NOTES for Luk 21:25-38

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.

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.

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.

The Kingdom of God is near, but Christ Himself said that it comes unnoticed and is already partly among us. This means that we should not identify the coming apocalyptic disasters with the Second Coming and the Last Judgment. After warning the disciples about the fearsome events that will accompany the Second Coming, Christ called them to keep watch and pray in the hope of escaping all these things that are to come. They will be the consequence of human actions, but Christ does not desire disasters for people. He does not wish anyone to perish, and the essence of His coming into the world is not found in cataclysms. On the contrary, the signs of His coming are compared to the tenderness of leaves and the blossoming of unfolding branches.

We are given a warning to be ready for the day He foretold. Therefore, let us note that He warns us not against some especially terrible crimes, but against what is natural and everyday: drunkenness, gluttony, and—most astonishingly—the cares of life. But how can we manage without them? Yet it is not the sea but a puddle that drowns us, and even the most normal and necessary concerns will do us no good if they obscure Christ from us.

What does Jesus mean when He asks us to keep watch? He is hardly asking us not to sleep. Yet often in our lives it happens that we are, as it were, asleep while awake. We may act energetically, work a great deal, and even have fun, but we notice little of the events taking place around us or the people living beside us. Keeping watch probably means being attentive to the world and to the people created by God. By watching and praying, we learn to receive this whole world and everything that happens to us, even what does not seem joyful to us, as a gift from God, and to recognize Christ in every person we meet.

Small children live this way; for them, important and unimportant events do not seem to exist. Every event is important and significant and brings many emotions and experiences. Of course, the ability to distinguish what is essential from what is secondary is important, including for a Christian, but we must try not to lose the ability to see what is secondary, because it is sometimes precisely through it that the Lord addresses us.

Jesus says, “My words will not pass away,” in the context of prophetic descriptions of Jerusalem’s destruction and the trials that Christians of the last times will apparently have to endure. Everything Christ speaks of will certainly come to pass, and by seeing these prophecies fulfilled it will be possible to judge how near His coming is. For clarity, the Lord even gives the parable of the fig tree, whose leaves announce the approach of spring.

But in the context of our own lives, this phrase can be understood much more broadly. At times it seems to us that God does not fulfill His promises, that He is deaf and blind. In such moments of crisis, these words can instill confidence that the Lord says and does nothing in vain, that not one word that has gone out from His mouth and not one covenant He has made with us will pass away.

Probably everyone would like not to be caught unawares by the day of Judgment and the Savior’s return. It would seem simplest to name the exact date of this event so that everyone to whom it matters could prepare for it beforehand. Yet, evidently, there is no certainty about this. At first glance, such uncertainty reduces our chances of a favorable outcome at Judgment for each of us. But is that really so? How can we prepare for Judgment? If we were facing an earthly court, we would naturally have to think about gathering all the arguments in our defense and bringing them to the court’s attention so that nothing was forgotten. At God’s Judgment, however, there will evidently be no need to remind anyone of anything. Moreover, Judgment itself assesses not only, or even chiefly, actions—as we are normally called to assess our own deeds and those of others in this world—but the spiritual quality of the person, their spiritual life and spiritual condition. Here it is impossible to prepare as we do for an examination, often hastily trying to learn in a few days what should ordinarily have been absorbed over a year. Such accelerated learning is impossible in spiritual life. That is probably why it is good that we do not know the exact date of Judgment. Not knowing guarantees that, if we take spiritual life seriously at all, our preparation for that day will be long and thorough, as it should be.

We are used to thinking that heaven and earth, this whole world, the whole universe, are something real, something one can see and show to others, something that obviously exists. But words are ephemeral: they sounded and are gone, flew out and flew away. "Words, words, words..."

But Jesus, as always, turns everything 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 precisely by the word that this world was brought into being. The world was created and therefore is not eternal; it has a beginning and an end. But God's word is not created, but begotten by the eternal God. It has an eternal nature, does not disappear, and does not remain fruitless.

So for us, who belong to the created world, still not to pass away together with it but to enter eternal life, we need to seek God's word, listen to it, accept it, and be permeated by it, becoming like Christ, the Word Incarnate.

