Collect
Great God who rules all nations, Your Son warns us that storms will come, but promises to come to us on the wings of those storms. Grant us grace now to see the throne of Christ in the clouds of chaos, to know that the leaves of grief hold the promise of precious fruit, and to seek our redemption in what feels like destruction. This we pray in the name of Your Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.
Left Panel: The World in the Text
When you visit the National Memorial on the grounds of the former Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, you enter through one of two gates. An inscription representing a digital clock above the eastern gate constantly reads 9:01. Across a reflecting pond, the western gate steadily displays 9:03. Between them they hold in permanent suspension the minute of time when the entire world changed. At 9:02 on the morning of April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh, an American citizen, detonated a truck bomb in front of the structure. One hundred and sixty-eight people died, along with a certain innocence and security among the citizens of the United States of America.
Sometimes in history, everything changes in an instant.
And these changes sometimes shatter a nation, or the entire world; but sometimes, their impact is more localized:
“Mom, Dad, I’m gay.”
“I’ve found someone else and I want a divorce.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Jones, I have been asked to inform you that your son has been reported dead in Kahandar, Pakistan, at 0700 on August 26, 2015. On the behalf of the Secretary of Defense, I extend to you and your family my deepest sympathy in your great loss.”
“Dear Employee: It is with regret that I inform you that you are being laid off from your position as pipe-fitter effective two weeks from today. Lack of funds and lack of work necessitates this layoff. This layoff action is indefinite in duration and should be considered permanent.”
News crews do not swarm to the site. Politicians do not make speeches. Protesters do not carry signs and shout slogans. But everything changes.
Central Panel: Christ in the Text
Thursday was Thanksgiving. The next day was Black Friday. For America, that means it is the now officially Christmas season. For Christians, going back centuries, however, today marks the first Sunday of Advent, from the Latin meaning “coming toward.” It is the time of year churches set aside to renew their faith that the Savior “came toward” us at Bethlehem, and is still “coming toward” us in his final appearing.
The text we have read today deals with that second idea, of course. But what is Jesus talking about? More importantly, perhaps, when is Jesus talking about: something that happened in those ancient times, as v.32 seems to indicate, or something that will happen in that great and final Day that is the focus of our future hope? And either way, what does Jesus want us to do about it? Perhaps more importantly, who is Jesus in this passage? What does he reveal about himself and, therefore, about God the Father? I want to offer one possible answer to those questions, and I can summarize it this way: Christ sits enthroned over the chaos of life.
Almost certainly what Jesus means to describe here is the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, along with the entire nation, in the Jewish rebellion against Rome from 66-70 AD, about thirty years after Jesus predicted it. We could compare that to an Oklahoma City moment for ancient Israel, only on a much larger scale. In 66 AD the Jews rose up in war against the occupying Roman empire. Before it was over, Rome crushed the revolt, smashed the temple - a symbol like our national capitol in Washington, D.C. - and exiled the Jews from their ancient homeland. Over the space of half a decade, tragedy struck Israel and nothing would ever be the same. We can tell this from the verses themselves and also from the verses before and after them.
First, look at the context: 20.45-21.4 contains two sayings of Jesus: one where Jesus denounces the religious professionals who run the temple for preying on poor widows, and one where he praises a poor widow for making the only truly meaningful gift to the temple. He seems to be saying that the temple is corrupt beyond rescue and that individual hearts matter more. Next thing (21.5-6), he flat-out declares that the temple will go down in flames. His disciples ask him to explain and he gives a very detailed description of the final Roman siege along with warnings about the persecution Christians will face until that time (21.7-24). Our passage finishes up that same prophecy. After this, Luke records a plot on Jesus’ life (21.37-22.6). Evidently the religious authorities understood that he had attacked the temple, the source of their religious, political, and financial power, and wanted him dead for doing it.
