“…like a trap.” (Luke 21:35)
Reading the ending chapter of Luke’s Gospel, I have come to the passages that have always seemed so fearful and anxiety inducing to me. Here in chapter 21 Jesus is about to enter into His passion and He is preparing the disciples for what is to come. There have been questions about authority and about resurrection and now He warns them about the signs and the days to come. He warns them of wars and earthquakes, of plagues and famines and the persecutions they will suffer. The temples will fall and a captivity will come that will make Babylon seem like a summer vacation. And through it all, throughout this almost chapter long warning, Jesus repeatedly reminds the disciples to hold on, to “persevere” and “stand erect” because their “liberation is near at hand.” (21:19 & 28)
And then He adds this odd phrase:
“…that day will come upon you unexpectedly, like a trap.” (34-35)
Reading that phrase I began to wonder—why would Jesus use that image? Where or how is the Love of God to be found in that image of a trap? Normally when I come to these passages, I read them with a bit of trepidation. I hear warnings and I hear challenges that seem beyond my mortal strength, and beyond my humble faith. I read them with the fear that I will fall short, not be up to the challenge; when God’s test comes, I will be found wanting--lost. That image of God feels not just confrontational, but prosecutorial—as if God had no interest in the outcome, in my salvation. As if my life were just one more show, among the billions and billions of others, He was streaming to kill time until the apocalypse. It is not a vision of love…
But, this morning as I read those words I felt a sudden tinge of hope. I heard in that phrase “like a trap” not capture and destruction, but the love of a parent. I heard the cry of a father playing chase in the front yard with his children and seeing one rushing to close to the street, he swoops down and snatches her up and cries out, “I got you!”
And I wondered—why? What would make me hear those words so differently today? And then I noticed the message that comes right after that trap.
“Stay awake, praying at all times for the
strength to survive
all that is going to happen, and to hold your
ground before the Son of man.” (21:36)
And I heard for the first time, the reassurance of this image—not that God is setting a trap for us, to catch us in our sin and throw us into the fire, but that God is setting something “like a trap” for us, to protect us. To gather us into His love and hold us in a safe place—a place where we can find the strength to survive—and that place is prayer. This thing “like a trap” is not a prison or a cell, but more like a chapel, a place of security, peace, renewal and love.
And it is “like a trap” because God knows we are all afraid sometimes, and that if we are afraid enough, we will flee even from the grace and love of Christ. So, to gather His flock, sometimes God must set a kind of trap—to protect us even from ourselves, to awaken us to the love, to the grace, of that is always waiting there, at our side, at your elbow, whispering in your ear—you are my beloved. And hoping only that we will hear, and be stirred to prayer.
One last word about this chapter (Luke 21). It is almost entirely a message about the coming trials, but it begins oddly enough with a brief little observation of a poor widow and her “mite” (21: 1-5). Sitting in the temple, watching the people with their offerings, Jesus points out an impoverished widow who puts two small coins into the treasury and uses her as the example of true giving. And that is how he begins His lesson on the end-times here in Luke. Why? Is it possibly because she is also our model of what God asks of us? Not for some heroic gesture or grand sacrifice that will land us on the front page of the New York Times or win the Nobel Prize, but only that –like this widow—we give what we have. Even if it is just two small coins… give it all.
The trap is not set against us. The trap is set for us. This is the whispering I hear in my ear: Don’t be afraid… The trap is love.
