The Last Days of Jesus of Nazareth: An Advent Apocalypse
At the beginning of Advent my thoughts are on the last days of Jesus Nazareth. In the weeks before Advent the daily lectionary for my personal devotions has followed the Gospel of Saint Luke chapters 20 and 21. This portion of the Gospel occurs between Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a colt and his arrest on the night of Passover. This includes what is known as Jesus’ apocalyptic discourse: after being asked “When will these things take place”. These things refers to Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. The temple frames all that happens between Jesus being acclaimed as messiah as he enters Jerusalem and his arrest on the Mount of Olives. The last days, the last words, and the last actions of Jesus all take place in the temple. As I reflected on this frame, I found Jesus’ apocalypse extends to all his teaching between his “triumphal entry” and arrest. In the last days of Jesus of Nazareth we find ourselves at our limit.
What is a temple, specifically the temple in Jerusalem. A temple isn’t just a sacred space set aside for a religious purpose. A temple is sacred because it represents the cosmos showing the structural connection between the unseen world of divinity and our earthly physical existence. The creation narrative in Genesis sets up the whole of creation as God’s Temple and humanity as royal priests in this temple. A central element of the story of God seeking out a people is to reinvigorate and reawaken this priesthood in humanity(cf Exodus 19:6 and 1 Peter 2:9). For Jesus the temple is integral to the proclamation of the Gospel, in its connection with creation and humanity as a royal priesthood in that creation.
Immediately after riding into Jerusalem on a colt, Jesus goes to the temple and drives out the money changers and merchants. Through “cleansing” the Temple Jesus reveals that the monetization and commodification of the sacrificial system obscures the meaning of the temple. Jesus is fierce in opposing the injustice of robing of the poor and the enrichment of money changers and merchants. Yet it also is this focus on merchandise (animals for sacrifice) and money (exchanging the idolatrous coin of Caesar for temple currency) that distracts from the restoration and insight that the temple is to bring. The temple and its rituals are to draw all the people of Israel into the reality of the cosmos as God’s temple and to awaken in them their role as a royal priesthood in the temple of creation. This meaning and purpose of the temple limits what can be done in and around it. Prayer frames our existence and our relationship to God and creation. This first action of Jesus of Nazareth in his last days establishes the centrality of the temple to Jesus’ apocalyptic.
Jesus argues with those who deem themselves important, believing they have the significant contributions to God’s treasury. After each of Jesus’ disputants is roundly answered, Jesus observes the wealthy making prominent contributions to the temple treasury. Jesus then draws attention to the paltry contribution of two pennies by a poor widow. In so doing, Jesus reveals to us God’s measure. No one’s contribution to the world’s treasury can surpass that minuscule amount a poor widow gives when she gives all she has for life. The measure of our contributions to the world, as God’s temple, is our whole life or nothing. Giving anything short of what is our very life can never approach the limit of the poor widow’s two copper coins.
Even as we seek to measure our contributions to the universe in all its created glory, Jesus reminds us that creation and the temple has it’s time and its limits. Even Jesus of Nazareth, God incarnate as a creature who was born, has his time and his last days. Jesus’ apocalyptic is an apocalyptic of the impermanence of creation, even the heavens. In Jesus’ apocalyptic we don’t look for the end, rather we receive our limit. We accept that anything that is not God has an end. Jesus’ apocalyptic is a view that sees even God’s good creation as having an end. Now, sin (our separation from God, our envy of others, our tendency to dehumanize, our desire to have power over others ,to seek our own comfort) turns our end into a fear of annihilation, which leads to suffering as we oppress others in our attempts to stave off our own fear. This suffering isn’t the God given results of our limits but the result of sin and our attempts to deny and escape our last days. Jesus’ apocalyptic doesn’t only reveal the limits and end of the temple, but exposes the selfish human origins of the suffering that comes as created things enter into their last days and pass away.
Jesus’ Last days uncover the ways our money, our knowledge, and our religiosity often distracts us from our limits. Apocalyptic violence isn’t’ “natural” to the limit of creation. Jesus’ last days expose humanity’s violent rejection of its’ limits. Jesus exposes even the religious rejection of the meaning of the temple: to accept our limited place in the created order as priests in the temple of creation.
Jesus’s teaching calls us to face the end of the world and move on. Then all the portents and signs are simply manifestations of the truth of our being creatures. A reminder that all creatures and creation have their time and thus their end and death. Even Jesus of Nazareth had his time and death. Though, God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead and this Christ sits at the right hand of God the Father. Thus, we in turn will be held in the love of God beyond our end. Though, all we can know is that we have our end, and in Christ we may live now at our limit in fullness of life. The follower of Jesus of Nazareth, the disciple of Christ, is called into this awareness of our limits. In this awareness, all our days are the last days. In receiving Jesus’s teaching we learn there is no greater contribution than that we give our whole life to being God’s creatures: A royal priesthood caring for each other and God’s temple the universe. This is the limit of our human contributions, the measure of which will only be revealed in the age beyond ages, which we, at our limit, approach but never cross.
