Apocalytic eschatology

Readings

According to the narrative set forth in Luke's Gospel, Jesus and his followers have arrived in Jerusalem. This is the part where Jesus really begins to stir up trouble. In our Gospel reading for this Sunday, he predicts the destruction of the Temple.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the Temple for ancient Judaism. The first Temple had already been destroyed. The Second Temple, the Temple that stood in Jerusalem in the first century, replaced it. The Second Temple, at this point in Luke's internal chronology, had only been completed a few years earlier. It was still new!

Jesus's teaching in this pericope is apocalyptic. "Apocalypse" does not mean divinely unleashed catastrophe, chaos, and destruction. It means to unveil. To unveil is to reveal.

No doubt taken somewhat aback by this dire prediction (keep in mind we're working here with Luke's text in a post-critical way- Luke was probably not composed until after the Temple's destruction), some of his audience asks when this going to happen and if there will be any detectable signs that indicate when this will happen.

What Jesus goes on to describe are things that are the stuff of human history. Keeping in mind that the same inspired author wrote both Luke and Acts, Jesus does seem to predict the persecution of the early Church, which takes place before the Roman destruction of the Temple, which occurred in AD 70. As with the rest of what the Lord predicts, his prediction of persecution can be extended over time.

In short, as is suggested in our reading from 2 Thessalonians, the key is perseverance in living the Gospel, following the way of Jesus, and walking the way of the Cross, not living some overheated state imminently expecting the end of the world.

In our culture, which is largely shaped, at least religiously, by a non-doctrinal, non-confessional form of biblicist Protestantism, which many Catholics have appropriated, endtime-mania seems to always be in season. The signs to which Jesus points are deliberately vague. In other words, there is no way of telling when these things will happen. This is just the point as it pertains to how a Christian lives. Today is always the time of tribulation.

Earlier, during the travel narrative, Jesus exhorted his followers to live in what New Testament scholar Raymond Brown refers to as "eschatological vigilance" (see Luke 12:35-48; An Introduction to the New Testament, 254). What is eschatological vigilance? It is an awareness that God can bring his purposes to fulfillment at any time and will do so in his own time. No one is privy to God's timetable.

Christians today, two thousand years later, are to live in eschatological vigilance. This is not "Look busy, Jesus is coming!" Rather, it is living your life according to Jesus' teachings come what may, even when you experience backlash, resistance, even persecution, or, worse yet, discouragement. Claims of persecution, at least the contemporary United States, are grossly overexaggerated. Of course, there are many Christians throughout the world who face genuine persecution.

What Jesus says about not planning what you will say before hand is realized in the Acts by the witness of Peter, Stephen, and, later. Paul. Clearly, the life that is "secured" is eternal life, not mortal life.

Living in eschatological vigilance is already an apocalypse, an unveiling, a revelation. Living this way, which is not a paranoid, alarmist, pessimistic way, but a hopeful, even joyful, way that makes God's kingdom a present reality, is the revelation. So far from supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, apocalyptic eschatology is adhering to Jesus' teachings.

Two examples of what this might look like: Saint Francis of Assisi was tending the community garden one day with another friar. This friar asked Francis (who was most likely a deacon), something like- "If the Lord were to return right now, what would you do?" Francis is said to have responded: "I would keep tending the garden." In a similar vein, Martin Luther said, "Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."

While the second isn't as "eschatological" as the first, it is highly relevant to the matter under consideration. Luther was noting that, at least for us, the future is uncertain. So, we should practice what spiritual teacher John Eldredge calls "benevolent detachment," what Saint Ignatius of Loyola dubbed indiferencia. What is that, you might ask? It is to put everything into God's hands and live the calling to which you are called without worrying about the future.

Earlier in the same chapter of Luke in which Jesus exhorts his followers to eschatological vigiliance, he teaches- "do not worry about your life and what you will eat, or about your body and what you will wear." He continues:

Can any of you by worrying add a moment to your life-span? If even the smallest things are beyond your control, why are you anxious about the rest? (see Luke 12:22-34)

Whether you accept it or not, this is the essence of the freedom Christ offers. By living in the freedom of the children of God we reveal what is coming.