Luke and the Delay of Christ's Return

Much scholarship has argued that Luke was dealing with the failure of Christ to return as soon as expected. Kind of like 2 Peter 3: “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised?” Luke, so it goes, responds to this unexplainable delay of Christ’s return by: (1) postponing its occurrence to an indeterminable projected future, (2) calling for perseverance in the interim, (3) periodizing history into Israel-Jesus-Gentiles, and (4) urging Christians to come to a polite political arrangement with their Roman masters. This is a neat and tidy approach to Lucan eschatology, which resonates with several aspects of Luke-Acts if placed in a certain arrangement, yet it has but one fatal flaw, namely, it is not true!