“Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” Luke 21:7.
In Nomine etc..
Today’s Gospel reading begins at verse 5 in chapter 21 of Luke’s Gospel. Jesus predicts the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, but, interestingly, he doesn’t say when this will happen. So, naturally, the disciples ask him to clarify his prediction, to provide more information. They actually ask for only two clarifications: for the time of the destruction, and for a forewarning, a preamble, if you will, of the impending event, a sign, as they call it. Straightforward requests, which should be easy to answer, the disciples seem to think.
Jesus doesn’t actually answer their questions. Instead, he pronounces warnings and exhortations and predictions about what will happen to them when “the time is near!” He doesn’t make clear what “the time” is either, but takes for granted that the disciples will know what he means. The disciples have asked for two things only: the time of the destruction of the Temple, and a sign that the destruction is about to occur. What they get is something else entirely.
The first thing they get is an answer to a question they haven’t asked. They haven’t asked, “Will the Messiah come?” But Jesus says, anyway, “Don’t go after anyone claiming to be the Messiah, and, incidentally, there will be many of them!” This, evidently, is the sign, or a sign, of the approaching destruction of the Temple.
But there’s more. There will be wars and insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues, portents and signs from heaven. These last are probably eclipses and comets, phenomena which alarmed pre-scientific people, and which still do alarm many people today. Jesus commands us, when we hear of these things, not to be terrified, just as he told the disciples not to follow the many claiming to be the Messiah.
“But before all this occurs, they will arrest you.” In other words, the wars and signs and portents will come after the arrests and persecutions and so on. Jesus is apparently saying, now, that the arrests are the sign or signs of the destruction of the Temple. The notion, the definition, of a sign is changing, from an event or events outside the community of the disciples, to situations in which they will find themselves, in which they themselves will become signs of the end of the Temple. But it doesn’t stop there; Jesus guides them into yet another understanding, a deeper one, of the sign of the end.
Jesus says, “you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name...you will be hated by all because of my name.” Jesus’s name has become the sign of signs, the sign of the end of the old order which the Temple represents, and the sign of the coming of a new understanding. The signs and portents, are almost the consequences of the coming of the new order, as well as being signs of the end of the old.
“This will give you an opportunity to testify,” Jesus says. Testify to what? Jesus doesn’t say, and he tells his disciples not to worry about it. Since the old order is coming to an end, there is no standard story that they can rely on, no catechism that they can recite, no fixed doctrine or canonical story that they can prop themselves up with, no tradition that they can claim to be the heirs of. “So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance,” Jesus says. “I will give you words and wisdom,” he says. In other words, their words, their wisdom, will come from the depths of their experience of the reality that Jesus represents, of the divine-human reality that he is, and that he has been helping them to perceive. Their words and wisdom will come from the depths of their souls that Jesus has opened to them, which they have reached, unknown to themselves. This is what Jesus means when he says, “But not a head of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
In other words, by their endurance, by their patient willingness to get beyond narrow questions about times and signs, and by accepting the turmoil which wars and insurrections and earthquakes and portents and persecutions and so on represent, they will reach the true depths of their souls, which the divine-human reality of Jesus is opening up to them. Signs and times are the beginnings of their transformation, not the goal of their spiritual life.
The time is always now, the signs are always before us, the events and portents that Jesus describes are always present. We always have opportunities to testify, and words and wisdom will always flow from our souls, not necessarily in words or thoughts, but in transformation of ourselves, our souls, into the beings that our Lord has made us to be.
“Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place.”
In Nomine etc.. (16.XI.19 Adv.)