Now look at the passage itself. Yes, it sure looks like end-of-the-world kind of stuff, huh? Signs in the sun, moon, and stars and all. But Jesus uses here a sort of coded language that everyone in his day and country would have understood. If I say a football team has a field general with a rifle arm who loves to toss bombs to a wing-footed receiver with hands like magnets, nobody thinks I mean that some sort of weaponized cyborg wants to blow up a bird-man with metal fingers. That’s figurative sports language and we all get it. In the same way, the Jews of Jesus’ day spoke of great acts of God, whether good or bad, in figurative terms. So let’s de-code it for a minute.
Notice the line about “distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.” The Jews associated the sea with chaos, since it never rests and can explode into terrifying storms. For this reason, the sea came to symbolize political turmoil. The Bible puts these together in Daniel 7.2-3 where Daniel sees four beasts, which stand for four kingdoms, come up from a troubled sea and engage in bloody battles. Jesus picks up that imagery to give a vivid picture of world-wide warfare. If this isn’t clear enough, Jesus directly quotes Daniel 7.13 in v.27: “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.” In Daniel’s vision, this Son of Man comes before the Ancient of Days (a name for God the Father) and receives power over all nations so that there can at last be peace. The book of Daniel, especially the final few chapters, was very popular among the Jews in Jesus’ time because they felt that its promises of peace and freedom for Israel had not yet come true, and that the messiah would soon come to fulfill them.
The idea, then, is not that Jesus comes riding down the mainstreet of Jerusalem in a big cloud like a parade float. It means Jesus will ultimately receive power over all kingdoms and bring about peace. That’s why in Revelation we get comets turning the sea to blood (8.8-9) and the monster rising from the sea (13.1), and angels throwing massive stones into the sea to symbolize judgment on sin (18.21), but in God’s presence the sea is either made of glass, and thus solid instead of stormy (4.6, 15.2), or there isn’t any sea at all (21.1).
So Jesus pictures himself as God’s messiah who rises from the chaos of nations to bring about final justice. Now, watch the different reactions on either side of this event: In v.26 people “faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world,” but in v.28 they “stand up and raise (their) heads, because (their) redemption is drawing near.” Those phrases are important. Remember that Luke was a physician, a doctor (Col 4.14). Here, he remembers Jesus using a very specific medical term that we might translate, “faint dead away.” These people are, we might say, “scared to death.” By contrast, God’s people “raise up (their) heads” because they see their “redemption” coming. In Jesus’ day, the Jews associated redemption, not so much with the forgiveness of individual sin, as the liberation of God’s people from oppression and the establishment of their own nation. Oddly, Jesus says that the destruction of their country is what ultimately leads to their real freedom: liberated from nationalism, they can truly live in the Kingdom of God that includes all nations, tongues, and tribes.
Here’s the idea, then: Jesus warns that Rome’s armies will create chaos, but promises to be present, ruling over it all. Those who lack this faith will look only at world events and succumb to fear. Those who trust Christ will see the destruction of their own political nation as the means to ultimate redemption of the entire world under the Kingdom of God.
Jesus wraps this up with two commandments that really say the same thing: “Be on guard,” and “be alert.” Notice what he wants us to guard against: dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life. I believe Christians shouldn’t get drunk, but I don’t think that’s the main idea here; I think Jesus is making a comparison: drunkenness, of course, is when someone consumes too much alcohol; dissipation is a medical term (Luke the physician again) for how you feel the next day. So Jesus says, “Don’t get drunk on panic and hungover with worry.”
That’s why Jesus puts “the worries of this life” on the same level with drunkenness and dissipation. If those early disciples started watching political developments in Israel, they might have gotten caught up in one of the various failed schemes for avoiding the war with Rome or winning the war with Rome when what Jesus wanted them to do was ask how the war with Rome could be a chance for Christianity to thrive by throwing off its specifically “Jewish” nationalism and character and becoming a faith for all the peoples of the world.