The Lord describes everything that will happen before His appearance in glory, and He gives us counsel: "...watch at all times and pray that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that are to come and to stand before the Son of Man." That is, something terrible will be happening around us, apparently close to what the prophet Daniel saw (Dan. 7:1-27).

At the same time, the main task of the person who believes in Jesus is to watch and pray in order to escape all this. Not to live through all of it with eyes closed, not to turn away, but to pass through this time while looking at Christ. This is the simplest way to stand before Him. In just this way one can escape all the horrors that are regarded as signs of the Second Coming.

The Lord calls the disciples to restrain themselves so that their hearts will not be weighed down by worldly cares. He says that dependence on the flesh, attachment to eating and drunkenness, and anxiety over worldly affairs bend a person down to the earth like a burden and do not let him not only rise toward heaven, but even remember it and look at it. The effort of fasting is directed precisely toward holding oneself back from this captivity. And further the Lord says that the day of meeting God will come upon us like a net. In the original stands a word meaning a trap, a snare. One can escape this net, says the Lord, only by being free from this oppressive weight of momentary cares.

Remarkable is the goal of watchfulness and prayer that the Lord offers the disciples: that you may be able, or in other versions "be counted worthy," to escape what is coming and to stand before the Son of Man. This is a very precise and clear setting of the goal.

Jesus concludes His description of the calamities that will befall humanity at the end of time with the inward temptations that can overtake anyone. He warns His disciples against sins that can weigh down the heart. The Lord speaks of the cares of this life, drunkenness, and gluttony, which make the heart increasingly incapable of perceiving God. When we allow earthly life to consume us completely and take first place over spiritual life, it is as if we fall asleep, and it becomes ever harder for us to remain sober and spiritually alert. This final trial can therefore prove the most terrible, because it can cause the coming of the Son of Man to pass unnoticed. The Lord often reveals Himself to us in our daily life, but we are unable to see Him or hear His voice because we are too absorbed in our own lives. We can become so focused on ourselves that we are not even able to notice Christ, who may be very near. This passage warns us against this unfeeling heaviness of heart.

We love Christ very much, and often because of this love we feel so sorry for Him in His sufferings that we want so badly for Him to avoid them by some miracle. In a way, we become like Peter when he said, "This shall never happen to You" (Matt. 16:22), only we cry out: if only You could avoid such suffering. And in those moments it seems to us that if Judas had been stopped, nothing would have happened. Judas becomes the object of our involuntary desire for revenge.

But we must not forget the main thing. Christ's suffering was voluntary. In the whole drama, Judas played no decisive role; he was simply a victim, a victim of his own weakness. Therefore it is wrong to see him as the embodiment of world evil or anything of the kind. If Judas had not been there, everything would have happened according to another scenario, but the meaning of the Redemption, as the greatest event in human history, would not have changed.

Another question that often arises in connection with Judas concerns his free will. Was he merely an instrument in the hands of providence? After all, Christ says that he was the "son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled" (John 17:12). Of course, this is not so either. A person is never merely an instrument in God's hands; each person whom He created "in His image and likeness" is too precious to Him. Some exegetes believe that when Christ dipped the morsel and gave it to Judas, He did so not in order to amaze the disciples with His omniscience, but to give Judas a chance to come to his senses, since the conversation was quiet, as we can see if we read the text carefully (John 13:26).

Besides, Judas could have repented as Peter did. But he would have had to repent exactly as Peter did, by bearing worthy fruit of repentance. Judas does not manage to do this. And that makes him deeply pitiful. Pity is the feeling that should arise in us toward this man.

Many have pondered the reason for Judas's betrayal: historians, writers and New Testament scholars. Yet it still remains unknown. Many different suggestions have been made, but none can be considered exhaustive, although many of them apparently did identify particular significant details in the overall picture.

The evangelist, meanwhile, points to only one cause: Satan, who, in his words, ‘entered into Judas’. To a scholar, whether a historian or a biblical specialist, such an explanation will seem clearly inadequate: from a scholarly point of view, it explains nothing. But perhaps the evangelist had no intention of offering a historical explanation? This does not mean that he disregards history or facts.

