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
There seems to be quite a contrast between the Old Testament and Gospel lessons.
Isaiah invites us to entertain a vision of what life can be for God’s faithful people, whereas the passage from Luke underlines the truth that Jesus never promised us that it would be easy to follow him.
This deserves some exploration.
Isaiah is widely recognized as being the greatest of the prophets. Professor Carolyn J. Sharp, of Yale Divinity School, writes: “In the Isaiah traditions are interwoven memories of ancient truth and promises of a radiant future for Israel. In this lection come to magnificent expression three Isaianic motifs: the motif of former and latter things, the motif of the glorification of Zion, and the motif of the shalom (peace, well-being, prosperity) of God’s holy mountain.
“Deutero-Isaiah proclaims a Creator who has always been in control of history. God has spoken about things before they came to pass, demonstrating both omniscience and the power to effect the divine purpose over eons (Isaiah 44:6-8). Other gods are mere illusion. ‘Tell us the former things, what they are…declare to us the things to come,’ sneers the God of Israel in a sarcastic challenge directed at other deities, who of course cannot answer because they have no substance (41:22-24). God alone foretold the coming of Cyrus of Persia as deliverer for Judeans in Diaspora (41:25-29); God alone has the power to speak new things into being (42:9). Post-exilic Judah—traumatized by exile, fractured by internecine strife—may dare hope for healing only because of the power and compassion of their mighty God.
“The LORD reassures this devastated people, ‘the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind’ (Isaiah 65:17). All that recent history had held for Judah—the terror of the Babylonian invasion, the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, the forcible dislocation and abjection of Judean leaders, perhaps even Judah’s own sinfulness (65:1-7)—will no longer be considered, for God is creating ‘new heavens and a new earth.’ This promise reconfigures everything that Judah had known about its life and its identity. Judah had been under threat from the very earliest cultural memories preserved in biblical tradition. Enslavement in Egypt, living under the shadow of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires according to its formative narratives, Judah had often struggled on the brink of extinction.”[1]
Some key points: Isaiah proclaims that our God has “always been in control of history.” God is in charge. God knows and speaks about things before they even happen.
But the obvious question that comes to mind is: “If God is in control, why do bad things happen?” Why did God allow the Babylonians to invade? Why did God allow his chosen people to be enslaved in Egypt? Why did God allow Judah to become devastated?
And we watch the news of hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires bringing death and destruction to thousands of people; we shake our heads in sorrow and anguish at the daily reports of people being horrible to each other; and in our own lives, too, we are often beset by challenges and hardships; and don’t we sometimes ask ourselves where God is in all of it?
Skeptics love to say that natural calamities definitely prove that either God does not exist, or, if God does exist, he’s not a very nice God at all, and certainly not the God of love that you and I worship. What kind of a God, they ask, would send a tsunami to wash over an island and drown every living thing on it?
The theologian Paul Tillich wrote that the way we ask a question implies the answer we’re looking for. We make assumptions, even when we don’t realize that we’re doing so. Asking a question like “Where are you, God?” implies that we don’t think God’s around. Asking “why me, God?” implies, first, that we don’t think we deserve whatever the problem is we’re having, and second, it implies that God is somehow to blame.
I think those are the wrong questions. First, regarding natural disasters, we need to keep in mind that, when God created the world, he set it up to follow what we call natural laws – and natural laws are neither good nor bad. They are what make the world work the way it does. Sometimes the natural world is kind to us, and at others very much the opposite.
The next, and really most important, factor is the human one. From the start – going all the way back to Adam and Eve – we have had what is called “free will.” Every second of every day, we have the choice to do the right thing – to love God and neighbor and live accordingly, or to do the wrong thing – to live only for ourselves and to ignore God completely. What happens to us depends almost entirely on which choice we make.
In any case, against the backdrop of the great suffering and the horrible calamities that his people had experienced, Isaiah proclaims
“For behold, I create new heavens
and a new earth;
and the former things shall not be remembered
or come into mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice for ever
in that which I create;
for behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing,
and her people a joy.
19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and be glad in my people;
no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping
and the cry of distress.”
That is the takeaway from Isaiah for us today – not the wars, not the suffering, but the vision of the glorious future God will bring to pass: “Peace and righteousness will oversee the life teeming within Zion’s gates (60:17); violence, predation, and fear will be no more. The idyllic picture that unfolds in Isaiah 65:20-25 constitutes one of the most beautiful oracles in all of Scripture.”[2]
The same recurring theme is present in the Gospel text from Luke, although it doesn’t seem to start that way. Jesus predicts the destruction of that massive Temple – as shocking to his hearers then as predicting the destruction of the Capitol building in Washington would be to us now.
But the text ends on the same kind of high note as the one from Isaiah: “But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives.”
God reigns! God loves! God saves!
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 live in the hope and the expectation of resurrection, redemption, and rescue. Even in moments of deepest catastrophe, we lift our heads and feel the grace and the power of God at work in us.
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.
Things are not always what they seem. 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 it to heart – those magnificent words: “But not a hair of your head will perish!”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Sharp, Carolyn J., “Commentary on Isaiah 65:17-25,” https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=678
[2] Sharp, Carolyn J., “Commentary on Isaiah 65:17-25,” https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=678