Advent 1: Luke 21:25-36
I was a tall, skinny, spindly-legged girl, gawky and uncoordinated. I recall my kindergarten teacher being alarmed when initially I could skip only on one side of my body. But all through my elementary years jump rope proved particularly challenging. Remember the schoolyard motion — elbows bent at the waist, palms down, a slight rocking motion, hands pushing the air in time with the rope? I could do that for hours. Days. I never knew how to jump in.
I feel like that with a text like this. I’m not quite sure how to jump in here.
Scholars come along and try to give us a push: It’s just apocalyptic literature, they say. So we jump in — only to discover that apocalyptic is the double-dutch of biblical genres, and we collapse in a tangled mess of dispensational exegesis.
The fact that it’s Advent, too, the beginning of the church’s liturgical calendar, the Christian New Year, complicates matters as well. Because this text is more about an ending than a beginning, and it hardly evokes a sense of celebration. Yes, we’re assured Jesus is coming again … but not before we’re bombarded with images of persecution and pestilence, cosmic disturbance and destruction. Don’t let the prescribed lectionary boundaries try to soften the blow — force yourself to go all the way back, at least to verse 12 and start reading there. Linger over these verses and you begin to get the sense that apparently followers of Jesus are not exempt from suffering. So much for a happy New Year.
Is it any surprise that so many biblical interpreters have tried to shoehorn texts like this into a detailed time line? Armed with the assurance that Jesus is coming again, they jump in with their prognostications of how and when it will all end, in a valiant attempt to neatly tie up all the lose ends. It is easier, I suspect, than facing the real challenges of the text.
One of the most controversial sermons I ever preached was titled, “Why you should consider leaving behind the Left Behind Series.” I explained that far from being “just novels,” Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins are foisting their theology on us all. I explained that back in 2001 the GA took the extreme measure of voting to let Presbyterians know that this Left Behind theology is not in accord with Reformed theology. I explained that by majoring in prognostication essentially the authors try to best Jesus — who said even he didn’t know the time of the return of the Son of Man. If this text has anything to say about it, Jesus’ point is not to prognosticate. Jesus’ point is to pay attention, to persevere. Verse 34: Be on guard so that … day does not catch you unexpectedly. Verse 36: Be alert at all times …
In other words, because Jesus is coming again the question is not “When?” The question is, “So now what?” What do we do now?
This is the question Eugene Peterson’s translation addresses in The Message, when Jesus says, “Be on your guard. Don’t let the sharp edge of your expectation get dulled by parties and drinking and shopping … don’t go to sleep at the switch. Pray constantly that you will have the strength and wits to make it through everything that’s coming and end up on your feet before the Son of Man.”
No way around it: these are challenging words for followers of Jesus today: Don’t let the sharp edge of your expectation [of Christ’s return] get dulled by parties and drinking and shopping…“ How do we hear these words in America, much less during the Christmas season — the darkest days of the year when we are often weighed down with anxiety, when so many try to deaden the pain with some retail therapy, and the social if not self-medicating use of alcohol is particularly rampant?
If you think Petersen is overdoing it, Clarence Jordan’s Cotton Patch Version of the News Testament has the same tone, the same urgency about it, when Jesus says, “Check up on yourselves to see that your [spiritual] sensitivity isn’t dulled by fast living and drunkenness and worry over making a living. … Stay on your toes all the time, praying that you’ll have the strength … to stand up and be counted for the son of man.”
These are challenging words that fly in the face of our options-based culture not only during Advent but 365 days a year. So much of the time we simply do what we want to do when we want to do it, when we feel like it. In a culture where “optionality” reigns supreme, Christianity is often nothing more than a little hobby we do on the side. Discipleship is like pursuing periodic volunteer work, on my terms, at my convenience.
So now what?
There’s a bumper sticker that reads: “Jesus is coming … look busy.” But, this text is saying don’t just look busy…be busy! Be about the business of participating in the coming of God’s kingdom, of living in the certainty of Christ’s glorious return. Get busy loving and forgiving as Jesus commanded. Get busy bearing burdens and feeding the hungry. Get busy praying and producing the fruit of the spirit in Jesus’ name. Get busy hoping, trusting, believing that the purpose and fulfillment of history is assigned not to Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, not even to George W. Bush, or the United States, but to Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Heidi Husted Armstrong recently completed a term of service as Christian Impact Director at World Vision US, after serving as pastor/head of staff for ten years at Columbia Church in Vancouver, Wash.
