NOTES for Luk 21:5-38

What Jesus says in this passage cannot fail to horrify His listeners. Terrible pictures of persecutions, deaths, and diseases that humanity will have to endure are supplied with such details that there is no room to doubt that what stands before us is not a figurative parable, but a description of reality. And therefore Christ gives us comforting words that help us overcome paralyzing fear: "I will give you a mouth and wisdom."

The Lord calls us to the impossible. On the one hand, He invites us to remember every minute that at any moment everything we build on earth can collapse. But at the same time He opens before us the road of complete trust in God, the path of confidence that every hair on our head has been counted by Him. And the path of Christian life runs between these seemingly opposite positions in life.

The combined Gospel reading read today includes three passages from chapter 21 of the Gospel of Luke, in which the Lord speaks about the destruction of Jerusalem. On the one hand, Christ's predictions were fulfilled in full in AD 70, when Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed by the Romans. On the other hand, in the reality around us in any age we see the fulfillment of what the Lord says: nation rises against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there are earthquakes and famine and other terrible events.

All this does not allow His prophecy to be referred only to the events of the year 70. One way or another, the death and destruction of which the Lord speaks are an image of the fate of the world that does not accept Christ.

In connection with this, it is important for us to notice that the hope of salvation is given to us by the Lord precisely in this terrifying prospect. Knowing everything that is happening and revealing it to the disciples, He says: by your endurance save your souls. Christ calls us not to be afraid, but to place our hope in God precisely amid the catastrophes of which we are witnesses.

Speaking about the end times and about His second coming, the Lord directs the apostles' attention, and therefore ours as well, mainly not to natural catastrophes, and not even to wars, but to what will happen personally to us. The Lord says that He will come a second time to each of us personally, Himself, and at the same time to all, to the Church. And before this, catastrophes will not simply happen in the world in general; we will be persecuted. Personally, each of us may be persecuted, and each will thereby bear witness to Christ.

We often say that Christ has already become incarnate and has already come to earth, forgetting that we are those who wait: we await His second coming, which will transform us and this world. Even when we see the horrors now taking place in the world, we can see in them signs of the Lord's approach and not fear suffering, but sing: "Come, Lord," Maranatha!

The Lord says that those who confess His teaching will face hard trials. Christians will have hands laid on them, they will be brought to trial in the synagogue, thrown into prisons, persecuted... From an ordinary everyday point of view, this means Jesus' complete failure as a preacher. If His followers are facing such trials, is there any point in believing Him?

The answer the Savior gives does not fit within the framework of familiar logic, because Christ thinks on the scale of eternity. His words, "...this will be your opportunity to bear witness," mean that in these difficult situations His followers will be able to bear full witness to Him. For God Himself took humiliation and pain upon Himself not in order to abolish them, but in order to sanctify them. Many holy martyrs in the history of the Church revealed the light of Christ in their sufferings and in this way became His true witnesses.

When we face danger, we want to hide and run away, but these words of the Gospel call us to the exact opposite: despite our smallness and helplessness, to carry Christ in this suffering.

There is hardly a Christian on earth who has not thought about witness, either his own witness or witness in general. And persecutions for the faith are also familiar to many. It would seem that there is nothing unusual in this: history knows many martyrs for an idea who were persecuted for refusing to renounce their convictions. It can seem that Christians are no exception here: they were persecuted for their religious convictions just like many others. But is this really so?

At first glance, there really are no fundamental differences. Except, however, for one thing: Jesus, as is evident, commanded each faithful person not to think about what he would say when he had to answer before his persecutors. And this can seem truly strange: after all, the matter concerns the most important thing, the confession of one's faith, and here, as it can seem, the Savior calls us to let everything take its own course!

But it turns out that the matter is completely different: Jesus simply calls us in a critical situation to give Him the opportunity to act. He Himself will speak through us, and all that remains for us is not to hinder Him. Not to hinder Him with our fears, our self-confidence, or our self-admiration. And then He will say through us everything that must be said, but that we could never have said without His help.

This sentence is pronounced by Jesus within His prophesy on the disasters and the persecutions to come, and only in this context it could be analyzed. And it is a matter not of patience for every person in any difficult situations, but rather Christians when they are persecuted. It doesn't mean here that we have to look at injustice and violence happening around us with an Olympian tranquility - Jesus Himself intervened in such cases, and did that promptly enough. So, He calls us then not to be impatient when persecutions "unwrap" on us. As base for it, He puts trust in the fact that God holds our lives in His hands, which means we shouldn't hurry up with our own reactions, and allow Him to act.

Someone said that in a critical situation, we have two variants: reaction and answer. Reaction – it's what's at once, it comes from us ourselves, from the "flesh". The answer - it is where we stopped our first reaction, endure it and gave the possibility to God to act, He Who will never act without our permission. It is not by chance that Jesus asks us in the previous sentences not to prepare ourselves, not to train our reaction early, but rather to rely on the fact that God will give His answer. When we hold on ourselves by such patience, God Who brings to fulfillment our salvation enters into our life.

This phrase was spoken by Jesus as part of His prophecy about coming disasters and persecutions, and it is precisely in this context that it should be considered. Moreover, the point is not the patience of any people in any difficult situations, but specifically Christians during persecutions. This does not mean that we should look with Olympian calm at injustices or violence happening next to us; Jesus Himself intervened in such cases, and rather promptly.

But when persecutions are being "unfolded" against us, then He calls us not to be impatient. He grounds this in trust that God holds our life in His hands, and therefore we can refrain from rushing our own reaction and allow Him to act.

Someone said that in a critical situation we have two options: reaction and response. Reaction is what arises immediately; it comes from ourselves, "from the flesh." Response is where we have stopped our first reaction, endured it, and allowed God, who never acts without our permission, to enter into action. It is no accident that in the preceding phrases Jesus says that we should not prepare or train our reaction in advance, but should trust that God Himself will give His answer. When by such patience we stop ourselves, God enters our life, and He accomplishes our salvation.

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.

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.

Strange, isn't it? We get used that heaven and earth, the entire world, the entire universe is something real, something we can see and show to others, which is obviously existing. And that words are ephemeral, once pronounced they are no more, they are taken off - flew away. "Words, words, words… "

But Jesus as usual “overturns” everything. A word isn't ephemeral when it comes from God (or from God-man); it {word} is more real than any material reality, because this world was brought to existence preeminently by word. The world was created, and so, it isn't eternal, it has a beginning and an end. But God's word isn't created, but is rather generated by the Eternal God; it has an eternal nature, it doesn't pass away and never remains fruitless. 

Consequently, it is necessary for us to seek God's word, listen attentively to it, accept it, to be fed by it, assimilating to Jesus - the personified word, so that we, belonging to the created world, do not pass away just the same as this world, but be part of the eternal life.

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.

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.

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.