The First Week In Advent – Your Liberation Is Near At Hand
Fr Dexter Brereton, CSSp ThM STL
The doctor looked at Derek’s biopsy results, furrowed his brow, turned to his patient, Derek and said: “I am not a religious man, but I was sure as I am of my own name, that someone ‘up there’ likes you. I can’t find anything…” It was only then that Derek himself exhaled a huge sigh of relief. The threat of disease and death had radically shaken his world, he was bewildered by the “clamor of the ocean and its waves” as he died of fear awaiting what menaced the world.” The “powers of heaven were shaken.” After several months of unending terror, he found himself delivered from the threat of cancer. Reflecting later on the experience and on his first cancer scare, Derek noted how the experience of radical uncertainty about the future impacted the way he lived in the present. He found himself more grateful for simple blessings: a beautiful day, a pleasant conversation, supportive friends, an interesting book. In its own quiet way, what had started out as an experience of blind terror turned out to be something transformative.
The Gospel passage today evokes the memory of my friend Derek’s deep personal crisis. It is taken from the eschatological discourse of Jesus from Luke’s gospel chapter 21. Here, Luke, through the lips of Jesus gives a teaching to his community on the end times, the ultimate fate of the world. It begins with a dire prediction, the destruction of the temple, then moves on to portents foreshadowing the end of the world. All of this type of preaching is called “eschatological” from two Greek words “eschatos” meaning ‘end’ and “logos” meaning ‘word’ or ‘discourse’. From these two we get the concept of eschatology, the doctrine of the last things – death, judgement, heaven, and hell, or, put more simply, Christian reflection on the ultimate destiny of the world.
What is perhaps the most frightening element of this entire discourse is the removal of everything that is solid and certain in life. For the Jews, the presence of the temple served as a kind of ‘national security blanket.’ As long as the temple stood, then regardless of events, the nation would be okay, since it enjoyed God’s protection. The loss of the temple then was an unimaginable catastrophe an unbelievable cataclysm. In a similar way, the shaking of the powers of heaven meant that the very world in which we live, so stable and so dependable is now thrown into turmoil. Jesus does not simply use eschatology but ‘apocalyptic’ (apocalypsis = ‘revelation’) language to describe the end of the world. This language is frightening, yet it is the foreshadowing of an incredible rescue on the part of God. Luke writes: “when these things begin to take place, stand erect, hold your heads high, because your liberation is near at hand.’ Light will arise out of darkness, new life out of destruction and new adventure and opportunity will arise out of incredible loss. This is exactly what happened to Derek as he faced the possibility of a cancer diagnosis. Derek’s story is an incredible demonstration of why the Word of God as it comes to us from Luke’s Gospel remains true, not only for its own time but for our time and all time to come.
Lord, we bless you for those moments when life shakes our certainties, a spouse proves to be unfaithful, we suffer a decline in our health, we lose a job we had for a long time. Show us Lord, that even as the ‘powers of heaven are shaken’ that our liberation is near at hand and that new life and new possibility awaits us. Amen.
