All Things Must Pass
Luke 21:5-19
Nothing says the holidays are around the corner quite like an apocalyptic warning from the mouth of Jesus. We go through this ritual every year. Turkey. Pumpkin pie. Advent wreath. Apocalypse. As we transition from the end of one liturgical year into the new liturgical year and the season of Advent, the Gospel readings always turn apocalyptic. It’s the end of the world as we know it, as R.E.M. sang back in 1987.
For those of us who follow the liturgical calendar, this is the last Sunday of so-called Ordinary Time, which means that it’s our last Sunday reading from the Gospel of Luke on a regular basis. Since July we’ve been following Luke’s account of Jesus’ journey from his home region of Galilee in the north of Israel down to Jerusalem. In the reading from last week Jesus was challenged by a group of religious leaders known as the Sadducees whose home base was the temple in Jerusalem.
The setting for today’s reading is that same temple. Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem and his disruption of the buying and selling taking place in the temple have stirred up a hornet’s nest of opposition. The chief priests, scribes, elders, and Sadducees have all tried to challenge his authority with trick questions designed to trap or embarrass him, but he has deftly responded to them with divine wisdom and grace. Their verbal attacks having failed, all of Jesus’ opponents slink off, leaving him alone with his disciples.
Some of the disciples are impressed by the splendor of the temple, noting the beautiful stonework and the many expensive gifts that adorn it—precious metals and stones, tapestries and rugs made of the finest fabrics, but as far as I know, no Tiffany windows. By all accounts, the temple was a sight to behold. For the sake of clarity, this was not the same temple that Solomon had built a thousand years earlier. That temple was destroyed by the Babylonians hundreds of years earlier, in 586 BC, and much of the population of Jerusalem was taken into exile in Babylon.
After the exile ended, the temple was eventually rebuilt but on a much smaller scale than Solomon’s temple had been. That scaled-down temple remained as it was for four hundred years, until the late first century BC. That was when King Herod commenced a massive and grandiose restoration and expansion. Like certain modern-day leaders known for their ostentatious tastes in building projects, Herod had a thing for gold. The ancient Jewish historian Josephus writes that the restored temple was covered in massive gold plates that caused it to dazzle in the sun.
The act of restoring the temple to its former glory began about fifteen years before Jesus was born, and while the temple itself was completed within a couple of years, work on the complex that surrounded the temple continued for decades, even after Jesus was crucified. Both the monumental scale of the temple complex and the Greco-Roman architectural elements that it incorporated were designed to make a statement. Herod, who was not a legitimate king but who had been appointed king by Rome, wanted to impress upon his Roman benefactors the importance of the Jewish kingdom. He wanted to show the Romans that Jerusalem was a jewel on par with the other great cities of the Empire like Antioch, Alexandria, even Rome.
I’m sure that the whole temple complex was impressive and worthy of the disciples’ awe and admiration. Jesus, however, seems unimpressed. While the disciples stand transfixed by the splendor they see all around them, Jesus says to them, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”
Man! What a Debbie Downer! Does Jesus not appreciate great architecture? Are gold and marble just not his thing? Too tacky? Too ostentatious? I’m joking, of course. Whatever aesthetics Jesus may prefer, the issue is not one of taste. The issue is that the disciples have, yet again, mistaken power for glory. They gaze upon the gold roof of the temple, walk upon its marble floors, press their hands against its limestone walls and think, “Surely this sanctuary will endure forever, a symbol of the might and majesty of God.”
No doubt the Romans felt similarly about the building that would come to define Rome in the popular imagination. I’m referring of course to the Colosseum. A monument to Rome’s greatness, the Colosseum was the largest amphitheater in the Ancient World. Construction on it began in the year 72 AD…about 40 years after the Romans crucified Jesus and just two years after they destroyed the Jerusalem temple that the disciples believed would endure forever. That’s right. Barely had the final stone of the temple complex been put in place when the Romans, responding to a Jewish uprising, brutally put down the revolt by laying siege to Jerusalem and leveling the temple.
Vespasian, the Roman general who was tasked with quelling the rebellion, became emperor before the war ended. It was during his reign that the Colosseum was built. At the time, with victory secured on the battlefield and with a newly built architectural wonder such as the world had never seen, it must have seemed to the average Roman that Rome would forever be the center of the world, for the world had never seen such a power as Rome. And yet, all that remains today of either the Jerusalem temple or the Roman Colosseum are ruins—a single wall in Jerusalem and a stone skeleton in Rome. What once seemed immovable and eternal now serve as a reminder: all things must pass.
Jesus was right about the fate that awaited the temple. And having heard his warning, the disciples of course want to know when this will happen. What will be the sign that it’s about to take place? The disciples want to make sure that they’re prepared. They don’t want to be caught unaware. They don’t want to be vacationing on the beaches of the Sea of Galilee when everything’s about to go down. They want to be ready.
