom are as much a part of God’s plan as signs of hope can make us more passive in our own suffering and less empathetic to the suffering of others. It can also shape our understanding of God in such a way that we find it hard to recognise or experience the unconditional and unshakeable love that I spoke about last week. All of this is really to say that I read this passage as saying that there will be signs of doom which come from our broken world, but there will also be signs of hope which come from the God who created it and loves it and will redeem it.
So let’s spend some more time with those signs of hope now. I read this week that hope has to begin with a recognition that the world is not as it should be, with an acknowledgement that we need to look for and trust in and work at something better. That is why Jesus begins with devastation and despair, which he puts in the future tense but which many in the crowd may have felt they had already seen in some way, and that is why we have to be honest about the devastation and despair of our own times. It’s hard to avoid it, in a week which has seen twenty seven people drown in the Channel, because their homes were no longer safe and cruel policies denied them safe passage to a new home here. The world is not as it should be.
But the point of hope is that we only start there. The point of hope is that things can be better. The point of hope is that the kingdom is coming and the kingdom will change everything, because the kingdom is justice and joy and mercy and grace, and the kingdom has a safe home for everybody. The point of hope is that we know devastation and despair are not the final word and so we can endure them, we can stand and lift up our heads instead of being bowed down by the weight of so much sorrow.
Now if we read this text on its own, we might think that all we need to do is wait, but of course this isn’t Jesus’ only word on the kingdom. He teaches us to pray “your kingdom come, your will be done”, which says to me that the coming of the kingdom rather depends on us doing God’s will. He talks about the kingdom as a seed and as yeast, and we know that seeds need tending and yeast needs working through dough, so again it seems there is a role for us to play. Hope is not just a promise but a calling to live out the justice and joy and mercy and grace of the kingdom.
The passage ends with a call to stay alert, to not be distracted by either pleasure or pain, but to always be on the watch and pray. I don’t think that means we should disengage ourselves from all the realities and experiences of this earthly life - that would be rank hypocrisy from a man who wept outside his friend’s tomb and seemed to enjoy a party as much as anyone - but rather that we are not so wrapped up in those things that we forget what is beyond them.
The most frequent advice I had as a new mum was that everything is a phase. They will eventually let you have a full night’s sleep again, and there will be much rejoicing, but they will also stop saying ‘bippits’ instead of ‘biscuits’, and you’ll miss how adorable that was. So you have to enjoy the good moments and breathe through the difficult ones, but above all focus on the wonderful task of helping these precious lives flourish. Perhaps in the same way we must enjoy the good moments and breathe through the difficult ones, but above all focus on living out the hope of the kingdom.
Our service started with a candle lighting liturgy written by JPIT on their theme of ‘hope, the environment is renewed’, and so I want to end by briefly considering that theme in the light of this passage. There is plenty of natural imagery in the cosmic signs found in the text, but hope for the environment specifically is perhaps not so obvious, although the image of trees springing into leaf and fruit does hint at the renewal of creation, and I hope we can easily see how a renewed earth would be a sign of hope.
I think there is a whisper of something specific to the environment though, as when Jesus speaks of people being “apprehensive for what is coming on the world”, the word he uses for the world is not one which refers to the whole created order, but rather one which refers to the political and economic structures. We know that the planet is suffering great damage, but ultimately the disaster will fall on us. It is not creation but society that will be dismantled, and perhaps it is in that dismantling that the environment will be renewed. The world is not as it should be and our structures don’t work, so perhaps our Advent hope is that we will move beyond devastation and despair and bring the kingdom nearer, by acting with the justice and joy and mercy and grace that will renew all things.
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You will also find below some questions for reflection, borrowed from the show notes for the podcast Pulpit Fiction. You may like to reflect on them quietly by yourself, or discuss them with someone else.
If the Son of Man were coming in glory this very hour, how would your life change? What would you do differently? Who might you forgive, reach out to, extend compassion or love to in order to set your soul or their soul at rest?
Can you find hope in the midst of devastation? Can you see the world through Advent eyes? The signs of disaster are easy to see but can you see the signs of hope? When there is death and destruction, can you “stand up straight and raise your heads, because your redemption is near”?
What would be a sign from God so big no one could mistake it? Does it take the suspension of physical law? Or does it take redemption, reconciliation, and grace that no one could fathom? Will the signs of the kingdom change us or the world or both?
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