That gospel extract you just heard was written probably in 90 ad. The death-resurrection event has taken place 60 years ago. In the main, we are dealing with a second generation of Christians. The author, Luke, did know Jesus in the flesh, but he is now a very old man. Two significant developments have taken place since the death of Jesus. Firstly, the relationship between the Jews and the Christians has been deteriorating with time. Christianity began as a branch of Judaism, but they have now emerged as a separate entity. In fact, the Jewish authorities have expelled them from the various synagogues. They are prevented from worshipping in public. The second development was more significant still. Between 69 and 70 the Roman general Titus laid siege to trhe Temple in Jerusalem. The Jewish peoples had taken refuge there. He broke through in August and massacred the Jewish refugees there. Having destroyed the temple, they flattened Jerusalem itself. And the Jewsish people were not to take possession of the city until 1967. The Jewish nation is wiped out literally. When this gospel was written Luke would have been part of these developments. The Christians are suffering from two fronts: the Jews expelled them from the synagogues and the Romans had begun a campaign of persecution because they judged them to be subversive. Luke tells his listeners to hold firm, not a hair on your head will be lost. They are being encouraged to stay the course: "The end is not so soon." So this originated as a text of consolation. Unfortunately, with time it will become a text of terror voiced by unstable and anxious men.

Next Sunday, the Feast of Christ the King, is the last Sunday of the Church year. The following Sunday, the first day of Advent, the whole liturgical cycle begins anew with the Church's preparation for the birth of the Christ child. The gospel you just heard embodies a belief that was current in contemporary Jewish religion. The presence of the long-awaited Messiah was a sure sign that the Day of the Lord was imminent, the end of the world was at hand. The early Christian communities inherited this conviction from their Jewish ancestors. A good example of this mindset is to be found in our first reading today, from the Book of Malachai: "All will be burned up in a great furnace." Of course there is truth in the vision: scientistis agree that our earth will some day have run its course. But the scientific view would seem to concur with T.S. Eliot's view that the world will end, 'not with a bang, but with a whimper.' And all endings are, I suppose, painful and harrowing. But it is the urgent, imminent and hysterical element which has had an embarrassing impact on Christianity. History shows that this concern with the imminent ending of the world comes to the fore in times of suffering, persecution, plague and insecurity. For example, the black death of the fourteenth century was interpreted by many writers as the beginning of the end. It was God's judgement on the world. The religious persecutions which followed the reformation in Europe were interpreted in a similar manner. Luther himself believed that the world would end in his lifetime. In fact so convinced was he of the imminent end of the world that he didn't bother to put any definite structures in place to continue his ideas and teachings. He concluded it wasn't worth while. In the United States today, many, many religious people interpret the AIDS epidemic in a similar manner. Coming up to the year 1000, from 950 on, Norman Davies the English historian tells us that "Europe quaked at the hysterical ranting of anxious men." Interestingly, after the year 1000, stone churches began to replace wooden churches as a preferred method of construction. The church obviously concluded that history lay with stayers rather than sprinters. We were here for the long haul.

In all probability Jesus would himself have shared that belief. Today's gospel indicates that he held strongly to this belief. He certainly lived in an age of great insecurity. Mark portrays him as addressing his listeners is classic apocalyptic terms: "In those days, after a time of distress, the sun will be darkened and the moon will lose her brightness, and the stars will come falling from heaven."

Political insecurity and anarchy within Palestine itself lent merit to this conviction. In fact in 70 A.D., a relatively short time after today's gospel was written, one of the prophesies voiced there was fulfilled: the Jewish temple was destroyed when Jerusalem itself was levelled to the ground by Titus. He ordered that just one wall be left standing as a reminder to the Jewish people of their sins and failures. Of course it remains standing to this day and is still known as The Wailing Wall. The destruction of the temple certainly meant the end of the Jewish world.

This conviction that the end of the world was imminent caused all sorts of difficulties for the early church. Paul had particular difficulties with it. So convinced were some of his communites of the immediate end that they refused to work. It just wasn't worth their while. What is the point in working today and worrying about any long-tern plans or goals. For example, when the people of Thessalonica heard of this group in their locality, many of them abandoned their farms and olive groves and took refuge in the Christian community which Paul had once established. Of course the only conviction they brought into the community was that work was pointless. The leader of the community had written to Paul about this problem. Paul replied to them in the following terms: "We gave you a rule when we were with you: not to let anyone have any food if he refused to do any work. Now we hear that there are some of you who are living in idleness, doing no work themselves, but interfering with everyone else's. In the Lord Jesus Christ, we order and call on people of this kind to go on quietly working and earning the food that they eat."

Here Paul expresses a way of thinking that was to gain widespread acceptance in the Christian church: The Lord Jesus is primarily encountered, not at the end of this life or at the end of this world, but within our world, primarily through our relationships and through our work in this world. Christianity should never be seen as an escape from the world. On the contrary: it points to the world as our meeting place with our God.