November 28, Advent 1C (Luke 21:25-36)
What if Jesus is snatching us out of our desire for another world?
Life is fragile. We live under the looming threat of real-world collapses. In Afghanistan, what took 20 years and $80 billion for the United States to build collapsed in days. It’s common to reach for things to shield us from the terror of our awareness that everything can end without notice, like a vapor. Jesus says, “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap.”
These words, placed on Jesus’ tongue, suggest a chronological expectation. But his immediate audience did not see the events described in any literal sense. In ancient imagination, “the roaring and tossing of the sea” symbolized an existential category of chaos. Unless historians missed it, that age passed into the next without the heavens shaking, the celestial bodies emitting irregularities, or the Son of Man surfing the clouds in unvarnished power. Jerusalem fell, and the Roman Empire met its demise, but the world of nations continued with its mass proliferation of inequality, violence, and exploitation.
What if the symbolism of Jesus' depiction of hopeful chaos is not about some distant time of ultimate endings? What if Jesus is snatching us out of our desire for another world by asking us to face the jarring details of this one? I see Jesus making a case about the fragility of life and the fierce need for people of faith to show up each day with stamina and courage.
