Text: Luke 21:5-19Revised Standard Version (RSV)
The Destruction of the Temple Foretold
5 And as some spoke of the temple, how it was adorned with noble stones and offerings, he said, 6 “As for these things which you see, the days will come when there shall not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” 7 And they asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign when this is about to take place?” 8 And he said, “Take heed that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is at hand!’ Do not go after them. 9 And when you hear of wars and tumults, do not be terrified; for this must first take place, but the end will not be at once.”
Signs and Persecutions
10 Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; 11 there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences; and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven. 12 But before all this they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. 13 This will be a time for you to bear testimony. 14 Settle it therefore in your minds, not to meditate beforehand how to answer; 15 for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict. 16 You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and kinsmen and friends, and some of you they will put to death; 17 you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. 18 But not a hair of your head will perish. 19 By your endurance you will gain your lives.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen
“What happens now?”
Since Tuesday, all of us are probably asking that question. We have all just lived through the most unprecedented, surprising, and perhaps even cataclysmic election in our lifetimes, and maybe in all of US history. We have now set foot into a truly unknown and undiscovered country; we do not know, really, where we’re going, or where we will eventually end up.
So we can understand the mood of the disciples as they stand before the Temple in Jerusalem. They, too, must have asked themselves “What happens now?” They, too, must have wondered what was going to happen in not the next days, but the next few hours.
Their journey from Galilee through all the territories of Israel is now over. The closer they’ve gotten to Jerusalem, the more tense and nervous they’ve become. Months, even just weeks, before, when Jesus “set his face toward Jerusalem,” they had the luxury of maybe thinking, “Well, that’s a long way down the road yet; maybe things will change in the meantime.” Out in the country, they could breathe a little easier, too: Not as many Romans.
But now they’re at Ground Zero. The Temple was not just the center of Jerusalem, it was the center of the whole of Jewish existence. So they stand there dazzled, these simple men from the country. I would imagine that they were grateful for the distraction from their anxiety and their foreboding this sight offered them, too.
And the Temple truly was magnificent. It was, first of all, incredibly beautiful. As Professor Richard Swanson writes, “[T]he Temple was beautiful because Herod, that Roman stooge who styled himself as King of the Jews, had spent massive amounts of money making it beautiful. Herod…had built up the Temple so that it would rival pagan temples built up by rival rulers. Faithful Jews knew the Temple testified to God’s unique majesty.”[1] No expense had been spared to make the Temple in Jerusalem one of the grandest buildings in the world.
The second thing that amazed and impressed the disciples, perhaps even more than its beauty, was its sheer, massive size – it’s been estimated that the outer court of that building could hold 400,000 people, and, at festival times, did in fact hold nearly that many people. By contrast, the Metrodome in Minneapolis has a maximum capacity of 64,111 people. Target Field’s capacity is “only” 39,504! Wrigley Field in Chicago: 41,159. Giants Stadium: 80,242. Even the Colosseum in Rome had a maximum capacity of 55,000 people. So you can understand how impressed people were when they laid eyes on the Temple. It looked as though it would stand forever.
And they must have said something to the effect that, “How incredible this is! How beautiful! How wondrous!”
Then Jesus shocks his audience by saying that even this incredible monument would one day fall. “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”
These words had a double impact. On the one hand, Herod was known far and wide as a vicious and brutal despot who had not shied away even from slaughtering members of his family to get where he was. His acts of public largess were meant to make up for his brutality. On the other hand, of course, it was all meant to bring glory to Herod himself.
For many people, it worked. But Jesus saw beyond that. Herod’s beautification of the Temple was really an affront to the faithful; but even all of Herod’s corruption could not alter the fact that the Temple was still the Temple, the place where God dwelt.
Things are not always what they seem. Sometimes you need somebody to set you straight about what it really is you’re looking at, to put things into proper perspective.
That’s what Jesus is doing here today. He tells the disciples not to waste time placing trust and hope in a building. As great as the Temple was, it was important, not so much for itself as for what it symbolized. The building itself, like all other structures, whether natural or made by human hands, was impermanent. Even if it stood 1000 years, its day of destruction was bound to come.
And, of course, the Temple is also a metaphor. It is a metaphor for impermanence, a metaphor for the ups and downs, the highs and the lows of human life. Certainly, today of all days, we can relate to that.
Jesus tells us to not waste our efforts placing our faith in things that cannot save us. History is littered with the wreckage of things, ideas, concepts, and movements that were thought at the time to be The Answer to the human condition, but the names of which we don’t even remember now. A few years ago, I found a fascinating series on Netflix called “Forgotten Planet,” which chronicled cities around the world that had been abandoned, including downtown Detroit! It was positively eerie to see what had happened to these once-solid, once-thriving places, which now were left to rot. It was also pretty humbling. Our proud and solid cities decay into dust, our powerful machines rust, wear out, their metal and parts are melted down and used to build other machines; our homes need repair and eventually must be replaced; our fortunes rise and fall; our very bodies age and change.
But God is eternal.
This is not merely a statement of faith, or even a statement of fact. It is for us the compass by which we can orient ourselves in troublous times. For Jesus himself assures us: “But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives.”
God reigns. God loves. God saves.
There are no easy formulas, no sure-fire steps we can take to make sure that we won’t suffer. Nonetheless: No matter what happens, whenever and however, we, you and I, God’s faithful people, still lift ours heads, raise our voices in thanks and praise, and expect resurrection, redemption, and rescue. If we indeed do lift our heads and look around, we will see, even in the moment of deepest catastrophe, the grace and the power of God at work.
At the time when this passage from Luke was written, the Temple had already been reduced to ruin, razed to the ground by Roman command, for something like thirty years. The only remnant of the Temple that still stands is what’s called the “Wailing Wall,” and generation after generation of faithful pilgrims have stood there to pray. The disaster that is forecast in today’s passage has already happened. And yet, the faithful persevere.
Jesus does not promise us a bed of roses here on earth. In fact, he tells his disciples in no uncertain terms that people will hate them and persecute them. He doesn’t promise the disciples that they will become strangers to pain; he doesn’t promise us that, either. Every one of us has experienced life-altering, sometimes shattering events. Every congregation, ours included, is made up of people whose hopes have been trampled. Sometimes we need to be supported just to take another breath.
Yet Jesus teaches us to lift up our heads and look for the promised resurrection even in the midst of the apparent triumph of death and all the things that bear down on us.
Remember: God reigns! God loves! God saves!
There is a meaning to it all, even suffering. In the background of our lives there is a grace and a love that can help us turn negatives into positives, tragedies into triumphs.
This is our hope. This is the promise of Jesus. Let us listen – and take to heart – these words:
STAND FIRM!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1853