NOTES for Luk 21:20-28

We so want to know exactly when the events indicated will take place, and for two thousand years people have been puzzling over the dates of coming catastrophes, even though the Lord clearly warned us not to do this. In speculation about times and dates there is a substitution, when our attention is diverted from how we live before the end comes to the search for the date of the end. And yet what follows from His words is that it is far more important to be ready at every moment, which means that at every moment we should live worthily before the face of the Lord.

Among the hardest sayings of Christ in the Gospel are those in which He reveals that the time He indicates is near. But twenty centuries have passed, and the world still lies in evil. Was He speaking about the coming destruction of Jerusalem, and not about a global judgment at all?

There is reason to say that He was indeed prophesying about events of the coming decades, but like the Old Testament prophets, through the images of the catastrophes His listeners were to witness, He was also revealing the meaning of other events. By earthly measures these events are far from the "present moment," but on the scale of eternity they are near. Therefore it is not worth guessing how much earthly time the rule of evil in the world will last, even if it lasts for a very long time. The sentence on evil has already been passed, and it is doomed to disappear.

The Saviour speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem as an event preceding His return in glory. At first sight, this may seem somewhat strange. After all, everyone knows that Jesus' prophecy concerning Jerusalem was fulfilled long ago, in AD 70, when, following another anti-Roman revolt, the Roman army stormed Jerusalem and razed the city and the Temple to the ground.

There can hardly be any doubt that this was the catastrophe the Saviour meant when He spoke of Jerusalem's destruction. But how, then, are we to understand His words about His imminent return? And how do they accord with His own warning about times and seasons? Viewed in terms of the order of things familiar to us, the situation can indeed only leave us puzzled.

On the other hand, the evangelist tells us nothing about how much time separates Jerusalem's destruction from the Saviour's return. Only one thing is clear: this is a spiritually significant event marking a boundary beyond which lies the final stretch, leading us directly to the end of our present age—to that end when the world will be transformed, the Kingdom revealed in all its fullness, and the Saviour will return in glory.

The end of Jerusalem truly becomes the end of the former order of things, the order that was in fact meant to end with the Messiah's coming. Of course, those awaiting Him thought the end of the old age and the beginning of the new would happen, if not instantaneously, then at least fairly quickly. They did not think that the unfolding of the Kingdom in our world undergoing transformation would take more than a millennium.

The age of the advancing Kingdom is indeed a different age, already more closely bound to the Kingdom as it will be revealed at the end of time than to the former order of things, when the Kingdom could be seen only from afar. We who live in the age of the advancing Kingdom must decide whether we are ready, in this transitional age, to bind our destiny to that advancing Kingdom—so that its triumph may become ours as well.

Very often people ask why the end of the world must be so terrible, why it could not be gentle, like the gentle death of the head of a family surrounded by care and attention. One can answer this way. You surely remember the proverb: a friend is known in trouble. It is easy to keep a gentle appearance and be kind when everything is in order; trouble, however, divides all your friends into true ones and others, into good and evil. Now let us remember that the End of the world, and this is its chief meaning, will bring the separation of good and evil, sheep and goats (Matt. 25:33), wheat and tares (Matt. 13:25). That is, it will become such a universal calamity in which the Lord's true friends will be known. And why exactly should the end be gentle if all of history is far from that? The end will become the apotheosis of the world drama; in it, as though under a magnifying glass, the powers of evil will grow in order to reveal themselves as such, and the powers of good will grow in order to separate themselves sharply from evil. Physicists can recall the Stark effect. Two levels in an atom may be indistinguishable, or degenerate, as we say, but once a field is applied to it, the levels separate and can be distinguished. But what is a field for an atom? A force effect, a shake-up; in other words, a disturbance of ordinary calm existence. Such, it seems, will be the end of the world.

When we see the signs of the approaching end of the world, which the Lord speaks about, we are filled with terror. Fear and confusion take hold of us when we see famines and earthquakes in various places, when nation rises against nation and kingdom against kingdom. "Where is this world going?" People in many different eras have asked this question, no less in our time than in any other.

Yet the Lord, who told us about all this in advance, does not expect either fear or confusion from us at all. "When these things begin to happen," He says, "straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near." This, it turns out, is the feeling with which we should await the end of the world. Not with fear, but with hope and trust. And the only thing we should fear is that we will not have time to fulfill what Christ has entrusted to us, that we will not bring the witness of this hope to all who need salvation.

Against the backdrop of the terrible events of the apocalypse, when "people will faint from fear," amid wars and darkness, Christ's words sound paradoxical and astonishing: "...Then straighten up and raise your heads, because your deliverance is drawing near." This is precisely the dimension that has always been lost in all kinds of final predictions about the end of the world. People expected nothing good from it, and in any case they did not expect from it a meeting with Christ. Yet this is a relevant question, and not by accident these words are addressed to everyone: "this generation will not pass away until all is fulfilled." However the history of the earth as a whole unfolds, each of us has ahead of us our own personal end of the world, when history will continue its course without us. And here the most important thing is to remember that meeting God is joy and deliverance, including deliverance from fear.

