Apocalypse Now
Advent 1, Year C; Luke 21:25-36
The Gospel for Advent Sunday across all three years of the lectionary cycle is drawn from the “little apocalypse”—as opposed to John’s “Great Apocalypse,” the Book of Revelation. This is Jesus’ speech concerning the end, first of Jerusalem’s Temple and then of all things, placed in all three Synoptic Gospels just prior to his arrest and trial.
While Jesus’ words through this discourse (in all versions) urge readiness, they consistently point away from making specific predictions and correlations. This sort of procedure continues to be a familiar misstep in fundamentalist circles, but the rest of us face an equal and opposite problem. Since no apocalypse has taken place and two thousand years have gone past, what sense does it make to think of an urgent end? For that matter, the specifics of these predictions seem as disconcerting, or just disastrous, as they remain obscure. What is the good news here?
A few weeks ago we pondered verses from the earlier part of Mark’s version of this material, the section more directly concerned with the fate of Jerusalem itself. Just as for Mark, Luke’s version of Jesus’ apocalypse moves from predictions related to the calamities of the Jewish War of AD 70, to the experiences of persecution that the early communities of believers would face, and then finally to the question of how everything ends.
In Luke as in Mark, we see that Jesus’ words guard against simplistic contemporary correlations, and refuse to see even the worst political or natural disasters as anything but reminders of the real end. That final stage is presented not as a matter of human events but of cosmic ones, “signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars” (21: 25).
Yet the question of how this makes a difference in the present was in the minds of Luke’s readers, as in ours. If “the kingdom of God is near” (21:31), how near is that, and how does it matter? Luke elsewhere depicts the teaching of Jesus about the coming kingdom even more clearly as something with present as well as future relevance. In chapter 17 we read:
Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’
This probably appeals to many people today, more so than do the version of the apocalypse we are reading. but not always for the right reasons. We are drawn perhaps to images of the kingdom, or of the Spirit, or the divine, that center God’s action on us and our present. This however can be little more than a liberal version of that fundamentalist problem of interpreting the coming kingdom as what we ourselves see and want it to be, a psychologized or spiritualized “Look, here it is!”
Even there in Luke 17 there remains a sense of God’s action as mysterious, not as a way of talking about who we already were, but of what God may be making of us and between us, despite ourselves. For the word of the kingdom is always about a hope that challenges and changes, not merely a coded message to help us reflect on what we already know and do. The message is that expectation of God’s transforming action in the future already changes us now.
The centrality of that hope is clearly stated in this week’s Gospel when it moves unmistakably to a cosmic disruption and the end, not just of that time and place, but of all things. It centers though not on meteorology but a person:
Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near (21:27-28)
The picture of the Son of Man coming on clouds is a direct reference to the Book of Daniel:
As I watched in the night visions,
I saw one like a human being
coming with the clouds of heaven (7:13)
This scene in that older Book involved the heavenly “human being” (=“Son of Man”), a divinely-appointed figure who heralds God’s victory over the forces of evil, thinly-disguised depictions of the world empires of that period. Luke’s Jesus now also presents the appearance of the heavenly deliverer, not just as an amazing (or disconcerting) story, and not as a disaster, but as a message of hope: “redemption”—freedom from captivity or slavery—is at hand. Just as we read in Jeremiah, God’s promise will be fulfilled with the appearance of a “righteous branch,” a deliverer who saves us from evil.
So this is not a scene of coming disaster, but of a glory that will triumph over evil. Apocalyptic scenes in scripture are consistently messages of hope for those in need of deliverance, not timetables or forecasts. The Son of Man must come because the world waits and wonders, burdened by the forces of death. Deep down we know what we need is not the comfort and joy of consumption, or of calling what we already have “the kingdom” when we lack its reconciling justice. Comfort and joy are unconvincing messages when terror and need engulf so many, but what this season offers, like this Gospel, is instead the disconcerting hope of new beginnings and news of the downfall of the forces that oppress and alienate us and all people.
The way the kingdom gets to be in our midst is in the daily realization of our need for God’s future, and our yearning for it. Then many small things as well as large ones, a fig tree as much as the world scene, can be signs both of our need and of God’s promise. To “be alert” and “be on guard” (vv. 34, 36) are how Jesus characterizes the work of expectant discipleship, not because these things will happen in our time, but because when we live with that expectation, the kingdom is among us.