The days are coming, says the LORD,
when I will fulfill the promise
I made to the house of Israel and Judah.
What was this promise about which the Lord spoke?
Once for all I have sworn by my holiness;
I will not lie to David.
His offspring shall endure forever,
his throne as long as the sun before me.
Like the moon it shall be established forever,
a faithful witness in the skies. (see Psalm 89:35-37, emphasis mine).
Yet the throne of David seemed to have succumbed to the judgment on the sinfulness of those who succeeded David on his throne. From Solomon on there was a deep stronghold of sin casting a shadow over that throne. Solomon had Pagan temples built for his many wives in the holy city of Jerusalem. Somehow, it went downhill from there, with good and admirable kings being outliers and exceptions. This continued until conquests of Israel scattered and divided the tribes such that there was no longer one king over all of them. The throne and the promise seemed to have failed.
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit (see Isaiah 11:1)
The promise seemed to have been cut off so entirely that there was only a stump remaining. But the prophets foresaw that even this seemingly dead stump could still somehow nevertheless bear the promised fruit if the Lord willed it.
In days to come Jacob shall take root, Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots and fill the whole world with fruit (see Isaiah 27:6).
Jeremiah also spoke of the shoot that God would raise up. From him we learn that from David's seemingly broken line of succession a new king would arise who would walk in fidelity to the Lord. Because he would do what mere human kings had again and again failed to do Judah could dwell in true safety and Jerusalem in lasting security. This promise was not possible based on merely human initiative. From the perspective the kingdom was unsalvageable. Even if someone managed to patch the tribes back together into a kingdom such a leader would not exceed the righteousness of David. Judgment would eventually inevitably tear it apart again. But in the fulfillment of this promise the Lord took the initiative. The shoot God himself raised demonstrated that the Lord himself would be justice for those who were not just. He came not only to patch an earthly kingdom back together but to provide a basis for a Kingdom fit for eternity.
this is what they shall call her:
“The LORD our justice.”
The Lord became not just justice in the abstract, but justice for each of us individually, first given to us in our baptism, by which we could stand before him and live in a way that pleases him.
For if, by the transgression of one person, death came to reign through that one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of justification come to reign in life through the one person Jesus Christ (see Romans 5:17).
The Lord became our justice so that in him we too could be just, we too could be righteous. By this gift we were made able to fearlessly await the coming of the Son of Man, made fit to inherit an eternal Kingdom.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (see Second Corinthians 5:21).
We live in a time of tension between the already and the not yet. Jesus himself already came to fulfill the promise to David, raising up and transforming a merely human and national kingdom into the Spiritual and transnational reality embodied in the Church. Yet his gift of justice to us is still something which we much each work out in our own lives, even "with fear and trembling" (see Philippians 2:12). This is why we receive all the warnings from Jesus in today's Gospel about the need to remain alert and focused on him rather than giving in to fear and anxiety. His justice in us is strong enough to empower us to stand erect and raise our heads. It is powerful enough to remind us that our redemption is at hand. But it is clear that this is not automatic. His justice is not just a given that we can take for granted. It is rather something on which we must rely as the source of the strength we need to live as faithful members of his Kingdom even here and now.
Be vigilant at all times
and pray that you have the strength
to escape the tribulations that are imminent
and to stand before the Son of Man.
The main sign we are doing what Jesus told us and relying on him in the way that he intended is that we are watching for him more than we are watching the circumstances. But if the circumstances have indeed clouded our vision with anxiety and fear and made us run to seek temporary fixes and worldly stop-gap solutions, the answer for us begins with turning our gaze back on Christ, and allowing the expectation of his coming to take deeper root within our hearts.
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