The reason for that, I believe, is that the disciples are thinking that the destruction of the temple will be part of a larger battle that will ultimately see Israel victorious. They think that, under the command of the Messiah, the armies of Israel, with the help of God Almighty, will cast out the Romans from Jerusalem and then eventually all of Israel. The kingdom will be restored. A son of David will once again sit on the throne.
Yes, I believe this is exactly what they’re thinking. They’ve just watched Jesus enter the holy city to a hero’s welcome, with people waving branches and shouting “Hosanna!” It’s the time of Passover, which celebrates Israel’s liberation from another oppressive power, Egypt. There is a patriotic spirit in the air. The disciples think the battle is coming. “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign?”
Jesus—ever hard to pin down—does not give them a date that they can mark on their calendars. He seems more concerned that they not be deceived because many false prophets will arise. There will be pretenders. There will be people proclaiming themselves the anointed one, declaring that the time is near. Don’t listen to their nonsense, he tells the disciples. They just want attention. They are not prophets, they are opportunists.
Of course there will be false messiahs because things will get so hairy that people will be desperate for a savior to protect them from the chaos and the violence. There will be wars. There will be insurrections. There will be earthquakes, famines, and, yes, plagues, too. In other words, pretty much the past five years.
But before any of that happens, Jesus warns the disciples that the suffering is going to get personal. They won’t read about it in the headlines, they will experience it first hand. “Before all this occurs,” Jesus tells them, “they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of your association with me.”
We worship Jesus Christ who in his suffering and death looked to all like a failure.
What’s more, “You will be betrayed even by your parents and your brothers, by relatives and friends. Some of you will be put to death. You will be hated by all because of my name.”
At this point the disciples must be wondering whether they’ve heard Jesus correctly because persecution and death is not at all what they thought they were signing up for when they left their fishing boats and their tax booths to follow Jesus. And I’m sure it’s not something that any of us thought that we were signing up for either when we answered the call of the Holy Spirit to follow Jesus Christ.
Even if we haven’t suffered persecution because of our faith—I certainly haven’t—I’m sure that none of us are strangers to suffering. It comes with the territory—not just the territory of being Christian, but of being human. Live long enough, and everyone in this room has, and you will suffer some form of tragedy: the death of someone you love, a serious disease that robs you of the health that is so easy to take for granted, the breakup of a marriage or other long-term relationship that can feel like a death.
And yet the Christian approach to suffering is radically different from how the world understands suffering. Where the world sees suffering as something to be avoided, if at all possible, the Christian—through the power of the Holy Spirit—sees suffering as an opportunity. Jesus tells the disciples that all their suffering will give them an opportunity to testify. Through their suffering, they will testify about the God who suffers both with us and for us.
Understand, I’m not suggesting that as Christians we purposefully seek opportunities to suffer. We are not masochists. But we worship a crucified Messiah. We worship Jesus Christ who in his suffering and death looked to all like a failure—to the Roman and Jewish authorities, certainly, but also to his own disciples. There’s a reason that Peter three times denied knowing Jesus; he didn’t want to be associated with suffering, failure, and death.
And who could blame him? The Christian message is counterintuitive and countercultural. We want to attach ourselves to winners, not losers. We want to be associated with success, not with failure. We want there to be glory in power, not power in the glory of the cross. We want to be part of something that will endure, not something that will die and then rise again. If we’re to testify, let it be of our victories, our triumphs, our successes…not our suffering.
I’m going to close with a story. There’s a chance the name Thomas Dorsey is familiar to you. Not Tommy Dorsey, the big band leader of the World War II era but Thomas Dorsey. Thomas Dorsey was an African American musician and songwriter who worked in blues and gospel, playing in both clubs and churches. He began to make a name for himself in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he left the club scene to focus solely on writing music for the church.
In August 1932, while he and his pregnant wife Nettie were living in Chicago, Dorsey travelled to St. Louis to attend a revival meeting at which he was the featured soloist. After the first night of the revival he received a one-sentence telegram from Chicago: “Your wife just died.” Dorsey raced home to learn that Nettie had given birth to a son before dying in childbirth. The next day the child died as well.
Dorsey withdrew from family and friends and stopped composing and performing music for some time. One day he found himself back in front of his piano, and he composed a hymn that has been sung in churches now for nearly a hundred years and that became a personal favorite of Martin Luther King Jr. “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” which we’re about to sing, is Thomas Dorsey’s testimony that emerged from incalculable suffering. It’s a testimony to the God who is well acquainted with suffering. It’s a testimony. It’s not a theological treatise. It’s not a confessional statement. More than anything, it’s simply a prayer. When everything that we relied upon has fallen, faded, or failed, when it feels like the end of the world, one thing remains and will endure: the abiding love and care of our precious Lord who takes our hand, helps us stand, and leads us home.