It is hard to grasp the full meaning of what Christ says. We are used to thinking that heaven and earth, this whole world, the whole universe, are something real and solid, something that can be seen, studied, and shown to others. In other words, we are used to thinking that the world exists independently of anything else and unshakably. That is why the name of God, "the One Who Is," becomes such a revelation for us. Words, in our view, are the opposite: ephemeral. They sound, and then they are gone; they fly out, and fly away. "Words, words, words..."

But Jesus turns these familiar ideas of ours upside down. The word, when it proceeds from God or from the God-Man, is not ephemeral. It is more real than any material reality, because it was by the word that this world was brought into being. The world is created, and therefore it is not eternal; it has a beginning and an end. But God's word is not created. It is begotten by the eternal God, has an eternal nature, does not disappear, and does not remain barren.

Therefore, for us who belong to the created world not to pass away with it, but to enter eternal life, we must seek God's word, listen closely to it, receive it, and let ourselves be permeated by it, becoming like Christ, the Word Incarnate.

The Saviour's words that the Kingdom will come before ‘this generation’ passes away (‘род сей’ in the Synodal translation) may seem not entirely clear. Of course, if we take them as a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, it was indeed fulfilled within the lifetime of many who could have seen and heard Jesus during His earthly ministry. But what of the Kingdom? If we take the day of the Kingdom's coming to be the day of its final triumph, then, of course, the Saviour's words may seem hard to understand. Yet the Kingdom's entry into the world has its own history.

This history begins even before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, on the day of Pentecost, when the breath of the Kingdom bursts into the world like the wind, embracing it and transfiguring the lives of those who are ready to receive it. But if so, why does Jesus single out the catastrophe of AD 70 as a kind of spiritual milestone? One could, of course, say that the Synagogue regarded the Second Temple in particular as the messianic Temple that would see and receive the Messiah.

Most believing Jews expected preaching different from that of the Saviour. Yet for both the first Christian generation and their Jewish contemporaries who had not accepted Christ, the end of the Temple was the end of an age. What followed were the eschatological times, the very ‘last days’ of which Jesus spoke. Still, the point probably lies not only in the traditional Jewish ideas of that period. It also lies in the meaning of what was happening, in its spiritual essence.

The end of the Second Temple really did mean the end of the former order of things, not only for the Jewish people but for the entire world. The age of the advancing Kingdom was beginning, when the meaning of history and its central pulse would be bound up with the Church and its history. This history is revealed to the world, of course, not as the history of ecclesiastical institutions—which contains a great deal that is earthly—but as the history of Christian righteousness or, as Church historians call it, the history of holiness.

From a spiritual point of view, the history of earthly kingdoms now recedes into the background. It will, of course, continue by inertia until Christ's return in glory, but its meaning will no longer lie in itself. It will lie in the history of the righteous, for whose life and witness it will henceforth be merely the backdrop.

The history of Christian righteousness, in turn, is, spiritually and historically, the final stretch, ending on the day of the Saviour's return and the ultimate triumph of the Kingdom, of whose spiritual nearness He speaks to His disciples.

Today's reading offers us a discourse of Jesus in which he links the beginning and the end of our age in a remarkable way. To understand what he says, it is important to bear in mind that, for faithful Jews of the post-exilic period, the Temple built by those who had returned from Babylon to the land of their fathers was the messianic Temple: it was to stand until the end of time and witness the coming of the Messiah and the triumph of the messianic Kingdom. Later, however, around the second century BC, these ideas were supplemented by the rabbinic teaching about ‘messianic tribulations’: persecutions that would descend on the Temple, the people and the country shortly before the appearance of the Messiah, who would begin the final messianic holy war. Its outcome would be the victory of God's people and the coming of the messianic Kingdom.

During the persecutions, representatives of some rabbinic schools believed, the Temple would be desecrated and possibly even destroyed, but it would be rebuilt when the Kingdom triumphed. Jesus evidently presents the whole history up to the year AD 70, up to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, in the context of these traditional ideas (vv. 5–6, 20–22). For him, apparently, the events of AD 70 really do become the end of history (vv. 22–24).

But for Jesus, the end of history proves to be only the beginning of the coming of the messianic Kingdom; this process is completed later, and Jesus gives no dates here. He speaks only of the signs by which one can judge that the end is near (vv. 25–28). In fact, apart from the signs or ‘portents’, whose meaning is not entirely clear—we can only suppose that some natural disasters are meant—the chief sign of the approaching end of the transitional age is the ‘distress and perplexity’ that grips not merely individual peoples and countries, as it did in the past, but the whole of humanity.

In modern terms, we would apparently call this a crisis of values and a spiritual and moral crisis, one affecting all humanity. It is impossible, however, to say exactly how long humanity will remain in this condition before the present stage of its history ends; but it will end with Jesus' return (v. 27). In this way the Saviour joins together the beginning and the end of the historical stage in which we have found ourselves witnesses and participants. The point is not the timing, which changes nothing fundamental, but the spiritual meaning of what is happening. We have been warned. What happens next depends only on us.

