Summary: Jesus urges us not to fixate on appearances of religiosity that can lead to self-righteousness or on catastrophes that can lead to fear. Instead, we are to focus on God, to trust him and bear witness to his faithfulness, whatever our circumstances.
In March of this year, Flow, a movie by a Latvian animator about a black cat and other animals whose lives are upended by catastrophic flooding, took the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards.1 The disaster elicits feelings of fear, anxiety and hope in the characters as well as in audiences who see the film -- emotions the disciples surely felt when they heard what Jesus had to say about the destruction of their grand temple and the apocalyptic events to come.
Herod the Great was engaged in a massive decades-long rebuilding and beautification project of the temple. Its white marble foundation and gold-plated walls looked like snow-covered mountains lit by the sun, blinding viewers who gawked at its glory and talked about how it honored God. But while the temple was a source of national pride meant to point people to God, it was built by the same man who had ruthlessly slaughtered his own family members whom he viewed as a threat to his throne.
Hearing the oohs and ahs of people viewing the temple, Jesus declared that not one stone would be left upon another, but all would be thrown down. Many saw the material appearance of the structure, but failed to see the corruption, hypocrisy and injustice within.
Jesus had just pointed out that the poor widow who dropped two small coins into the collection plate, which was all she had to live on, had given more than all the well-to-do donors who made an ostentatious show of their generosity and religiosity.
Jesus' warning against focusing on the appearance of godliness while neglecting its substance is in line with the wisdom tradition found in Ecclesiastes. In that book, the Teacher wrote that he had built great works, houses and pools; planted gardens and orchards; created parks; acquired slaves and concubines, huge herds and flocks; and amassed treasures and cultural achievements, becoming greater than everyone who had preceded him in Jerusalem. But at the end of the day, he said, "I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind."2 But he learned "that whatever God does endures forever ... God has done this so that all should stand in awe before him."3
Building a magnificent religious edifice is pointless if the condition of the heart fails to match the external structure. As the psalmist says, "Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain."4
The disciples didn't catch Jesus' drift, though. Rather than focusing on what's eternal and essential, they asked when the temple would be destroyed, and what sign would indicate it was about to happen.
How often do we also nitpick about non-essentials and miss what's really important?
But Jesus isn't interested in providing us with the dates and times of future events. Don't be distracted by people who claim to know such details, he says. Be more concerned with how you live in the present.
Like the disciples, many of us would rather avoid any trials, but Jesus doesn't sugarcoat his message. His guidance is for people who live in the real world, not in some fantasyland where everything is sweet and light. He speaks of wars, insurrections, social disorder and political upheavals, conflicts, earthquakes, famines, plagues, dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. "People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken,"5 he said.
On top of all that, Jesus predicted the arrest and persecution of his followers. The Greek word meaning "persecute," diokA, carries the idea of chasing someone. Persecuted people may be harassed, falsely accused, betrayed by relatives and dear friends, doxxed, swatted, detained, incarcerated, deported, receive death threats; they may lose jobs, friends, security and even their lives.
Such traumatic developments may lead to dismantling of faith -- a phenomenon known as "religious deconstruction,"6 which refers to a process in which people re-examine their faith tradition, belief and practice. While this may result in a more robust faith for some, it can lead others to abandon their faith completely. As people lose faith in religious leaders and institutions which are increasingly seen as "corrupt, ineffective, and self-serving,"7 they may stop believing in a faithful God those leaders and institutions claim to represent. When that happens, there is nothing to prevent terror from taking over.
In such a world, how can we not panic? When the things we have believed seem like illusions, and we can't see God for the cataclysmic events bearing down on us, how can our faith survive?
Yet Jesus urges the disciples not to be terrified.
It is amid suffering that we bear the most effective witness to the power of God. In the greatest difficulties, it is our enduring and our persistent joy in the Lord that proves the truth of the Gospel. When we acknowledge that God is God in good times and bad, no matter what happens in the world or in our lives, we are testifying to the truth, as Job asserted, "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD."8
When Paul and Silas were beaten, shackled and thrown in jail after, in the name of Christ, freeing a female slave from a spirit of divination, what did they do? They prayed and sang hymns to God, bore witness to their fellow-prisoners, to their jailer and his household, to the police and city magistrates, both about the injustice they had experienced and also to their hope in Christ.9
Our testimony is not only given in the words we speak, but in the way we live. Jesus told his disciples not to obsess over how they would defend themselves from false charges, but to concentrate on following him, trusting him to give them wisdom their opponents would be unable to refute.
After delivering the bad news that everyone would hate his disciples because of his name, Jesus made the startling assertion that "not a hair of your head will perish," even though they would be persecuted and some would die.
Jesus' own resurrection from the dead demonstrates the power of the Holy Spirit to take what has been physically destroyed and infuse and transform it with indestructible life.
Paul explained that the love of God in Christ is greater than the power of death, when he asked rhetorically, "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? ...."
Then he answered his own question emphatically: "No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."10
If this be true, we can say with the psalmist: "In God I trust; I am not afraid. What can a mere mortal do to me?"11
Through all the calamities and furies we may face, Jesus calls us to reject fear and ground ourselves in the hope that God remains present and active in the world and in our lives. We are to keep the faith unfailingly, persevere in persistent hope, against all odds. "By your endurance you will gain your souls," Jesus said.
How can we endure, in the face of such fearsome onslaughts against our faith? Surely not in our own strength, but in the strength of Christ who lives within us.
Jesus' promise to be with his disciples even to the end of the world still applies today. The one whose name is Emmanuel, God with us, assures us of God's presence with us, whatever challenges we face.
When everything is falling apart and we are tempted to panic, that is our time to bear witness to the bigger picture of God's loving presence and the hope we have that chaos is not the last word, that Jesus' resurrection assures us of eternal life and that God is building an indestructible temple in which to dwell, made up of living stones, the people of God in the beloved community.
Only seven years after its completion, Herod's temple was leveled by the Romans. When the temples we have built our lives around fall, where do we find courage, meaning, security and stability?
Our faith is in the God who "is able ... to raise up children to Abraham"12 from the very stones on the ground. God is constructing a new temple made out of living stones, human beings thrown down by life, dedicated to serving God. We are becoming that temple, "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone; in him the whole structure is joined together, and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God."13