The Important Thing

As we near the end of the liturgical year, our gospel readings (Lk 21:5-19) seem a bit scary…fire and brimstone stuff – wars and insurrections, famines and plagues, temples being destroyed, and Christians being persecuted, spurned by their families and friends, and ultimately put to death.  Where’s the love?

Often I tend to set these readings aside, to compartmentalize them as written in a far distant time to a much different set of people in a much different culture.  I read them as apt descriptions of what was going on in first century Palestine, but of much less relevance to me living in twenty-first century America.  But this “historical” look at Scripture is a spiritually dangerous path to tread, for Scripture is the living word of God, as relevant to our salvation today as it was to the apostles living and eating with Jesus.

Today, we hear the disciples marveling at the magnificence of the Jerusalem Temple, but Jesus admonishes them that, in time, there will not be one stone atop another.  (Lk 21:5-6)  Most scholars agree that Luke wrote this gospel about 85 or 90 AD, when the memory of the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 AD was still fresh in many people’s minds.  Thus, it is easy to think that these words of Jesus were simply an accurate prediction of this tragedy.  Temple destroyed, prophecy fulfilled, end of story.

But it’s not the end.  Jesus was saying much more.  Jesus warns his first disciples – and us – that whenever we place our faith in anything on earth, a material thing, a human person, or a human institution, that faith must crumble, as all things on earth ultimately do.  It may take some time, but all earthly things must come to an end.  Their journey must end in death.

Today, death seems to be a larger and larger part of our culture, for many seem to have replaced trust in God with trust in mere earthly people, eartly institutions, earthly solutions.  We abort babies because we have lost trust in God’s ability to provide us the strength and resources to raise more children.  We are obsessed with guns, many of which are designed specifically to kill other human beings, because we have lost trust in God’s protection.  We kill the infirm, the criminal and the enemy because we have lost our trust that God’s love is more potent than our drugs and our drones, more powerful than our bombs and bullets.  We focus our efforts on changing laws because we have lost our trust in God’s power to change our hearts, to break hearts of stone and give us hearts of living and loving flesh.  We live fear of our physical safety because we have lost trust in God’s promise of eternal life.

Jesus goes on to say how his followers will be called before the governors and kings, forced to witness to their faith, and some will die for his name.  (Lk 21:12-19)  Again, I recall the early martyrs of the church, many of whom, like Paul and Ignatius of Antioch, were called before Caesar himself to testify and to die.  That was then, but certainly not so in our more enlightened time.

Yet, here in America, we are being called up before governors and, if not kings, congressmen and Presidents, called up to testify to the faith that we share, the values we hold and the principles by which we live.  Though we respect the rights of others to not believe what we believe, respect their right not to hold our same values or live by our same principles, even accepting that our beliefs and values and principles may put us in a distinct minority, we must, as the early martyrs did, persevere in asserting our first and most important duty to hold firm to our faith in God, to live our values, and to be true to our principles, whatever the consequences.

We persevere in our living witness even if we find it hard to come up with the words for our defense, for Jesus himself stands with us today and until the end of the age, while the Spirit will certainly give us the words we need.

Jesus ends by promising that by persevering in faith, by persevering in trust, we will secure our lives, for we will live forever and ever, with Him and with all the saints in the kingdom of God.

Trust in God, and all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.