Word to the Wise
Sunday, November 14, 2010 - Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
[Malachi 3:19-20a; 2 Thessalonians 3:7-12; Luke 21:5-19]While some people were speaking about how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings, Jesus said, "All that you see here - the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.
I have heard it said that we humans and all creation "live between a tic and a toc!" We live in a "time/space continuum." The sun "rises" every day in the east and sets in the west. The earth orbits the sun every 365 days, more or less! We are aware of "history" as a way of speaking about events that occurred in the "past" and of our hopes for the "future." We have divided each day into equal parts of hours, minutes and seconds. Even though some of us see the most recent photos from the Hubble telescope, which tell us how tiny a speck we are in the cosmos, we mostly tend our own planetary garden (or try to tear it up) and think of ourselves as the center of the universe! Once in awhile, in a theological or philosophical mood we may try to imagine the "end of time and space as we know it." There are plenty of authors with overheated imaginations who make a living trying to overheat ours about the end of time. If these authors are Christian, their imaginings may concern the return of the Lord at the "end of time." Lest anyone get the wrong impression, I want to make it clear that I believe God created the universe but did not create it to be materially eternal any more than any of us individuals. God can bring it to an "end." Nor does God have to pay any attention to our clocks! The passage from the Gospel of Luke, quoted above, is a warning about that. Jesus speaks of all kinds of events that might tempt folks to believe that the "end of time" is occurring, but he is emphatic that no one knows when "the end" will occur. The Gospel of Luke seems to have been put into writing after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem during the First Jewish War, 66-70AD. This was about 35 years after Jesus' death, but Jesus could see it coming! That destruction meant "the end" of Judaism as it had existed from the time of the return from exile in Babylonia, but Judaism would continue. The early Christian community had to learn to interpret God's plan in a new way, namely in the way of Jesus' teachings, and to live with persecution because of their beliefs. They believed the Lord would return "soon." The fact that I am writing this and you are reading it is a reminder that the Lord is not governed by our "soon." Luke's way of telling the story mixes the concerns of the early community with universal concerns about the Lord's return. We, like they, still live between our "tic and toc" but we have ample guidance about the way we should live "in between." The "end of time" comes for each of us at death. The "end of time and space" for all creation will come when the Lord decides. AMEN
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