In today's passage the Lord tells His disciples that in the future their life may change very sharply. Now everything is familiar to them: there is Jerusalem, there is the Temple, their beloved Teacher is near, and nothing is required of them except to follow Him. But Christ reveals to them that He Himself is going to His death, that the Temple will be destroyed, Jerusalem laid waste, and the disciples will face persecution, hatred, and betrayal.

To one degree or another, these words apply to each of us. The Lord calls us to keep watch, because we do not know when the ground will give way beneath our feet, when a time of testing will come. And here He gives us very important commandments about how to stand, how to survive, and how to win in this battle of good and evil. First, "do not be afraid and do not be terrified" - the Lord will not abandon His disciples. He will give them words for witness and wisdom that the world will not be able to withstand. The disciples are threatened with persecution and death, yet paradoxically "not a hair of your head will perish." Even the sufferings to come will be filled with meaning and will contribute to Christ's victory. Second, "by your endurance save your souls" - in trials they will need steadfastness. Third, "lift up your heads; your redemption is drawing near" - victory will inevitably belong to Christ, and therefore the final trials will be permeated for them with the joy of that victory. And finally, "keep watch; watch yourselves" - so that at the necessary moment they will not be unready and helpless, will not give in to panic, and will meet the coming Lord with a joyful heart.

Jesus' prophecy about the destruction of the city and the Temple, sometimes called the Little Apocalypse, causes bewilderment among many. This bewilderment first arose in the second generation of Christians, some of whom lived to the year 70 and saw with their own eyes the devastation of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple of which the Saviour speaks. This was because what Jesus had predicted happened, while He Himself still did not return. Another revelation, given to the apostle John, was needed before the meaning of the new era became clearer. Jesus Himself, meanwhile, seems not to have gone into detail when speaking about the end times and His return in glory. He mentions only the principal events: the end of the former age and the coming of the Kingdom in all its fullness.

The revelation received by John completed the picture: it portrays an entire age, the age of the advancing Kingdom, which the Saviour does not mention at all in His prophecy. This is understandable, however: He was telling the disciples about the coming events when history had not yet ended, when the Temple was still standing in its place. In Jesus' words, it is precisely the end of the Second Temple that becomes the end of times.

This might seem strange: almost two thousand years have passed since the year 70, yet history apparently continues. But from the standpoint of the processes that began with Christ's coming into the world, the former history really did end with the end of the Second Temple. All subsequent events belong to another age, one wholly defined by the moment of its completion and therefore by the Saviour's return and the manifestation of the Kingdom to the world in all its fullness. This is precisely why, immediately after describing the devastation of Jerusalem and the Temple, Jesus turns to the subject of His return and the triumph of the Kingdom. He says nothing about the transitional age itself. This is why those who remembered this conversation formed the impression that Jesus would return immediately, or almost immediately, after these events.

The revelation received by John after the year 70 put everything in its place: it became clear that an entire age was meant, the age of the advancing Kingdom in which we too have had to live. Yet it can already be regarded as the home stretch leading us to the goal. The main thing is to reach it.

The sacred in our lives faces two dangers: the danger of desacralisation and the danger of excessive sacralisation. There is a fine line along which the embodied elements of our faith do not weigh down its spiritual dimension. In the minds of many Jews during Christ's earthly ministry, attitudes towards the Temple fell prey to the second danger. On the one hand, its destruction in the early seventies became a significant symbol of the rejection of the vineyard Owner's Son. On the other hand, it also became a renewal of faith. Recall Christ's conversation with the Samaritan woman. He says: believe Me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem (Jn 4:21). This is a very important point. Revelation of the one God accumulated among God's people, as though within a small space, throughout their long history. This confinement was then necessary precisely for that difficult process of accumulation; but something like an explosion had to occur, scattering its particles throughout the world. There is a plant called momordica (momordica L.). It grows and ripens, and at first its seeds are held in something like a capsule; when it ripens, the capsule bursts and shoots out the seeds, which can now spread throughout the world. Some may dislike such a botanical metaphor. In any case, the destruction of the Temple is both a tragedy and the beginning of a new, unprecedented universalism.

Christ's mysterious words about the end of the world and His second coming have mattered in every age. People have always been torn between a sense that the end is near and the warning that no one knows the time. But it appears that words one writer once said about death also apply to the end of the world: it is not only in the future; it is already at work in the world.

That is why the Gospel prophecies can be addressed to every person, whatever age he lives in. They contain not only a prediction of the final horrors; they are filled with confidence that Jesus will not abandon this world on the threshold of its ruin: "I will be with you, I will give you a word for bearing witness to the faith... fear nothing; not a hair of your head will fall in vain..." So these are words not only about the world's last days, but also about the final, ultimate faithfulness of Jesus to His disciples.