Mal 4:1-2a; Psalm 98; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19
We often use Scripture to find out who God is. In these last readings of the Church year, it’s almost as if God returns the favor, and shows us who WE are. Visit any historical museum, and you will see evidence of countless years of war, weapons development, bigger and better, science, knowledge, huge sums of money used to promote killing in the name of freedom, peace, and righteousness. One war sows the seeds for the next.
And so we can understand the apocalypse and apocalyptic writing. God is telling us what we sometimes refuse to believe, even after all of the violence: nothing in this universe is permanent, and something in us wants to destroy it all. The U.S. and Russia are even now in negotiations about how many mass destructive devices they will keep to destroy each other. And some of our politicians want to derail these negotiations so that we can build MORE bombs than other superpowers. In this, they say, is our security. Any other approach, they imply, is naïve.
Into all this conflict and tribulation, a Prince of Peace has come, with a whole different view of what power is and in what direction to go if we are looking for peace. God first sent prophets like Malachi (whose name means “my messenger”). Prophesying in the 5th century BCE, Malachi might have said: Yes, you have rebuilt the Temple, but your rules for worship harm and manipulate people; your leaders are corrupt, and you continue to oppress the widows and the poor as well as reject aliens. How can you be freed from all of this without some kind of purification? It will not be pleasant, but it will be healing, like an astringent salve on a wound. It is so difficult to take up the cause of the poor and oppressed, and to fight for justice because we know we will be persecuted.
God sends his son, Jesus, the embodiment of the divine. He doesn’t come with guns blazing, flame throwers clearing the way like some Schwarzenegger action film. We’re talking a manger here, and fishermen, lepers, donkeys to ride on, a crown of thorns, and a painful and shameful death.
And now, even after Jesus’ coming, says the author of 2 Thessalonians, we need a second coming because we didn’t get His message the first time. Or we’ve gotten weary trying to do what is right. Or we’ve become distracted by the budget, and have forgotten to pull together and work to help one another and those outside our circles who are in need.
Jesus’ words in Luke remind us what our world is like and what we can expect of corruptible forms. Natural disasters have and will come. We don’t know how to live without violence. The message here, I think, before we can seriously look at where Jesus needs to come again and how we can help make this second coming happen, is that we need to treat these tribulations as a purifying process. He will be with us, urging us to hang in there with faith and to wait to feel his presence, a presence so all-consumingly wonderful that we will consider the pain of getting to it trivial.
Like the Psalmist, even while we are being purified, we will only think praise, of making a joyful noise, of using all of the instruments we know how to play and then calling upon all creation to join us: “Let the sea roar…let the rivers clap their hands…let the mountains sing” (Ps. 98:7-8).
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