LUKE 21: 25-38

Laterally Luke…Advent 1…Revised 2016

Rather than getting bogged down in apocalyptic & its interpretations, the import of this passage as LK reports it is living in the present! When things aren’t going too well, it’s often tempting to look into the future for a saviour rather than trying to live out what’s already been revealed to us by the very much feet-on-the-ground Son of Humanity & Saviour who’s already come. Why not heed what He teaches us about living in ‘Now’ time, which is always ours & at the same time, God’s.

At the moment the world looks more threatening - for many people in many lands - than it’s looked for a long time. That doesn’t mean ‘the end’ is coming, though it does raise the question of whether  any ‘end’ will be of our own making; climate change, all-out warfare, or otherwise. Neither the Scriptures nor Faith guarantee God will rescue us from trials & tribulations, personal or on any wider scale. They do, though, assure us of God’s presence with us throughout whatever we’re going through. More, anything that happens to us needs to be seen in the context of what we do about what happens! To be constantly looking for the Son of Humanity coming on the clouds may simply be escapism. Pray, always, ‘Save us from the time of trial, and Deliver us from evil’, and expect saving & deliverance, even if it comes in surprising ways!

Jesus always reads ‘the signs of the times’. Signs in the creation all about us & in us. As He also reads the signs of the state of our humanity. As Celtic spirituality often reminds us, all things are at one in God’s eyes, and it helps if there’s a one-ness in the way we think about them, pray about them, & face them. In a frontispiece to his ‘God & the New Physics’ ¹ Paul Davies quotes Einstein as saying, “ Religion without science is blind. Science without religion is lame.” Those of us who preach do well to take that on board, & with it, the ‘signs’ such physicists read in these same skies Jesus reads too. It might be an interesting exercise to modify, for instance our Australian 4th form of Great Thanksgiving with, say, ‘Therefore with angels & archangels …with holy men & women of every age….with those skilled in medicines, chemists, biologists, physicists & cosmologists……we proclaim your great & glorious name….Or would that be just a silliness on my / your part? Perhaps it’s time we unlocked a lot of the compartments we shut others who differ from us up in. Already the forces let loose by such lock-ins are among the many & varied forces shaking our world apart.   

As Jesus takes respite (v.37) after a hard day’s work, most of us need to take more of His kind of respite than we usually do. Time in which to pray, not ‘my will to be done’, but for God’s will to be done on earth as in Heaven. That understanding can take a long time to reach, as many of can bear witness to. But the more time we take, hopefully & prayerfully we can get there. Which will make it that much easier for God to get there, reach us, too! 

¹  Reprinted by Penguin, ’90.