“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.”
My sermon outline today has two parts. In the first and longer section, I am going to reflect on hope—to compare our world’s insufficient definition of hope with the one implied by this week’s epistle and Gospel. In the second and much briefer section, I’m going to tell you to read your Bible.
When I first started to think seriously about hope as a theological virtue—about why, in 1 Corinthians 13, we find hope sandwiched between faith and love—I found it kind of odd. Of course, faith and love are at the heart of what it means to be a Christian—but hope? Does life in Christ mean having a perpetually optimistic, temperamentally upbeat take on life? Does it mean remembering that “every cloud has a silver lining”? Always “making the best of a bad situation”? Making lemonade “when life gives you lemons”?
Now, these very American sayings aren’t all bad. They can be helpful when we lose perspective amidst the minor setbacks and frustrations of everyday life. In those cases, there’s nothing wrong with saying, “It isn’t as bad as all that, is it?” But these little pieces of sound but limited advice have essentially nothing to do with the theological virtue of hope.
When, in fact, it is that bad—when real tragedy strikes—(saying,) “look on the bright side” amounts to a denial of reality. And denying reality is not a theological virtue. To the contrary, denial is one short step from despair, hope’s opposite.
So, then, what is hope? Let’s look at today’s readings.
The epistle begins and ends with hope. In between, St. Paul shows us the source and substance of that hope.
“Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers : and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy; as it is written, For this cause I will confess to thee among the Gentiles, and sing unto thy name.”
St. Paul wants the church at Rome to see that the extension of the gospel to the Gentiles fulfills the Old Covenant. God has not turned his back on Israel or changed his mind about the promises in the Old Testament. The Gentiles were always part of those promises. He is following here his argument in Romans 11 depicting the Gentiles as grafted into Israel, as wild olive shoots are grafted into a cultivated plant. This is important, because a God who proved unfaithful in his promises to Israel could not be trusted in his promises to the Gentiles. In the season of Advent, we remember the hopeful expectation of Israel on the eve of our Savior’s birth. We recall that Jesus really and truly fulfilled Israel’s hope.
If the epistle points us back to Christ’s first Advent, the Gospel directs our attention forward in time to when we shall “see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” Our text builds towards the climax of a conflict that has been simmering and growing throughout St. Luke’s Gospel—a conflict between Jesus and Israel’s ruling class. It is in our chapter, Luke 21, that the irreconcilable nature of this conflict is made fully manifest. The Gospel text follows immediately upon Jesus predicting the destruction of the Temple. In Luke 22 he will be arrested, then crucified in Luke 23. As St. Matthew’s account makes clear, Jesus’s prophecy about the Temple and his claim to be “the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory” directly provoked the ruling council to kill him (Luke 21:27; see Matt. 26:57-66). These claims represent a direct, unmistakeable, and unavoidable challenge to the authority of the Jewish rulers—because the manner in which Jesus fulfilled Israel’s hope ran directly contrary to the expectations of Israel’s leaders.
In our passage, Jesus nears the final confrontation with the powers of this world, which will culminate in his death on the cross. In this fraught context, Jesus’ apocalyptic language takes on layers of meaning. The imagery is profoundly disturbing and disorienting. Signs in sun and moon and stars, “distress of nations, with perplexity.” A roaring sea, “men’s hearts failing them for fear.” Jesus is explicitly speaking about the end times—the eschatological last day of judgment. Two chapters later, however, St. Luke tells us that at Jesus’ death, the light of the sun failed, while St. Matthew relates an earthquake at that time and even appearances by dead saints—apocalyptic foreshadowings of the end times.
“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.”
St. Luke’s account of the Ascension in Acts 1 clarifies what Jesus means here. After his final earthly appearance to the apostles, Jesus “was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight”—a remarkable event, and so it is no wonder that the apostles stand there dumbstruck, “gazing into heaven,” at which moment, St. Luke informs us, “behold, two men stood by them in white robes.” I rather imagine them tapping the disciples on their shoulders and clearing their throats. “Men of Galilee,” they say, “why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:6-11). That is to say, he will return—but not quite yet.
