Luke 21:25-36
And oh what joy, the year of Luke, Luke that writer of accounts and parables, that author who is ‘the scribe of the gentleness of Christ’.
Yet as is so much of the gentle writers, it bears the greatest punch. Quite rightly Advent 1 kicks off with one of pictures of final things, ghastly images of suffering, though much quieter than what one finds in the OT.
Luke differs from the other two gospels who have their little apocalypses. In comparison with the other two, he emphasises the word sign, and that what is coming is for all who live on the face of the whole earth, not just for fig trees but for all, as in Luke’s version of the parable we have just heard.
Also, he sees that what is to happen is an occasion for redemption, that word only found in Luke among the gospels, the kingdom of God is coming and what is happening is going to be a place of redemption, of being set free, bought from slavery.
Others of course may be cringing and fainting out of fear and attachment to things which hold them, but for those whom Jesus addresses, they are “stand up and raise your heads, before the Son of Man. They , we are to stand before the Son of Man.
In many ways this is a surprising take on what is being made clear by Jesus; most of our images of what apocalypse means have been coloured by the paintings of the middle ages, of Last Judgement and of the dafter interpretations John.
The coming of the Son of Man will be of a humanity;being divine, absolutely of God, it will be for this humanity, this world’s humanity. It will come in a world which is in deep need of rescue, among people in great suffering, it will separate spirits and there will be those who will stand and raise heads, be secure in faith and hope.
The confusion of the world is unsettling, very much so. Though it can be surprising what unsettles. It often is affected by who you are and where you are, but am I alone in being puzzled why some are so put out by the resignation of the southern archbishop? The church remains the church, pray for Archbishop Justin, but pray get real.
Our bishop Nick, speaks of the crisis of a law/treaty based international order, even its end. When Peter the Great and Swedish Charles waged war, their wars were concluded with treaties; the suffering of many notwithstanding, it was a norm. That way has rather receeded from hope at the moment.
Great violence, genocidal perhaps is happening now, and the violent seem beyond humanity and beyond reason. Perhaps the genocide, if it is such, is making explicit things present in 1948, or perhaps it is a repetition of a earlier adventures. The invasion of Ukraine is a repetition, a second one. Both depend on ideologies, ethno-nationalist and whose cogency is solely of weapons and propaganda, the bomb and the lie.
Marx calls to be cited
‘Hegel once remarked that all events and personalities of great importance in world history occur twice, but he forgot to add that the first time they occur as tragedies, and the second as farce.[1]
and I might add and the third as horror.
These are but two of signs which make us feel helpless; and other matters closer at hand give much trouble,much worry. Some in our world are tempted to give up, to shut it out by looking to fantasy, those ideologies or to give way to fear. Fear and fantasy often together.
The gospel we have hard shews that this cannot be not right. Rather we are called to stand before the glory of the Son of Man, His humanity, a humanity which is the sign which is the sign (Luke 1.21) in the manger. The same one born in a manger is the one who suffers and who comes as the Son of Man. The same one who comes as the Son of Man is the child, a child leading the hosts. As Henry Vaughan puts it
And One born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.[2]
Humanity is assumed by the same Son, it is not to be deprecated, and even those who are most shameless, most barbarous are loved of God. This is the one who comes and in whom is our trust and our hope.
What is it to stand before the Son of Man?Our call is to live in a world where some things are decidedly unsteady and where there is fear and terror. I suggest that much of the political asinities and the violence and decay of language is a reaction to what is unsteady and unclear. If we refuse the humanity, the kind of vulnerability and steadiness of Jesus, if we do not allow this to be our humanity also, then we will refuse His coming in glory, then we will fall back into the maddened violence which runs in and out of the ways of this the world. If we will not recognise how partial we are, how awash with tilts toward the crabby and the pushy for starters, the lying and the murderous for the entree ,— and here comes the challenge —if we will not seek to accept that this is what God is working with, us, then we may find it really tough to respond and to engage with deep need of rescue, among people in great suffering.
When we stand and hope, we become part of the coming of Christ. Hope is part of the way Christ is coming, that coming which in various ways, is always, and always will be. There is but one coming of Christ – albeit in different ways. Whenever it comes it comes as somat new. It is as von Balthasar once remarked there is a hope which saves alone,a virtue which alone saves as either love or faith. Sola spe, by hope alone, the kingdom comes and Christ comes.
Our salvation lies in hope, but not in hope that insists on the future good it has imagined, but in hope ready to rejoice in the kind of good that actually comes our way. The God who creates out of nothing, the God who makes dead alive – the God of the original beginning of all things and the God of new beginnings – justifies hope that is otherwise unjustifiable. When that God makes a promise, we can hope.
[1]Karl Marx The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon 1852. The reference to Hegel is not precise, but is about Brutus and Caesar from. The Philosophy of History, 1900, trans Sibree, p312-313
[2] From the poem Peace