See, Jesus really ends where he started, which was a common device in speeches and sermons in that day. His very first response to the disciples’ request for more information about the destruction of the temple is to warn them against false messiahs (v.7-8). There had been a lot of “messiahs” before Jesus, and there were several after him. (See Acts 5.36-37.) But they all had the same interest: How do we make Israel a great nation again? How do we keep Israel safe? How do we regain our empire? Jesus doesn’t care about any of that stuff. In fact, he says that it is in the very moment of Israel’s fall that the Church receives redemption!
Right Panel: The Church in the Text
So what about your own Oklahoma City moments? What about our world, torn to shreds by murderous foreign terrorists at concerts in France and murderous domestic terrorists at abortion clinics in Colorado? What about our private worlds, shredded by rebellious children and a bad economy and an uncertain future? Well, let’s go back to our original questions: What and when is Jesus talking about? What does Jesus want us to do about it? And, Who is Jesus in this passage? What does he reveal about himself and, therefore, about God the Father? I’ve given you my answer to the first two: Jesus is talking about the destruction of the temple in AD 70.
That makes the second question harder: What could Jesus possibly want me to do about something that happened nearly two thousand years ago? But remember Jesus’ overall message: When the sea of the world’s power structures turns stormy and churns out a series of leaders who promise peace, don’t get drunk on panic and hung-over with worry. Instead, believe that Jesus places his throne above all of the madness and will bring about redemption for God’s people.
I’ve noticed that politicians like fear. So do corporations with products to sell and so do a lot of preachers. Because if you’re scared two things are true: one, you aren’t thinking very clearly, and two, you have very low sales resistance. So you’re vulnerable to buying into any scheme that seems to promise peace.
Politicians say things like, “We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule.” The next thing you know, we’re in favor of shutting down places of worship and shutting out people in trouble and shutting up people with different ideas even though Jesus talks about treating others as we want to be treated, and about welcoming strangers, and about blessing those who curse us. Politicians tell us we have to do these things to “Make America Great Again,” and we forget that Jesus never promised us America would be great; in fact, the fall of America might - how could we know? - be as great an advancement for the gospel as the fall of Jerusalem was.
And of course newscasters jump on this juggernaut. They make their living by scaring the living daylights out of us so we’ll keep tuning in so we can know who the enemy is, whom we should fear. And big corporations like fear too because then they can sell us guns and alarm systems and retirement plans, and they can tell us we have to keep giving them power and money or else the whole economy will tank because they’re too big to fail.
So I think what Jesus wants me to do is to be on guard instead of getting sucked in by all the worry-merchants in politics and on TV cable news and on Wall Street. I think he wants me to avoid getting drunk on fear and instead get serious about prayer. I think he wants me to stop asking how to save America and keep asking how to save souls. I think he wants me to remember that even if America falls, Christ still rules.
Then there’s that last question: What do we know about Jesus, and therefore about God the Father, from this passage? First, I’ll tell you what we don’t know: We do not know that we serve a God who promises that only good things will ever happen to us. In fact, we serve a God who basically tells us that people around us, sometimes powerful people and sometimes only people with power over our own smaller worlds, will do crazy, irresponsible, stupid things and that these things will affect us and can, in fact, bring our worlds crashing down as surely and as violently as that bomb ripping through the Murrah building in Oklahoma City. But once we get that down, we can look at what we do know about God from this passage: We know that we serve a God whose Son sets up his throne in the very middle of our worst days and nights and declares that it will all work together to bring about the Kingdom of God where the sea of chaos is as smooth as glass.
So when, in one click of the second-hand, your world goes from order to chaos, don’t lose your head; lift up your head! Don’t look for a mushroom cloud on the horizon; look to Christ who sits enthroned on the clouds of Heaven in the very midst of your mess. Don’t join anyone’s revolution; look for your redemption. It is not in some event frozen in the past, or some event hidden in the far-flung future, but right now, in your crisis and your chaos, in your difficulty and disaster, when you find yourself seasick with the tossing waves of events you cannot control, that the risen Christ who defeated the chaos of death takes his throne and brings you the peace that passes all understanding.
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