FINDINGS II
Advent
I - C - November 29, 2009
Luke 21: 25-36
(Jeremiah
33: 14-16; Psalm 25:1-9; I Thessalonians 3: 9-13)
 By Harry T. Cook
11/23/09
RUBRIC
As has been mentioned in an earlier FINDINGS II, the graphic
symbols of Advent, having originated in the Northern Hemisphere, work better in
it because of the approach of the winter solstice congruent with the build-up
to Christmas, a feast of lights, and the waning of daylight hours. In antiquity
and well into modern times there was no general illumination of the night
beyond individual efforts with candles and oil lamps so that the coming of
darkness became a symbol of the approach of death with its attendant miseries.
No wonder apocalyptic became important to Christians, especially in light of
the belief in the resurrection of Christ and his prophesied return.
Thus shall the hymns and songs and psalms and readings for
the coming four weeks be redolent of all that, at first with the last judgment
at the forefront ("Every eye shall now behold him, robed in dreadful majesty;
those who set at naught and sold him, pierced and nailed him to the tree,
deeply wailing, deeply wailing shall the true Messiah see."),* then with a general reversion
to immature, juvenile hopes that all will be well once Christ arrives (again)
and the sun comes out. -- It is against this thematic scrim that our exegetical
explorations will be made.
WORKSHOP
The consensus among scholars not driven by ideological or
theological agenda is that all four canonical gospels were written and compiled
after 70 C.E. That date is of enormous significance, because in that year the
Second Temple was desecrated and destroyed by the Roman military in an
epoch-making, life-changing event for any Jew. To virtually all first century
persons who might have answered to the name "Christian" and would first have been
Jews or Gentiles enamored of the Jewish tradition, that event had enormous
implications.
Luke, writing 25 years or so after the debacle, used the
images of astronomical omens, political conflict and natural disaster that Mark
first proposed a decade or so earlier as real or imagined events to explain the
destruction of the Temple. It would not be unreasonable to think that Jesus
Jews of Luke's era might have interpreted the Temple's destruction in an odd
kind of positive light because the disappearance of the cultic site and the
resultant discrediting of its elitist administrators strengthened the
synagogue, i.e., the local assembly of people. The synagogue may have been the
nest in which Christianity was hatched, although it soon took flight on its own.
Mark, Matthew and Luke, each and all, connect the dread
apocalyptic imagery that appears in Luke 21: 25-26 with the parable of the fig
tree (21:29ff). The "sign" exhibited by the fig tree (sprouting leaves)
suggests that purposeful passage of time and function that anticipate a
consequence -- in the case of the fig tree, figs. In the case of the
astronomical signs "in the sun, the moon, and the stars" (whatever those signs might
actually have been in the Lucan imagination) baleful things are suggested.
A reasonable interpretation is that Luke (and maybe Mark and
Matthew, too) were saying to late first century Jewish and Gentile Christians
(or Jesus Jews) that, with the passage of time, fewer days and hours remained for
people to make up their minds about personal loyalties. The fig tree's blooms
would flower and ripen into edible fruit. Whatever Jewish Christians of the
time were or were not doing would likewise have commensurate results. Luke was
allergic to summary condemnation of the recalcitrant -- see 15: 11-32, the
parable of the prodigal son. But even Luke, whoever he/she was, was part of
that late first century ferment when and in which anything must have seemed
possible both for good and ill.
A term in these verses needs further explanation: first
"redemption" (άπολύτρωσις), but here referring not to Jesus' sacrificial death
but to an eventual realization of his rule (or kingdom). One could even say
that the redemption was a release from the complicated cultic requirements of
the former Temple life. Paul might certainly have seen it just that way (see
Romans 4: 13-16; I Corinthians 4: 11-17; II Corinthians 4:7, 5: 1-15 and
Galatians 5: 1-2). To achieve freedom, Jesus Jews had to give up the security
of tradition, perhaps as symbolized by the Temple and what it had meant
culturally.
The Jeremiah and I Thessalonians readings have an air of
anticipation about them: Jeremiah: "The days are surely coming, says the Lord,
when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of
Judah . . ." Thessalonians uses such language as "at the coming of our Lord
Jesus with all his saints." -- A caution to homilists: take care that you do
not confuse Jeremiah's vision of the future with Paul's or specifically with
the destruction of the Temple. The similarity shared by the three passages is
that each points to different future event. The readings taken together merely
help reinforce the Advent theme of anticipation.
HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
The classic homiletic temptation of Advent is to use the
appointed readings to forecast the end of life as we know it, to dilate too
graphically on the apocalyptic themes found here and there in the Bible and to
skate too close to hysteria. A better approach is to acknowledge that such
themes exist and, when scholarship permits, to explain them in their historical
contexts.
A helpful thing to do would be to assemble the amply
available evidence of sure and almost certain disaster concerning climate
change, the signs of which are clearly visible in nature. Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima/Nagasaki
and 9/11 were huge and terrible surprises, the first and third being huge
shocks to the national psyche of the United States, the second catastrophically
ruinous of life to those over whose cities the atomic bombs were detonated.
Yet most disasters of lasting effect occur slowly over time,
and therefore the evidence of their inexorable approach comes in bits and
pieces over time. It is easier to assume the position of denial when a
cooler-than-usual summer in one region of the planet seems to the untutored to
contradict the facts that Earth's atmosphere and oceans are growing warmer,
sometimes by the year. Yes, there may be other evidence to the contrary, but
the overwhelming scientific conclusion is that Earth's residents are courting
trouble but nevertheless are thought to be able, in fact, to stave off the
worst effects of degradation by altering lifestyles.
That was, in a way, what the character(s) named Jesus in
the gospels was saying. Not all those who work with New Testament texts agree
that Jesus was a wisdom-teacher type as opposed to an apocalyptic prophet, but
I am persuaded that the textual evidence supports the former rather than the
latter.
The corpus of Jesus' wisdom teaching has to do with how
human beings live together in peace. The unspoken part of that wisdom is that
if they do not turn the other cheek and forgive as often as it takes and do not
find ways to love the enemy as well as the neighbor it is possible that human
conflict could grow to unsustainable proportions.
Once the human race crossed the line into the nuclear era
the possibility of catastrophe became clearer. We see the signs of it all the
time. The Advent preacher need only call attention to those signs.
*"Lo, he
comes with clouds descending," by Charles Wesley, The Hymnal 1982, #s 57 &
58, The Church Hymnal Corp.
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