As has been mentioned in an earlier FINDINGS, 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.
The consensus among scholars not driven by ideological or theological agenda is that all four canonical gospels were written and compiled after 70 CE. 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 been described as proto-Christian and would first have been Jews, or Gentiles enamored of some aspects of the Jewish tradition, that event had enormous implications.
Luke, writing 25 years or more after the debacle, used the images of astronomical omens, political conflict and natural disaster that Mark first proposed a couple of decades 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 Lukan 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, i.e. "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.
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, 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 city the atomic bomb was first detonated.
Yet most disasters of lasting effect occur slowly over time, and therefore the evidence of their inexorable approach comes in bits and pieces now and then. 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 recent terrorist attack in Paris is another piece of it. The Advent preacher need only call attention to such signs to make the point that in human hands life on Earth is no Eden.
* "Lo, he comes with clouds descending," by Charles Wesley, The Hymnal 1982, #s 57 & 58, The Church Hymnal Corp.
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POSTSCRIPT: What We Know About According to Luke
We will hear fairly consistently throughout this liturgical year readings from the Gospel according to Luke. Here are a few things that will be helpful to remember as we enter what the lectionary calls Year-C: Luke is chronologically the third of what are known as the "canonical gospels," that is the ones the fathers of the church deemed helpful to the cause of promoting the Galilean Jesus as the Christ. The first of the four New Testament gospels is Mark, compiled somewhere in the Galilee some time soon after the fall of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. The second is Matthew that came along around 85 CE and appears to have emerged from the early community of Jesus Judaism in Antioch of Syria. Luke, as we have said, is the third. Dates of its compilation vary from 90 to 120 CE and may also have had its origins in Antioch. The fourth is the Gospel of John about which not much is settled as to its time or origin - but anywhere from 90 to 125 CE. Nothing is known of the compilers of any one of the four. Why they were named as they are is one of the mysteries of New Testament studies. A Luke said to be a physician is mentioned by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Colossians at 4:14. Paul also names a Luke as one of his co-worker in Philemon 24. There is at this time no evidence that either of those Lukes compiled the third gospel.
A footnote: there exist 16 other documents called "gospels," the most prominent of which is the Gospel of Thomas containing 114 sayings attributed to Jesus. It was known to have existed as early as the second century CE due to quotations from it in other documents of the time. But no direct evidence of it appeared in the modern age until a set of scrolls including Thomas (written in Coptic but probably based on an earlier Greek version and composed as early as 50-60 CE) was found in a cave in northern Egypt in 1945, thought to have been buried there some time in the fourth century CE.
Luke is distinguished from the other three New Testament gospels and the other 16 by its lovely Greek syntax and vocabulary, by its lyrical narrative of Jesus' birth, by its stunning parables of the Good Samaritan, of the Prodigal Son or Dives and Lazarus and by its sublime tale of Christ on the Road to Emmaus. Luke's genealogy of Jesus takes Matthew's from legend into myth by declaring that Jesus was descended first from Adam. Matthew was content to stay with legend and started with Abraham.
Luke called the gospel the first book of two, the second being the Acts of the Apostles. Some who work closely with the Gospel of Luke have wondered over time if a woman or two were involved in its compilation. One interesting thing is that in the text of Matthew an angel tells Joseph of the imminent birth of Jesus. In Luke's, the angel makes the announcement to Mary - whence the Angelus: The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary, and she conceived by the Holy Spirit. Hail, Mary, full of grace . . .