Jesus’ prophecy in the gospel text, then, tells us when it’s time to look back up into the heavens to anticipate “the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” His instruction to “look up, and lift up your heads” should rightly be understood in a bluntly literal sense. But, as with the apocalyptic imagery of the passage, we should be attentive to other meanings as well—in this case, to the theological significance of our Lord’s instructions. Amidst terror, confusion, uncertainty, perplexity—how does the Christian respond?
Paradoxically, when the world is quite literally going off the rails into chaos, that is precisely the point at which our “redemption draweth nigh.” That is to say, the Christian should have the complete opposite reaction to what the world would consider reasonable. As the English Standard Version puts it, “Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads.” One translator has it, “hold your heads high!” (Fitzmeyer)
In this context, the nearness of redemption has a clearly chronological sense — it draws near in time — but it’s important to remember that, as Fr. Glenn pointed out in his Agape series on Revelation, apocalyptic literature is as much or more about the unmasking of present reality as it is about future anticipation. The kingdom is nigh at hand because Jesus is coming soon—but also because the kingdom even now breaks into our world. Jesus has already defeated death. Despite appearances, his victory is sure. Our hope is not just a future expectation of what God will do—even more, it is about living out of a correct perception of present reality. It is about seeing things as they truly are and acting accordingly. Thus, we are to understand everything, including our suffering, in light of the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and promised return of Jesus Christ.
This hope in no way denies or reduces the reality of suffering. It does not seek to “balance out,” much less eliminate, suffering. Rather, through hope our suffering is incorporated into the life story of Jesus. Just as the scars of Jesus were not erased in the resurrection, this incorporation does not wipe away the tragedies in our lives. Yet we will find them somehow transformed, healed, and redeemed in Jesus. And just as Jesus wept over the death of his friend Lazarus moments before raising him from the dead, our right understanding of reality and our full anticipation of the triumph of life over death does not eliminate mourning. The promise that Jesus will wipe away every tear is eschatological—it is a distinctly future event. That future is sure. Our task, then, is to live with a right understanding of present reality in anticipation of future triumph. To live hopefully means knowing that death is not the end, that the apparent power of the forces of darkness is an illusion, that our victory is sure.
This is not easy. In order for this narrative to become the dominant one in our lives, it has to drown out all the infinite other competing stories our culture tells us about the meaning of life and the nature of reality.
How do we counter these false narratives? Well, the first thing to do is to come to the Church and be fed, to receive the grace of God in the body and blood of Christ.
But, as our beautiful Collect indicates, our Anglican tradition also affirms the responsibility of each Christian to study the Scriptures. The Bible is the corporate treasure of the Church, but each of us, as a member of the Body of Christ, has the opportunity and responsibility to be immersed in the Word of God personally—not alone as an individual interpreter, but in concert with the Church corporate, guided not only or even primarily by sermons but by the creeds and liturgical theology of our common prayer.
Immerse yourselves in Scripture, every day, through the daily office of Morning and Evening Prayer. “Hear” the Scriptures at mass—but also, as the Collect says, “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.” You “mark” the Scriptures, says the great Anglo-Catholic priest John Keble, when you do not just hear or read passively but actively work to understand them. You “learn” a passage when you so study it that you will always remember and recall it. Inward digestion, though, is another thing entirely. This occurs when the Scriptures become absorbed, as Keble says, “into the substance of [your] body.” It becomes part of who you are. This can only happen by grace through faith. That grace is yours, because you have been incorporated into Christ through baptism, because on him you are fed each week.
The Collect goes on to commend patience to us, and rightly so. As with other challenging and rewarding pursuits, we may at times find it a slog to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the Bible. Yet if, patiently and faithfully, we immerse ourselves in it personally and corporately, we will learn more and more to see things as they really are. We will know true hope rather than the trite niceties and hollowed-out illusions of contemporary culture. This will, in turn, comfort us—it will strengthen us. And it will allow us to endure, to “embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life.”