an apocalyptic vision of the future
Advent 1C | Luke 21:25-36
Happy New Year, everybody! Today we celebrate the church’s new year. Which, if we’re counting, goes alongside the new years we celebrate with the Gregorian Calendar on January 1st and the multiple school calendars that depend on what school you or your kid are in or which one your church is next to, so it could be after Labor Day or late July—who really knows? So the church gets its own calendar. But we don’t always follow it that closely because we still have to contend with all of the other calendars in our lives. So this is a kind of a “more-the-merrier” kind of deal. What’s another reason to celebrate? Jesus is kind of the “we need more reasons to party” sort.
Above the world’s ordering of our lives, the church uses this Sunday, marked as four Sundays before Christmas Day as the beginning of the church year. And like all good new year’s days, it is an opportunity to reset, to begin anew in a life that needs annual renewals. That we get to do new again, begin again. That it gets to be new and also familiar. All of that comes as new creation and also that all that came before still remains. This is why we can hear again the stories we have heard a thousand times and make them both new and familiar. This is part of the process, part of the design of a fancy concept called anamnesis, which, in the church, is essentially to make something real by remembering it, like communion, memory, love.
An apocalyptic New Year
Our New Year’s celebration, however, is always apocalyptic—which, to some people, is kind of a downer. I’ve spent nearly two decades trying to rehabilitate people’s understanding of apocalyptic thought because it is so cool, so useful to people who are oppressed or living in challenging times, and communicates some of the most difficult concepts about grace and love and the nature of creation and order and humanity.
We begin the year in much the way we ended last year: speaking of Jesus’s revelation to his followers about the world to come, the experience they will have, and how to persist when everything seems stacked against them. Seems relevant to a lot of people, right?
And I get it. We probably want something more uplifting or distracting. Sorry. That’s not how this works. Besides, that consumer Christianity people have tried to subsist on for the last half century? That’s fast food for the soul. We’ve spent decades acting like kids who demand junk food and then just seek out the parents who would feed us our favorites in the biggest proportions.
No, we get apocalyptic talk because it is the only way of making sense of this moment. When so many people feel underwater, when systems of protection exploit us, and when the world’s response to all of this is violence and death.
Signs and Preparation
We are now reading from the gospel of Luke, but the story picks up close to where we left it two weeks ago in Mark. When Jesus and the disciples leave the Temple and Jesus tells them the whole thing will be destroyed. And it was, about forty years later.
Jesus offers his disciples three important ideas here:
- There are signs in their environment for the disciples to interpret.
- Interpreting signs will reveal what is to come.
- Stand up, prepared.
A lot of people hear or read apocalyptic stuff and get stuck in that first idea, right about that second word: There are… and we go Yeah, I don’t like what you’re trying to do here, so I’m gonna tap out. And this is a lot like the thing we call “shooting the messenger”. Sorry, we don’t get to choose that option here. Because the suffering we’re about to dig into will happen and Jesus is trying to help you deal with it. You don’t get to avoid this one.
We like that dodge, don’t we? That’s what we do when we pick at the words the messenger is using to avoid the message. Jesus, you’re getting too political right here. Can’t you use different words that aren’t so… divisive?
What Jesus is trying to do is to get people to see that the oppression to come is reactionary and predictable. But there is good happening here because God is at the center of things. And being prepared to roll with what is to come is invaluable.
But to get there, we have to recognize that sometimes this junk is a sign of something greater. And recognizing what it means will help us stand up and prepare for the moment.
Family Systems Theory
There is a helpful field of study I refer to a lot called Family Systems Theory, first pioneered by the American psychologist Murray Bowen. He theorized that there are predictable behaviors and patterns in families. And knowing those patterns can help the families and their members understand what is really going on below the surface. This theory also works on organizations, institutions, and even nations.
And one of the most tangible aspects of Family Systems Theory is what happens within the family when stress is introduced. When something happens to the family, like a job loss, a medical emergency, or a child goes off to college. The perceived stasis within the family is disturbed and the whole family gets anxious.
My favorite example of this is what happens when an adult child comes home. They had a specific role in the family, but that is changing. Think about the Thanksgiving table, the food, the traditions. But now the good son wants to drink a beer or tells you he dropped out of school or is getting married. It really could be anything. Now, in this example, most of the family is happy, but Mom, she loses her mind and starts saying nasty stuff. Why? Because her little boy has the audacity to grow up! That doesn’t match who he is supposed to be: her little boy. Is he supposed to stay that way? Of course not, that’s impossible. But Mom treats this as a violation.
A more disturbing example can happen in families when one of the members is in recovery, for instance. They are literally trying to get clean, and living a new healthy life. Let’s say they’ve made it a year. And two siblings are so proud of them but another one of them is awful and rude—spewing nasty asides and backhanded comments. Why? Sometimes it is because they’ve lost the right to look down on the person. But usually it is something more intangible.
What connects so many of these behaviors is the simple fact that a family member has chosen to not fulfill other people’s expectations of their role in the family. They had the audacity to grow up or become healthy. And some people perceive that as a threat to the whole system, so they attack that person, literally threaten their welfare because they believe that person is ruining everything.
Some people think Jesus is ruining Judaism.
And being a part of that means the disciples are destroying the family.
The predictable suffering is a reaction to what Edwin Friedmann calls self-differentiation. Learning to be different. The powerful will attack their own for daring to become “the other”. Often, as in this case, by welcoming the other. Loving the other. Feeding and clothing and preserving the lives of the other. Not letting the other die in the streets or be exploited by the banks.
And because it is a threat to the precious order of things, the Roman Empire will destroy them indiscriminately. They don’t care about the internal squabbles; they want their money and their compliance—silence and what they perceive as order. They are just looking for an excuse to make an example of someone.
Jesus wants them to see the signs of backlash, retaliation. Of the world to come that will inflict pain for the sake of healing and disorder for the sake of order. War for peace. Because that is how tyrants rule. How empires empire. They oppress, exploit, control.
It is even how some loving parents or siblings try to protect their families: by punishing the self-differentiated. And to this,
Jesus says to stand up.
“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.”
For the Dream of God is happening. And this is how the world responds to it. It takes healing for a threat. It doesn’t want to make peace peacefully. It is afraid to. Much easier to control by force. But here is the way of Christ coming along and being like, Dude, you can’t fight fire with fire. Throw some water on it, for Pete’s sake. And their response is just as the Simpsons meme says, “We’ve tried nothing and we’re out of ideas.”
But this is precisely why we stand up and prepare. Why we look for the signs of the in-breaking God in our midst in places of frustration and outrage. Because this is where we can see Christ’s Way of Love far more clearly trying to break through. The anger reaction is the sign. When people with power choose cruelty, we can see the reaction, the retaliation; that there is longing for control that people aren’t supposed to have. Assurance and certainty we aren’t supposed to have in things of the world. In power and countries and governments and war and punishment.
Assurance we are to have in Christ. And then, through Christ, each other.
We are the antidote to the moment. To the suffering and frustration of the season we’re in. To the pain and rejection so many are feeling. To the violence of maintaining order and the exploitation of controlling economic fortunes.
We are the differentiating family members, the ones working for health and hope through faith. The ones trying to do the right thing in a world that offers shortcuts and consumption. We love when it is easier to hate and hope when it is easier to give up. And we follow Jesus’s Way of Love because it is the only path that actually works.
Jesus reminds us to see the signs, work them out, and stand up prepared. Because this world isn’t going to love itself.