19.07 | Dissipation & Drunkenness
Luke 21:5-38
“Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Luke 21:28
Inigo Montoya was a drunk.
Inigo is a character in the 1980s cult movie, The Princess Bride. After the murder of his father in his childhood (by a man with six fingers on one hand), he devotes his life to seeking vengeance—mastering swordsmanship so that when his moment comes, he will be ready to avenge him.
But Inigo is also a drunk. And when he loses focus on his task, he turns to the bottle. Around halfway through the movie, Inigo is found by his massive friend, Fezzick, slumped in a drunken stupor. Fezzick sobers him up, nursing him back to health, and Inigo, steady and focused again, is ready to face his enemy.
Jesus today describes an age of the earth that we now find ourselves in. And His wording isn’t positive:
Wars. Tumults. Earthquakes. Famine. Pestilence. Persecution. Martyrdom. Desolation. Signs in sun and moon and stars. Distress of nations in perplexity. Roaring of the sea and the waves. Fear.
These things will come, He says.
When we look at the world right now, we can quite literally check these things off Jesus’ list. And when we do this, we need to recognise that He said this would happen. Jesus’ words weren’t some madman soothsaying doom: they were accurate descriptions of the condition of history in the ascending chaos that will precede His return.
And in this teaching, Jesus describes two ways we can then live.
The first is this:
Dissipation and drunkenness.
Two words, with essentially the same meaning. Both speak of the numbing and deadening effects of major alcohol consumption. The words give a sharp metaphor—where a hopeless soul medicates its condition with pure numbing. It is the response of one who lets the condition of the world around them set the condition of their soul—who sees pain and poverty and pestilence and joins the rest of the world in the stooped-down, hopeless slump of the avoidant.
I know this place. Drink has (mercifully) never been a vice that has held me, and yet there are a million other ways to let the pain of the world set our internal atmosphere. There are a million other ways to become hopeless. There are a million other ways to turn to the sedation of numbing and the lure of avoidant distraction.
But there is an alternative.
Look at Jesus’ words:
Straighten up. Raise your heads. Stay awake. Pray.
Jesus invites us to look at all of this chaos and confusion around us, and, rather than viewing it all as reason for hopelessness, to see it precisely as evidence of His imminence. It is leaves on the fig tree, hailing the coming of summer.
Such a posture doesn’t mean denial of the pain, but rather it reminds the soul that pain doesn’t get the last word in this story.
This perspective doesn’t mean we don’t lament warfare, but it does mean that we tell our hearts that the brutality of the warmonger is soon to crumble in the inbreaking reign of the Prince of Peace.
This way of being doesn’t view opposition to our message as reason to sit down and shut up, but rather creates opportunity to bear witness.
The kind of endurance that Jesus calls for is a straight back, shoulders squared, steady gaze through the muddle and mayhem of the world, with hearts steady in the simple expectation of the age that is on the very cusp of arriving.
Reflect:
What events are weighing your heart down right now?
What does numbing look like right now?
What would it look like to sober up in the clear-mindedness of hope?
Pray:
Lord Jesus,
You were right:
All this has come to pass—
From what you said about Jerusalem,
To how you described the whole world.
And yet, Lord,
It can be easy,
When I see all this pain,
To view it as proof of the darkness winning,
Rather than as evidence of the coming of the dawn.
And so, Lord of History,
I choose to stand,
To straighten my back,
To raise my head,
And live as a person who heralds the coming dawn.
But Lord, I cannot do this alone,
And so would you
Drench me afresh with your Holy Spirit,
To see all things
From the perspective of the age that is coming
And the certainty of your word.
In Your Name,
Lord Jesus,
Come.
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Jeremiah 5-6 | Proverbs 19:11-15