First Sunday of Advent
(Sunday 2nd December 2018)
A New Beginning – (Luke 21:25-28, 34-36)
This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent. In these four weeks of Advent we are preparing for the coming of Jesus Christ to Christmas. We enter into biblical salvation history in the four thousand years of humanity’s yearning and longing for the coming of a Saviour.
In our Gospel reading today we are hit with a very powerful message from Jesus, one that is going to shake us up and wake us up so as to help us to get ready. In this Gospel reading today we hear Jesus talking about the Sun and Moon darkening, we hear Him talking about the stars falling from the sky. Many Christians interpret this as being the end of the world or the end of time. I want you to know that, biblically, these images would not have been brand new to the original hearers of this message in Jerusalem that day when Jesus spoke them. These images would not have been new to the earliest Christians who were reading them because these are found in the Old Testament scriptures as well. These images were not used literalistically to talk about the end of the physical time, space and universe but as many biblical scholars have noted, they were used to describe the end of kingdoms, nations and rulers who were oppressing God’s people, the Israelites. For example, in Isaiah 13:1-10 and 14:4-12, we read about these kind of images used to describe the destruction of the Babylonian kingdom and the fall of the great Babylonian king. The ancient Hebrews would use this image as a powerful metaphor to describe just how shocking that would have been. Babylon was the most dominant power in the Middle East in that day and for a prophet to talk about that nation falling would have been shocking. So they used these powerful images to describe the fall of this great kingdom. It is kind of like in our own culture today where we might say that September 11th, 2001 in the USA was an earth shaking event. It was not physically that all around the world but we use that to describe just how dramatically that shook up the social political landscape of our modern era. Another example is where we might say that the first shot of the revolutionary war in the US was ‘the shot heard around the world’. We do not mean it was literallistically heard around the world but we use that as a metaphor to describe how important that was historically. The same is true for the ancient Jews. They used these powerful images to describe God’s judgement on powerful nations that were oppressing God’s people.
Now lets take a look at the context in the way that Jesus uses this kind of imagery in our Gospel reading for today. This reading comes from the last week of Jesus’ life when He is in Jerusalem and He is confronting the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem. Jesus used this imagery to describe what is going to happen to them. It is announcing judgement on Jerusalem. Ironically now, the Jerusalem leaders are the ones who are oppressing God’s righteous Man, Jesus who is the Saviour, the Messiah who is about to be condemned and be put to death and to be handed over to the Romans by these Jewish leaders. Jesus is announcing to them that yes, you are going to persecute me but in the end I am going to be exalted, I am going to be vindicated, I am going to be raised and God is going to come back in judgement on Jerusalem.
Now, what is the message that we can take away for our lives from these readings? I think about one line from today’s Gospel reading where Jesus talks about how the Son of Man will come on the clouds and He is going to come in glory and power. “And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” – Luke 21:27. Well that imagery of the Son of Man is taken from a prophet of the Old Testament, the Book of Daniel chapter 7, where Daniel has a vision of these four pagan kingdoms that are coming to oppress God’s people. God’s people are being persecuted. And yet, at the very end of this vision, Daniel sees a Son of Man figure is going to come in judgement and in glory and He is going to establish a worldwide kingdom. And so, the message of Daniel 7 is the message of suffering and persecution and how God is going to come and rescue His people. He is going to vindicate them, He is going to rescue them. He is going to exalt them. That pattern is what Jesus is applying to Himself. He is saying that I now am being persecuted, I am being oppressed by the Jerusalem leaders and God is going to raise Me up and I will be vindicated and God will come in judgement on Jerusalem.
So let me ask you how do you respond when you see many bad things happening all around you, whether it is in our world today, attacks on marriage, on human life, on religion? How do you respond? Maybe in your own personal life you have family members and friends who do not understand your Christian way of living. Or maybe you are trying to make some great things happen advancing God’s Kingdom but you wish things were happening faster at your parish or that people would understand the faith better. How do you respond when you see things not working out the way that you desired? Do you respond with discouragement? Do you get angry? Do you get bitter? Do you just complain about all of the bad things happening around you? How do you respond? Today’s Gospel message is meant to give us hope because Christ’s followers are meant to be followers that have confidence in God working through the difficulties and trials and persecutions that we as Christians face today. We should have confidence that the Son of Man is coming in glory and in power and He is going to make all things new. He is going to be the One who will set things right in this world and all the way until we get to the next. So as we leave this Gospel reading, let’s take time to think about the areas in our lives where we may fall into that trap of discouragement and negativity where we lack the confidence that the great saints and martyrs had. Those great saints and martyrs were marked with that great hope in the Son of Man coming in glory.
Dr. Edward Sri (Augustine Institute)