The Second Sunday in Advent is known in the Anglican Church as “Bible Sunday.” The reason is that the Collect for the day has to do with the Scriptures and the Epistle and Gospel, though both mentioning the coming of Christ in some fashion as befits the Advent season, also refer to the Word of God. Thus it is that, on this Sunday, we recognise the glorious role of the Holy Scriptures in the life of the Church. The Collect was written by Archbishop Cranmer in 1549 for the first English Prayer Book. It was in that year of its publication that the English Church heard for the first time one lesson from the Old Testament and one from the New in the Divine Service and both read in English. As one person has said, “The Collect was the Church’s burst of grateful joy at the recovery of a treasure she had lost so long”; viz: a firsthand knowledge of what was contained in the Scriptures. (Harper, Year with Christ).
The Collect for the day reads like a catechism for how a Christian is to treat the Bible. It provides a list for us of ways to handle the Scriptures. It says that we are to hear them, referring to the actual reading of them in the Church or on other occasions, but also in our taking heed to what they say. We are to read them, which is something we can all do thanks to the Reformation ideal of providing the Scriptures in the language of the people. Reading also refers, of course, to our need to be sure that we are indeed reading the Bible and not leaving it sitting unused in some revered place. We are to mark them. This probably, in the language of Cranmer’s day, means what we mean by “pay attention to”, but there’s nothing wrong with considering the use of pen or pencil as an aid of study and meditation. We are to “learn” the Scriptures. This would refer to memorisation, something we should all be regularly doing. The Scriptures themselves speak of the need for this, telling us to lay God’s Word up in our hearts. Finally, “inwardly digest.” This means we are to spend time pondering the Scriptures, reflecting upon them, going back over them, and, as the image of digesting would indicate, receiving the nourishment to our souls that the Scripture is meant to provide. It is in this manner that we can experience the patience and comfort of the Scriptures for our eternal welfare.
Ironically, the Bible Sunday Gospel reading contains a statement by Jesus that some people use to deny the things that Bible Sunday is about. They use it to tear away from the Bible its inherent authority and reliability as the inspired word of God. This statement is the next to last sentence of the Gospel, v. 32, where Jesus says, “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled.” Now how is it that this statement is used to abuse the Bible?
Look at the whole reading for today. There you will see that Jesus is talking about his coming in power and glory and that his coming would be proceeded by remarkable events in the heavens and tumultuous events on the earth. It is very common, and has been for some time, for this passage to be understood as refering to the second coming of Christ at the end of the world, when he will bring this world to an end and, after the last judgment, establish the new heaven and earth. All the remarkable events mentioned here do look, to us, like the end of the world. But if that is indeed what Jesus was talking about, then this is where verse 32 is a problem. Jesus said that everything he was telling his disciples would happen in their generation, in their life time, but this world is still here. Jesus has not yet returned a second time in his glory. How are we to understand this?
Some people have tried to work this out by saying that, by “generation”, Jesus meant the age of mankind or perhaps the generation of the children of the kingdom, that is, the Church. But, as one critic said, 99 out of 100 people reading this passage would immediately think Jesus is referring to the people in general who were alive at that time. If we agree with him, and we think the passage is about the second coming of Christ, then we have a serious problem concerning the reliability of the Bible. If Jesus himself was wrong about when he was going to come back, how can we trust anything that anybody else said in the Bible about anything?
The answer I think best is this: the passage in Luke is not referring to the great second coming of Jesus. In spite of all the language about the heavenly bodies and the earth being like a sea in a storm, it is not about the end of the world. How can that be, since it looks so much to us like it is about the end of the world?
First of all, let’s recognise the context of the passage. The whole discourse began with a question about Jerusalem’s destruction. Jesus had told the disciples that the stones of the temple would not be left one on another and the disciples asked Him when this would take place. Jesus’ response was to tell them signs to look for and then he said, when you see these things happening, get out of Jerusalem, because I’m coming in judgment. This destruction, at the hand of the Romans, took place in A.D. 70, which was about 40 years after Jesus’ prophecy; in other words, within a generation. The verses we are considering are part of the end of that conversation. We would expect, then, that they would be about this destruction.
But how can this cataclysmic imagery be about the siege of a city? The problem is that we are not generally familiar with the imagery used by people in the times of Jesus. Scholars studying this question have been able to demonstrate from other Jewish writings, and also from the Bible itself, that it was common for people in those times to use the language of the stars falling and the sun going dark and the moon turning to blood, and so forth, to represent titanic changes in the history of the nations. It was a way to talk about the life of people in the nations of the earth “going through convulsions” (Wright, p. 255).
