God is just around the corner…reflections on Luke 21.25-36

What do you think about the times we live in? Do you think they are particularly worrying and bad, or do you think that they are just the same as they always have been? Either way, Jesus’ message is that God’s kingdom is just around the corner.

I must admit, things seem bad to me at the moment. We’ve got war in Ukraine,  thousands dying, the majority of them women and children, in Gaza, and more dying in Israel and Lebanon, as political leaders try to hold onto power and armies and terrorists act out of fear and hatred. Syria has lost one dictator but who knows what the future will hold for that country? I’m worried by the new leadership in the US, the election of a man as president who tells lies and has a criminal record. And yet when you look at the spread of history across the world, none of this is anything new. There have always been wars and violence, self-seeking and tyrannical rulers. But added to all of this is climate change – and people are becoming more afraid of the roaring sea and raging tides – remember the tsunami in 2004, think about Pacific islands being swamped by rising sea levels and floods in Florida, and even floods in our own country making life very difficult for many.

Jesus says, when these things happen, stand up and raise your heads, because your salvation is near.

One way of understanding this is to say that if the world is always like this, then salvation is always closer than we think. Elsewhere Jesus says ‘the kingdom of God is within you – or among you’, depending on how you translate the Greek word ‘en’ that he uses. God is always just around the corner.

But when he says that these things will take place ‘before the people now living have all died’, we realise that unless he was mistaken, he must have been talking about something quite specific, something that is now history. The paragraph before this one in Luke chapter 21 speaks specifically of the destruction of Jerusalem - and indeed the temple in Jerusalem was utterly destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans - but that wasn’t accompanied by the powers in space changing their courses. Or perhaps Jesus was talking about his own death, the day when the sky went dark and the curtain in the temple was torn in two. On that day history did indeed change, and according to John’s Gospel, that moment of Jesus’ death, the moment of his humiliation and agony, was the moment of his greatest glory, the moment that defeated the powers of death through Jesus’ willing sacrifice, the lamb who died to save the whole world.

Jesus was never easy to understand – and perhaps that was deliberate. Faith is never cut and dried, ready to pop into the microwave and consume – faith is a mystery that we are meant to search for, and puzzle over, as we go through life.

In the face of all of this uncertainty and promise: the hope of Jesus coming again in the future, in glory that we can see; in our experiences of life which can be so difficult and painful; we can yet choose to have our eyes open for the kingdom of God among us. And after all the warnings Jesus sets this as our aim; expect things to be difficult and don’t get distracted, because God is just around the corner.

I don’t know about you, but when Jesus speaks like this, I’m not sure the message gets to the right people. The people who are already searching for the kingdom and trying to live a good life have nothing to fear. We shouldn’t be quaking in our boots, fearful of putting a foot wrong in case God comes down on us. It’s those people who are waging war across continents, living without any regard to other people, people who are making money out of sending people to their deaths in the English channel, or abusing children, who need to take the warning to heart – and sadly, they are the least likely people to do so. But what it does mean is that we can take comfort that God’s justice will come – whether in this life or beyond it – that the wicked will not go unpunished and that the downtrodden, as in Mary’s song, will one day be lifted up and restored to the dignity and honour of being children of God who know their worth.

I hope that is some encouragement to keep on doing what we can to support those who don’t have much, to build community, to be honest when honesty doesn’t always seem to pay, to keep the flame of the love of Jesus alive in our hearts.

I visited someone in hospital a few weeks ago who has spent most of his adult life in and out of prison for petty things, addicted and looking for hope. He had thought much more about God than many people do: through being in prison, he had had time to reflect on what life means.

For us, caught up in the day to day stuff that life demands of us, it is easy to push those things aside. And so Jesus’ warning to be aware of the signs around us as signs that God’s kingdom is near, not to get distracted, is really a warning - or a promise - that we need.

Let’s make the time and space, whether between now and Christmas or in that period between Christmas and New Year when things can sometimes be quieter, to listen to God and to look out for where he is calling us to in this coming year, in a world that now, as in the first century AD, is still full of war and noise, and where sea levels, tides and floods are rising fast.

And before then again, as we celebrate our Lord’s coming to earth, let’s rejoice that one day the rich will be sent empty away and the hungry filled with good things, and let’s play our part to make sure that some of it happens right now, because God is always just around the corner.

Sally