First Reading
Jeremiah 33:14–16
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’ (ESV)
Second Reading
1 Thessalonians 3:9–13
For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you, for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God, as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith?
Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. (ESV)
Gospel Text
Luke 21:25–36
“And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
And he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree, and all the trees. As soon as they come out in leaf, you see for yourselves and know that the summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all has taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
“But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” (ESV)
Comments/Questions for Discussion
First Reading
Jeremiah, the unhappy prophet
In the last days of the Davidic kingdom, just before (and for a little while after) the fall of Judah and Jerusalem to the Babylonians, Jeremiah was called by God to preach to His people, to call them back into faithful relationship to their God. Injustice and unfaithfulness were rampant. The poor were trampled, and worship of other Gods was frequent.
No one wanted to hear from Jeremiah his words of warning, and frankly, he didn’t much want to share them either. But when he tried to keep silent the words of God he’d been given became to him like “fire shut up in his bones.” He prophesied the fall of Judah, the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple of Solomon. This last prophecy almost got him killed (chapter 7) and is, in my thinking, the reason the people turned against Jesus at the end. Jeremiah compared the Temple to a “den of robbers” (also chapter 7) and it got him thrown into a pit. Jesus spoke of the Second Temple as a “den of robbers” and the people around Him knew exactly who He was quoting and what had come of that prophecy. (That is, the destruction of the first Temple.) This angered the people of Jesus’ day just as it did the people of Jeremiah’s day. (Although, in the case of Jeremiah, it wasn’t fear of the destruction of the Temple, but the belief that this prophecy made him a “false prophet” as they believed that Isaiah had prophesied that the Temple would never be destroyed.)
Still, throughout Jeremiah’s predictions of disaster that would follow if the people did not repent, there are large doses of hope. Jeremiah’s faithful understanding of the consequences of the people’s faithlessness never obscured his vision of God’s desire to restore the people and make of them a light unto the nations. This week’s passage falls into that category. If you read the early verses of chapter 33, you’ll see the coming destruction that Jeremiah foresaw. But then the tone switches and there are words of comfort that would, I think, be read and re-read during the time of captivity.
The question I have is this: Are we capable of clinging to the Goodness of God in the midst of things that are crumbling around us? When God destroys the things that are destroying us, even the ones we love, can we still believe that His will for us is still for our good, and not our harm, to give us a future and a hope. (ref. Jer. 29:11) It seems to me that our answer to this question plays into how we understand our reading from Luke this week, too.
Second Reading
1 Thessalonians is the earliest epistle we have from Paul. In it his theology is far from being as developed and nuanced as it is in his last letters. This one is full of the imminent expectation of Jesus’ return. It is clear that Paul thinks that many of his readers and (one supposes) he himself with live to see it. It is also somewhat lacking his later understanding and grasp of the power and working of the Holy Spirit in the individual and in the church. (We see that understanding expand in the letters that follow his visit to Ephesus.)
In this week’s reading, I am captured by one thing in particular, Paul wants his readers’s hearts to be found “blameless in holiness” at the coming of the Lord. But it’s the “how” that fascinates me.
First, it is through love for one another (“and for all”) that this will be accomplished. Not through avoidance of sin (though we might hope that such love would lead us not to sin) or by anything we do. It’s just that this is what renders our hearts holy. And here’s the next thing. He doesn’t tell them to love, but prays that God will cause their hearts to abound in love. So, the love that Paul desires from them isn’t even something he expects them to achieve, only to receive. I think there’s a lesson in there for us, no?
Gospel text
In our text for today, Jesus uses eschatological language that Luke knows from Daniel and Matthew to describe the chaos that will precede His return. We read this to begin Advent because the season not only looks to Jesus first appearance in Bethlehem, but also looks with longing toward His return. It acknowledges that worse must come before the end of this world and its injustice, but also holds out the hope that says, “Even these things are not too big for God.” This theme, then, threads its way through all three lessons (though less explicitly in 1 Thessalonians).
Rather than go into that in greater depth, I’d like to provide some early thoughts about Luke as a whole, as we enter into Year C, when we read mostly Luke.
Of the three “synoptic” gospels, (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) which are so much more alike to each other than they are to John, Luke is the latest. It is attributed by the early church to Luke, the physician who is mentioned in Paul’s letters. Whether it was or not, it was written by a Gentile convert to Christianity and written largely for a readership composed also of Gentiles.
One way in which I read Luke that is somewhat different from most students of the synoptic Gospels, is that I do not think Luke composed his Gospel ignorant of Matthew’s. When I read current academic articles on Luke nowadays I see far fewer references to the imaginary source called “Q,” one that both Matthew and Luke are said to have used, but differently. This source, of which no one has ever found a copy, was thought to explain many of the materials that Matthew and Luke shared, but that were absent from Mark.
But even back in the 90’s, the Q hypothesis was crumbling. I came across a book “Beyond the Q Impasse – Luke’s Use of Matthew”, that demonstrated quite clearly that the shared materials can more easily be attributed to Luke’s knowledge and editing of Matthew’s Gospel. Since that time, I think that this view has found more traction. I think “Q” is nearly gone, as it should be.
From my own reading and research into the peculiarities of Luke, I have come to a separate and significant (to me) conclusion. Luke wrote during a time in the early life of the church when it was already being torn by division. This division centered on the question of whether one had to be Jewish first in order to be a Christian. Christianity is growing much more rapidly in the Gentile world than it is in Israel and Palestine, and the divide is becoming really hostile. I’ll get into the specifics of that later, but I think one of Luke’s great concerns is trying to build bridges between the Jewish and Gentile segments of the church. He understands the value of the Jewish roots of his faith and he doesn’t want to lose them. But he also values Paul’s mission to the Gentiles and the inclusion of “the nations.” It is why I think he was compelled to write a second volume – Acts.
Of course, Luke writes for a largely Gentile audience, but I believe it also included Jews of the Diaspora, for whom Luke’s Greco-Roman frame of reference would make sense. So, when you read Luke, I suggest that, in addition to noticing Luke’s “gentileness,” and asking “Why did Luke change this from what he found in Matthew?” you also read with this question in the back of your minds, “How does Luke’s use of this story from the life of Jesus (or from Acts) contribute to his goal of reuniting the church, and how does that speak to today’s church?”
For a more easily printable version of this Divergence, please CLICK HERE.