Now, did that generation, the people who lived from around 30 A.D. to 70 A.D., go through great political convulsions? Most certainly! People living in the last decade before 70 A.D. might well have felt like the world was falling apart. Let me quote Bishop Wright here:
After Nero’s suicide in 68, four emperors followed in quick succession, each one at the head of an army. The much-vaunted “Roman peace” that Augustus and his successors claimed to have brought to the world was shattered from the inside. A convulsive shudder went through the whole known world. That fits verses 25-26 exactly. (p. 255)
Then, when you consider that Jesus was addressing the Jews in particular, the incredible distress that came upon the Jews in 68 to 70 A.D. certainly fits the bill, for the land was overrun by the army of Rome and Jerusalem and her temple were completely destroyed. Everything that had brought the Jews a sense of stability and identity in their world was ripped out from under them. Their stars had indeed fallen, their sun had darkened, and their streets were filled with their blood.
So, then, if we understand the language of tumults in heaven and earth as figurative of political changes, we recognise that this passage may not be about the second coming, but, instead, about events that were going to take place in the near future: the destruction of Jerusalem.
Now, beside the cataclysmic imagery of this passage, we also have to deal with Jesus’ words “And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” That sounds like the second coming, too.
In reply, the first thing we need to understand is that Jesus can talk about his coming to a place without referring to his great second coming. In the letters to the churches in the book of Revelation, Jesus says several times that he will come to these churches in judgment, if they do not repent. So, since Jesus is the one into whose hands God has committed all judgment, and since Jerusalem is to be judged for her sin, and since Jesus has been talking about that very judgment in this chapter, it is not a stretch to say that when he says here that he is coming, he means that he is personally going to oversee the judgment of the city.
But why does he say his coming will be in a cloud with power and great glory? Jesus is probably picking up on the language of Daniel chapter 7, which refers to the establishment of the kingdom of the Son of Man. The theme of Daniel 7 dovetails with Jesus' involvement with the destruction of Jerusalem.
Daniel 7:13: I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.
14: And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.
Bishop Wright tells us that this prophecy in Daniel was very popular in Jesus’ day and that the Jews understood it as a foretelling of God’s vindication of His true people after they had been persectued by the pagan nations for many generations. What wound up happening, however, is that the Jews themselves wound up persecuting the true people of God – the believers in Jesus – and thus brought upon themselves the vindicating judgment of God. Since God was determined to establish the kingdom of the Son of Man, He had to remove those who were opposing that kingdom.
But we wonder how God could destroy his own temple. Well, in their opposition to God’s way of righteousness, the Jews had turned their temple into a symbol of rebellious Jewish nationalism. The Lord had destroyed the temple before, back in 586 B.C., when it had become profaned. There was no reason why he would not do so again, should the Jews oppose his kingdom plans. And since Daniel 7 uses this language of power and glory in the context of the establishment of God’s kingdom plans for the Son of Man, so Jesus uses this vocabulary when speaking of this very important event related to his kingdom: the destruction of Jerusalem. It was the final ending of all the ceremonies of the old economy – a very important event in salvation history, but here, especially, it was the vindication of Jesus before the Jews who had rejected their king.
One final question. What about Jesus’ statement to the disciples that, in those days, when all those things were going on before his coming, they were to look up for their redemption was drawing nigh? When Jesus came to Jerusalem, in AD 70, to destroy Jerusalem and the temple, he brought an end to the persecutions of his people by the Jews. The Jews were the great persecutors of the Church in the first generation of the Church. When they could no longer hurt them, they were delivered from them. That’s why he tells them to look up, for their redemption, their deliverance from persecution, was nigh.
So, then, let me summarise. The passage in Luke 21 we have read today is about the destruction of Jerusalem. 1) because that is what the rest of the passage is about, 2) the cataclysmic imagery is a common device in the Bible and elsewhere for great changes in human history, 3) Jesus’ words concerning his coming were meant to be taken as a limited kind of coming, a coming in history to bring judgment, but not the final coming and the final judgment; 4) his description of his coming in power and glory was a reference to the picture of how Daniel describes his vindication before the throne of God; and lastly, 5) the redemption of the saints mentioned here, is their deliverance from the Jewish persecution.
We have thus tried to understand how this passage was not about the second coming of Christ at the end of the world, but, intead, his coming to bring the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the Jewish persecution. The result of this is, of course, that Jesus did not make a mistake about the future. He knew what he was talking about, what he said did come true, and, thus, the Bible remains the utterly reliable guide for our faith.
We learn from all of this that there is a sense in which Jesus comes in a number of ways, not just at the end to judge the world. Beside the coming in judgment mentioned several times in the early chapters of Revelation, Jesus also speaks of coming into the lives of believers who will open their hearts to him. You remember the passage: 20: Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. During the season of Advent, we often reflect upon our own personal need to make our hearts open to the Jesus who came at the first Christmas, that he may, in another way, come into our hearts and set up his kingdom there. He longs to do so. This picture in Rev. 3 of his standing at the door of our hearts and knocking shows his heart to us. Let us hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest this passage of Holy Scripture, too, and consider if there be any area of our lives in which we have not allowed Jesus to come, to judge what is wrong, and to establish his kingdom of goodness and peace. Let us not keep Jesus standing outside the door of our hearts, but welcome him, in all his love, all his power, and all his glory.
Amen.
Comments