Luke is indeed a historian. He carefully gathers and analyses everything connected with the Saviour's earthly life, and his books—both his Gospel and the Book of Acts—are rich in factual detail. Yet in Judas's case he evidently prefers to avoid the explanations historians seek. Such an approach can hardly be considered accidental. Of course, there are things a Christian finds painful even to think about, let alone write about. But is that all there is to it?

Perhaps there are things that cannot be explained by anything, by any circumstances or facts? Can evil be explained at all? And, more importantly, does it need to be explained? Every sin, of course, has a cause. Judas's sin was not without a cause either. But what matters for spiritual life is not the causes of a person's action, but its spiritual meaning, determined by the intention the person puts into it. Whatever Judas's motives, the result is clear: he wants to be rid of his Teacher, at any cost, even at the cost of betrayal. Such an intention is essentially wholly irrational, like all evil carried through to its end.

There is a goal here, but no meaning. It is no coincidence that, having carried out his plan, Judas hanged himself: he could not bear the meaninglessness of his own action. This was not intellectual meaninglessness—in that respect he had thought everything through carefully enough and carried it out successfully—but spiritual meaninglessness. The betrayal proved to be nothing but betrayal; it had, and could have, no other spiritual meaning, although when Judas was planning it, it had seemed to have meaning.

The evangelist's mention of Satan is not accidental: here we see the familiar devilish game in which the spirit of darkness tries to create the illusion that evil has spiritual meaning and substance, which it does not and cannot possess. And Luke, apparently, is not concerned with why Judas fell into the trap that had been laid. He only wants to show what can happen to someone who falls into it.

Today's Gospel reading reminds us of a triptych—an icon in three parts. At the centre Christ teaches in the Temple; on the left, Satan enters Judas; on the right, Christ and the Passover lamb. It seems to us now that these are the three central themes of the Gospel story, and that there are no others. Thus, in a single reading, providentially appointed for us by the Church, we see the whole Gospel. And this is very precious. We often break our spiritual life into experiences of small fragments. There is a purpose to this: throughout the Nativity Fast, for instance, we think about the birth of the Divine Infant, and then, after Christmas has passed, we spend some time experiencing it as something accomplished. Extending one experience over months has one kind of meaning. Suddenly living through the whole Gospel in a single minute has another, but no less important, meaning. These are, in fact, two limiting points between which lies the whole spectrum of our ordinary spiritual life. And every scientist knows that, if we want to obtain a complete picture of a phenomenon, we must run all its parameters through the ranges available to us. For any phenomenon may look and mean something quite different at one limit than at the other. This is difficult; it demands a special investment of effort; it demands an ability to ‘readjust’. But without this, fullness cannot be attained. This is impossible in professional work: one person cannot encompass everything even within their own field. Yet in the spirit we are obliged to seek wholeness, because we must come into our own personhood, which is by definition whole. Of course, this wholeness, even in today's Gospel words, does not always reveal itself, nor does it do so immediately; but with some experience we can, and must, learn this. Sometimes, for example, we have no time to complete our morning or evening rule of prayer. If we have our own experience of discipline and diligence in this, then, when time is lacking, we can withdraw for one or two minutes, close our eyes, concentrate our attention to the utmost—almost to the point of pain in the head—and live through the entire rule of prayer in those one or two minutes. It is important to learn to do this. It is a step towards the prayer of silence. For silence is very full and intense.

The terrible picture of Jerusalem's destruction is revealed in this passage in all its fullness. As the details accumulate, they become ever more horrifying. The climax is the death of people from “fear and foreboding of what is coming” alone. What could be more terrible? It is precisely at that moment that the Savior comes, and with Him everything takes on a new meaning.

No one among us knows when Christ's second coming will occur. But many people have lived through a moment when the darkness became so dense that not even a tiny gleam of light remained. It is often at just such a time that the Lord visits us and reveals His power to us. Therefore, when we encounter trials, we must not only suffer and grieve, but also try to see God behind them.

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.

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.