Is Luke 21.25-36 about the Second Coming?
Appearance is once more upon usa, and with it comes two sets of defoliation: the thought that Advent is the anticipation of Christmas (when it is actually about looking forwards to Jesus' return and The Terminate); and the notion that the set passages in the lectionary are all most Jesus' return.
Equally we are almost to enter Yr C of the Revised Common Lectionary, then we turn to the Gospel of Luke and its distinct focus. (If y'all demand the lectionary for your electronic calendar, the all-time place to go is Simon Kershaw'southward offering at Oremus. You lot can specify exactly which parts of the lectionary information you want in your agenda, and choose the advisable format.)
I have previously argued (like-minded with G B Caird and R T France, who influenced Tom Wright) that in the parallel account in Matt 24 (and Mark 13), the section read in the lectionary which is commonly taken to refer to Jesus' return is actually near the Ascension and the proclamation of the gospel to the nations, which we read virtually in Acts. The key elements of the argument are:
- the 'technical' linguistic communication ofparousia (used repeatedly by Paul in e.one thousand. i Cor 15.23, 1 Thess 2.19) occurs in the2nd half of Matt 24 (Matt 24.37, 39) but is absent in the outset half, except in Matt 24.27 when Jesus says all that is happening isnotsign of his coming;
- English translations misfile this, by using the same wording ('coming') to translate both this word and the quite different present participleerchomenos;
- the language of the 'coming of the Son of Man' in Matt 24.xxx is a direct innuendo to Dan 7.13, which refers to the Son of Human being coming from the earth to the throne of the Ancient of Days. Matthew conflates it with a reference to Zech 12.10, which talks of the Spirit existence poured out on the House of David, and all the tribes of Israel seeing the one they take pierced—used in reference to Jesus' crucifixion and then the events of Pentecost;
- the main stumbling cake for the 'traditional' reading comes in Matt 24.34–35:
Amen I say to you: this generation will not laissez passer abroad until all these things take place. Heaven and world will laissez passer abroad, only my words will never pass away.
Despite some attempts at fancy footwork, the term 'generation' does refer to those listening to Jesus, so Jesus emphatically states that all these events will happen within the next 30 to 40 years. If you do not think that 'these things' relate to the autumn of Jerusalem, the Ascension, and the preaching of the gospel including the gentile mission, then the just coherent thing to do is (with Albert Schweitzer and others) believe that Jesus was a deluded apocalyptic prophet, and that the early Jesus movement was constantly concerned with managing its disappointed apocalyptic hope.
I think the strongest argumentagainst this reading is that the events in Matt 24.4–35 don't come up in the right order, in that if the linguistic communication of the 'coming of the Son of Man' refers to Jesus' ascension, why doesn't this come in the narrative ahead of what almost everyone agrees are events associated with the fall of Jerusalem? In response to this, I would note that the presenting question is nigh Jerusalem and its fate, and this is what Jesus addresses first. And the whole discourse deals with themes rather than chronology; Jesus talks of the events that are to come, cartoon on language from Daniel to connect information technology with God's purposes, and the suffering that volition be involved—but but and so turns to the source of hope and the reason why the disciples should stand up firm. It is quite feature of both Mark and Matthew to organise their record of Jesus' teaching thematically.
With all that in mind, let u.s.a. turn to the Lukan parallel to Matt 24, which is the lectionary reading for the Beginning Dominicus in Advent. Matthew and Marker run quite closely in parallel, at least until Matt 24.36, when Matthew includes Jesus' extended teaching about theparousia only Mark's account finishes quite abruptly. Only Luke's record is quite distinct here, not least in setting the didactics in the city of Jerusalem itself (then that others tin can hear, and non but the disciples) rather than on the Mountain of Olives. Let'south look at the relevant sections side by side (this is a photo of the page from Throckmorton, the standard English synopsis of the beginning iii gospels):
Yous can come across immediately that, even in this short section, Matthew and Marker concord closely, whilst Luke is looking quite unlike at several points. There are 2 chief trends in Luke's presentation of Jesus' teaching here.
The first is the downplaying of the cosmic and 'eschatological' elements of the soapbox in several different ways.
- The language of sunday, moon and stars loses its detail details (concealment, not giving its light, and falling) which comes from the source in Is 13.10 and Is 34.iv. Instead, Luke postpones this detail to Peter's Pentecost spoken communication, where he cites similar linguistic communication from Joel 2.28–32.
- Matthew's citation of Zech 12.ten, and the linguistic communication of 'gathering the elect' from both Matthew and Marking are omitted.
