… there will be portents in the sun and moon and stars, and on the earth nations will be dismayed in their confusion at the roar of the surging sea. People will faint from terror at the prospect of what is coming over the civilised world, for the heavenly forces will be shaken! … … When these things begin to happen, stand tall and hold your heads high, because your deliverance is just around the corner. [Luke 21:25-28]
There’s no shortage of doom-sayers in our world, people who are all-too-ready to proclaim the end of life as we know it, harbingers of cataclysmic disaster, prophets of gloom and doom. Maybe such despondency is understandable given the problems that assail us: conflicts and wars, violence and crime, economic uncertainty, climate confusion (to my mind ‘climate confusion’ captures the unpredictability of the seasons better than ‘climate change’) – the ‘signs of our times’ are hard to miss! That excerpt from Luke’s gospel does seem to capture our present predicament.
Why is it, do you think, when we hear passages such as these from the scripture or read parallel stories in our contemporary news services, that we tend to go to dark and foreboding places, to expect the worst, to ‘see’ these portents as signs of the end?
I suggest it’s at least partly due to the bizarre Christian tradition, in which many of are steeped, that holds to an expectation that the world as we know it is going to be blown away by a cosmic disaster that will trigger the triumphant return of Jesus, and we faithful few, having been saved from the disaster, will be swept up to paradise, leaving the unfaithful masses to fend for themselves in the mess they have created.
You are probably familiar with this so-called theology, and you may be aware of the propensity of some to hasten the disaster in order to also hasten the rescue!
We’ll, if that’s where you go when you hear or read of such ‘signs’, I urge you to cast the image from your mind, because such thinking is neither Christian nor healthy!
A quick side-bar on the text I quoted. The translation comes from The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say?, a book that was the result of many years of study and discussion by a large team of scholars meeting as the Jesus Seminar. One of the products of their collaboration was a consensus around the sayings that might confidently be attributed to Jesus and those that are more likely the result of later editing by the gospel writers. They devised a colour-coded scale for the words attributed to Jesus where RED = Jesus definitely said this, PINK = Jesus probably said this, GRAY = Jesus probably didn’t say this but it may represent his thinking, and BLACK = Jesus did not say this.
Interestingly, the passage above is printed in BLACK (Jesus did not say this), meaning that it has been inserted by the writer. So when we read it, rather than ask what is the teaching of Jesus, we need to ask what is the intention of the writer.
The context is important: the gospels were written in the shadow of 70 CE – the armies of Rome had put down the bubbling Jewish rebellion with a violent march through the territory and the horrifying destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The terror to which this passage points is not a future event but their present reality!
And the key to the intent of this passage comes not in the doom of vv. 25, 26 but in the hope of v.28: When these things begin to happen, stand tall and hold your heads high, because your deliverance is just around the corner. To a people living in fear and foreboding, Luke writes a message of courage and hope, a call to perseverance and action.
So here’s my take on how we might respond constructively to the all-too-evident signs of destruction and despair that assail us. Rather than throw up our hands in hopeless or helpless resignation, we are invited to look beyond the signs of destruction to the signs of hope and courage that are also always evident, even if they take a little more seeking!
Don’t be afraid or numbed into passivity because of the terrible things that may happen. Rather, take courage and be hopeful, because, despite the things that threaten us (climate confusion and energy crisis, COVID and other viruses, greed and corruption in politics and commerce, tension between superpowers, etc.), all over the world there are people of goodwill and genuine concern offering alternative signs: signs of kindness and compassion, of generosity and philanthropy, of service and care. And in those signs is our hope!
Further, this hope is not mere wishful thinking: ‘I hope the weather is OK’ or ‘I hope my footy team wins’ or even ‘I hope the kids turn out alright.’ Nor is it passive: let’s sit back and hope that God or someone else will save us. Rather, it is an active hope, it is a choice we make about how we are going to live. Because what we choose will determine how we act, and how we act will determine how we live, and how we live will determine the sort of world we build together.
Want a world that lives in peace? Then choose to live peaceably in your places of family, work and recreation and you will help make it so. Long for a world in which climate is stable and sustainable? Then make choices now to create that reality. Hope for reconciliation with First Nations peoples, or amongst angry protest groups, or within your workplace? Then be an agent of reconciliation in your networks and your neighbourhoods. What does your soul hope for? Don’t just sit waiting for it to appear. Live as though it were already a reality, because in doing that you make it real!
Here’s the key: interpret the hopes and aspirations that arise within you not as mere wishful thinking, as pie-in-the-sky dreams, but rather as the promptings of the Spirit of Creation regarding the things about which you care, about which you can make choices, about which you can make a difference, about which you can take action!
This sort of hope is reflected in the inspirational quote from Robert F Kennedy:
Some (people) see things as they are and ask, ‘why?’ I dream things that never were and ask, ‘why not?’
May we begin every day by gazing out upon the world and making a commitment to take courage, to affirm hope, and to ask ‘Why not?’ Because the truth is that there really are enough people of goodwill and generous intention in the world to ensure the wellbeing of all Creation. Let us determine to be numbered amongst them and to live and act accordingly!
David Brooker
11th July 2024
OldSoul.blog 
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