This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to ponder Luke 21:25-36. The English Standard Version[1] divides the passage into three portions. It supplies them with the headings: “The Coming of the Son of Man,” The Lesson of the Fig Tree,” and “Watch Yourselves.”
Why did Luke compile these accounts? Why did he place them at this point in his gospel,[2] in this sequence?
I’ll address the second question first. The sequence begins with The Widow’s Offering (1-4) and continues with Jesus foretelling the destruction of the Temple (5-9), foretelling wars and persecution (10-19), and foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem (20-24).
Luke begins with Jesus’ comment on the widow’s offering to an institution whose leaders’ main concern had become themselves. And they had made the Temple so rotten that God would depart from it and destroy it.
I wrote about that in my column titled “Don’t misread Jesus comment on the widow’s offering.”
In today’s chapter, Luke arranges the accounts such that they build up in dramatic sequence. The sequence begins with a widow’s praiseworthy but misguided sacrifice. It ends with the Final Judgment.
Two weeks ago, the Lectionary invited us to see the Temple in the Fig Tree. We read that Jesus ordered the fig tree to die because it did not bear fruit. We read that the next day, the tree died. And we know that about 30 years later, the Temple and Jerusalem were utterly destroyed.
Today, the Lectionary invites us to ask, “Do you see the world in the Temple?”
The tree died the next day. The Temple died 30 years later. We can be just as certain that the world, all the people on earth, will also die, because the vast majority of them refuse to accept that they do not bear fruit.
What is that fruit?
That fruit is complete obedience to the Law of God over the entire span of every human life – a level of obedience which only one person has ever achieved. That one person is Jesus. He alone completely fulfilled the summary of the Law in the Great Commandment,
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and [love] your neighbour as yourself.”[3] (Luke 10:27)
Luke was not one of the Twelve members of Jesus’ inner circle of hand-picked disciples. Like us, he never met Jesus in the flesh. He was a companion of Paul, whom he introduces to us as Saul.
Initially, Saul was a Temple-certified Jewish teacher. Initially, he flushed out, tortured, and killed those who preached Jesus: those who preached that Jesus was the Promised One, the Davidic king, who would rule justly and liberate the captives from oppression. Jesus, who began his ministry by reading these words written centuries before by Prophet Isaiah:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
(Luke 4:18-19)
Three years later, the leaders of the Temple successfully instigated the Roman governor, Pilate, to crucify and kill Jesus. But Jesus returned from the dead. He went to his disciples. He instructed them to persuade and to command people to turn from the Wrong Way to the Right Way.
What is the Wrong Way?
The Wrong Way is to put ourselves or anything else before God. To treat God like a slot machine in the sky. To treat God as if he could be “bought over” by means of gifts, so that he “serves us,” by giving us health and wealth; and by saving us from all kinds of disasters.[4]
What is the Right Way?
The Right Way is to live out our lives based on the understanding that Jesus’ death on the cross is God’s provision for us. That his death is the taking away of our sin, of our failure to fulfil the Great Commandment.[5] That we must join his church and work for the betterment of the world.
The disciples began to preach Jesus. The result was immediate. Beginning at Pentecost, thousands switched parties. They left the Jewish leaders and joined Jesus’ disciples. You can read about it in Acts chapter 2.[6]
The Temple authorities became alarmed. They organized and deployed their forces to repress the Christians.
They commissioned Saul and others to persecute the Christians. Luke tells us of one striking example: Saul had Stephen killed by stoning. You can read about it in chapter 7 of Luke’s gospel.
Jesus let Saul continue his attacks. Jesus let his followers become afraid of Saul. Then, Jesus blinded Saul. Then, Jesus gave Saul a personal experience of the prophecy of Isaiah: Jesus restored Saul’s sight. And called Saul into his service. You can read about it in Acts chapter 9.
Saul is better known to us by his other name, Paul.[7] He went on to be a very fruitful evangelist, church leader, and writer – while also suffering things like stoning, lashings, shipwrecks, and imprisonments.
Paul attracted many people to Jesus and to himself. Luke was among them. Luke, a gifted researcher and writer,[8] served as Paul’s secretary.
In today’s passage, we read about signs of the end. Signs in the sun, moon and stars; distress on the earth, for example, rough seas. We read of these events being followed by “the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.”[9]
We also read that “this generation will not pass away until all [this] has taken place.”[10]
Luke’s statement that his contemporaries will be witnesses of all those things suggests that his purpose is to explain to them what happened to the Temple and to Jerusalem – assuming he wrote his gospel, and Acts, his history of the early church, after the fall of the Temple and Jerusalem.
Luke tells us his chief reason for writing this sequence of accounts. He wants us to be alert. He wants us to live each day as if it were our last. He says God’s patience will wear out. He says when that happens, God will put in motion “the last day.” And it will spring upon us like a trap.
This is how he puts it:
“But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and [the] 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.” (Luke 21:34-36)
Peace be with you.
Image: The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70, David Roberts, 1850.
[1] You can read about the ESV translation here.
[2] I use “gospel” to mean “record of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.”
[3] Jesus explained “The Great Commandment” using The Parable of the Good Samaritan.
[4] The prophets railed against such approaches to God. See especially Micah 6:6-8. Or one of Revd Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s favourite chapters, Amos 5.
[5] The prophet Isaiah explained our sin and Jesus’ death powerfully in Isaiah 53.
[6] Acts is the second book Luke wrote.
[7] Luke tells us in Acts 13:9 that Saul was also known as Paul.
[8] See Luke 1:1-4. In Colossians 4:14, Luke is referred to as a physician.
[9] Verse 25.
[10] Verse 27.
To learn more about Rama, click here.