2024-12-21 A Meditation on That Coming Day

“20 Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, 21 nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” 22 And he said to the disciples, “The days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. 23 And they will say to you, ‘Look, there!’ or ‘Look, here!’ Do not go out or follow them. 24 For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day. 25 But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. 26 Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. 28 Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot—they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, 29 but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all— 30 so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed. 31 On that day, let the one who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away, and likewise let the one who is in the field not turn back. 32 Remember Lot’s wife. 33 Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it. 34 I tell you, in that night there will be two in one bed. One will be taken and the other left. 35 There will be two women grinding together. One will be taken and the other left.” 37 And they said to him, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.”” (Luke 17:20-37 ESV)

Jesus talked about a day. On that day some will step aside, their job done, though precisely in contrast to it being that day when the jobs of so many others begin. Some will have a party: the stage one went off without a hitch. For, we are those who use every angle at our disposal to try and understand or put form and function, to all that we see, to all that’s “out there”. We try to make sense of it, to find a smooth-running machine behind it all. And the pundits, the statisticians, the framework-minded, the high-above-the-fray, all these also are no different from the foot soldier, from the conscript, from the trickle-down level of playing field: these, too, experience brokenness, experience impassibility, experience heart-on-the-sleeve going solo and going for broke. Some things, no matter how analyzed and studied, call upon our better resolutions to level all comers, to see all as soldiers of the Cause, to understand that when Jesus spoke of “a Day”, it was derivative of God the Father’s story of seven-Day creation. Day, again. That the world cannot politely fathom just what is possible as the stars come into alignment, and we are each of us found hopefully ready, hopeful and ready that is, hopefully not distracted or bogged down.

To be Ready, then, is to know a thing or two about our Master in history, in heaven, in a community not too different from ours, who went to His Cross. He went, that we might have the mud cleared from our eyes and see the solo-nature of things preferably done in a group mind and group manner. Each of us, we awaken and worry over the coffee pot or the troubled roommate, all the while living the illusion of All-Capable, of All-Under-Control, of All-Sensible. That Illusion feeds the pundits who assembled or dispersed at some proper city’s distance from the Old Cross upon the distant Hill. It means that the Holy Spirit, as present in the Trinity, is no less vulnerable and front-line than our best friends in the service. We are wearing our hearts on our sleeves. We know how to bark, and how to murmur. We know how to go zen mode and begin to orchestrate, to swing the marionette strings, to Unite and Coexist with those the Lord has put in our presence today.

Jesus’ Day was His hope that the judgment would be swift, knowing that all of us suffer when one suffers, knowing that to judge someone is to heal them, to release them, to cubby-hole them only insofar as it was a Necessary cut, a needful hasty discernment. Judgment is for all of us, to suffer as Christ did on His judgmental Cross. That is, we shall be pained over all the sins of an enemy for whom we forgot to pray. We shall be laughing at just how bright the pathways are, those that cross through the valley of Judgment, but also see our own silly nature for simple things we never found the faith to believe in. That God will rectify. That God will Heal. That God will put things in their place.