- Several parts of the Matthew/Mark account are relocated earlier in Luke: Matthew'southward reference to the coming of the Son of Homo as lightning and the parallel with the 'days of Noah' are found in Luke 17; and the later 'Parable of the Talents' (highly abbreviated in Mark) becomes the Parable of the Pounds in Luke xix. Another sayings gathered into this section by Matthew are found in Luke 12. (This is like to the way that Matthew has gathered teaching of Jesus into the Sermon on the Mount in Matt v–7 which is establish in other places in Mark and Luke.)
But the 2d, complementary, trend in Luke is the much more explicitassociation of these events with the fall of Jerusalem.
- Luke replaces the rather oblique reference to Daniel in the phrase 'desolating sacrilege' (or 'abomination of desolation') in Matt 24.15 and Marking xiii.fourteen with the much more mundane 'When you lot see Jerusalem surrounded past armies…' in Luke 21.twenty, only before the lectionary passage that we have (which shows why chunking the text into lectionary bites is non always very helpful).
- This connects the teaching here with the earlier, uniquely Lukan, passage Luke 19.39–44 where Jesus weeps over the city considering 'the days will come up on yous when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They volition nuance you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They volition non leave one stone on another, because you did non recognize the time of God's coming to y'all.' Notice here the quite explicit references to the Roman siege of the city ('build up an embankment') and the anticipation of the question about stones that then comes in Luke 21.5 and parallels.
- The language of the 'roaring of the sea and the waves' draws on the apocalyptic imagery of the sea as the peoples of the world from which 4 abominable empires sally in Dan 7 and the Roman Empire as the beast from the sea arises in Rev 13.i. In fact, in that location are numerous surprising links betwixt Luke and Revelation, including Luke's unique addition of 'patient endurance' in the parable of the soils at Luke 8.15 connecting with John's participation in 'suffering, kingdom and patient endurance' in Rev 1.9. In our passage, the language of 'falling by the sword and going to prison' in Luke 21.24 connects with the linguistic communication of sword and captivity in Rev 13.10, and the 'trampling by the Gentiles' in the same verse connects with the paradigm of the temple existence trampled in Rev eleven.two. In both cases, there is a clear focus on contemporary cultural reality, rather than the distant time to come.
- Luke's unique addition in Luke 21.28 and the further section of encouragement in Luke 21.34–36 connect the events quite specifically to the trials that Jesus' own disciples will face.
I recollect it is this kind of shift which explains why Conzelmann saw Luke equally displacing eschatological expectation with his own perspective of 'salvation history', in which God's purposes are worked out and fabricated manifest through the Gentile missionrather than in waiting for the eschaton. I call back this is actually a false dichotomy, but it does reverberate Luke'due south unique accent on 'salvation' every bit something that comes in the nowadays, and non but in the future. (On this, meet Marking Allan Powell's very helpful study of conservancy in Luke-Acts here.)
Commentators deal with this all in a variety of means. Howard Marshall in his NIGTC p 780 explores all the ways in which 'this generation' has been understood, and opts for a reading that gives certainty that the events of the end 'have begun' just are not time limited. (It is worth noting that Marshall explicitly rejects France'due south reading of the parallel passage in Matt on p 776—merely he does so on the ground that 'France applies the parousia language to the fall of Jerusalem'. The centre of France's argument is that theparousia linguistic communication is actually absent!) But every bit Tannehill (Abingdon) points out (p 308), the whole betoken of Jesus' maxim that the generation 'will not laissez passer away' is that information technology offers a temporal perspective, and stripping it of its temporal significance renders the statement meaningless. Interestingly, Joel Light-green (in his very good NIC, and with whom I hesitate to disagree!) sees a switch to the eschatological perspective from the historical at poetry 25, only Mikeal Parsons (Paideia, p 303) notes that the flow of the text here is 'seamless', though drawing more on cosmological images. Parsons so goes on to notation something significant: that, in keeping with the consequent and distinctive emphasis in Luke on promise and fulfilment, this passage with its predictions of difficulties for the followers of Jesus is actually fulfilled in a range of elements of the narrative in Acts:
What does all this mean for preachingthis passage on Sunday forenoon?
First, we need to have it seriously in its historical context, noting that Luke is writing to his starting time audience, and being careful to hear what God might exist saying to us through what Luke wrote to his first audience.
Secondly, nosotros need to ensure that we read this passage within the context of the whole of Luke-Acts, so that we come across the connections Luke makes between the events of the autumn of Jerusalem, Pentecost, and the gentile mission.
Thirdly, we need to annotation that, for Luke, the End was not just something future (though information technology is that); rather, the 'end days' have already commenced with Jesus' Ascension, the fall of Jerusalem, and Pentecost. God's covenant grace has at present been broken open up to include gentiles within the 'Israel of God'.
Fourthly, because of all this, the troubles that Jesus' followers experienced throughout Acts are troubles that we ourselves might well encounter. Similar them, nosotros are to 'hold our heads upward' and not be dismayed, since this Jesus is Lord, and he volition return.
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