Friends
Peace be with you.
Have you ever had to stay calm while scary things were happening around you? How did you do that? What tactics did you use to not let the adrenaline take over? I would guess most of the time we did this because we had to stay calm for someone else, for instance a child who is under our care and responsibility. I have a friend who cannot stand the sight of blood but, when her daughter dropped a glass bowl of popcorn, my friend was the one to calmly wrap her finger in a paper towel and apply pressure until they could hand her daughter off to the ER staff.
Deep in the heart of Autumn and starting to head to Winter, our readings turn to the cold reality of Apocalyptic literature. We focus on the end times, or the tribulation as Jesus called it. Let me admit that I’m going to use this word very differently than the writers of the Left Behind series use it. If you look at the previous few verses between last week’s passage and this week’s, Jesus issues five warnings. First, he says the Temple will be torn down, a reality that happened somewhere around the year 68 when the Romans stopped a Jewish revolt of their leadership by destroying the Temple. Then Jesus warns of wars and insurrections, some of which happened before the destruction of the Temple and some after. Next, Jesus warns that they will be taken before councils and tried, a reality we know that happened to both St. Paul and St. Peter and would be the norm for the first four hundred years of Christianity. Fourth, and most cryptically, Jesus warns of a “desolating sacrilege”, a phrase that also appears in the Old Testament Book of Maccabees to describe a statue of Zeus that was put in the Temple by the Greek occupiers of Jerusalem. It’s not entirely clear what Jesus means by using this phrase, possibly the fact that the Temple was used as a war planning center before it was torn down but it’s also possible that the Romans did terrible things on the Temple Mount after. Lastly, and possibly most challengingly, Jesus warns that false messiahs will appear and there will be a lot of people claiming to have knowledge of his second coming but Jesus makes it clear that we aren’t to listen to them. Why?
There is certainly a lot of tribulation, reasons to be afraid. If I were to go throughout the church, I bet each of us has something that causes us concerns. I would also bet that, the person or activity that is causing one person a lot of concern may well have the opposite effect on other people. Not being all that far from a rather ugly election, you probably understand to what I’m referring. Personally, the worst part of the past election was how much time all the media spent making us afraid of what the other side said. They spend so little time telling us about most of what any given politician actually believes and focuses on what they find scary about them and then they report that in the scariest way possible. And then they say that religion uses people’s fear.
If we listen to Jesus, he acknowledges that there will be tribulations. Yet, he makes it clear that, when the second coming happens, it won’t be because of a virgin birth in Bethlehem. He’s coming with power and glory from the clouds and the whole world will see it. He’s taking the guesswork out of it for us, in a sense.
In the heart of this passage, Jesus says, “he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky…” The word “angel” means messenger. We tend to, quite rightly, think of the purely spiritual beings fighting satan on our behalf when we hear this word. One commentary reminded me, however, that St. John the Baptist was called a messenger and, indeed, we are called to be messengers of God’s Good News to this world. I think this is what Jesus is really trying to get across to us in this passage: while the world is filled with tribulations, we have to keep spreading the good news, keep going out to gather people from all over the world to come to know Jesus before he comes again. Our lives are finite. Fear is finite. Jesus calls us to be messengers to others of his hopeful message of eternal life.
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