Sermon - 2019-11-17

Our Gospel lesson today can serve as a warning, but on that, we must hear through the ears of the people who heard it.  So let us go back to first-century Jerusalem, Jesus is speaking about the end times and especially the destruction of the Temple.  Now imagine for one moment that you are standing in the church, the place where you come to encounter God within the world, the place where you find comfort and peace.  A place where things can actually make sense in the world or at least, you know that God is in control here.  

So I want you to think for a moment, Jesus, the savior of the world begins talking about the destruction of this place.  That not even one stone shall remain upon one another. For many of the people who heard it, were afraid. They knew that the temple had been destroyed by a foreign army and the people were taken out of their homeland to become homeless and without a homeland.  They knew this was part of their history and if it happened once, it could happen again.  

So their next question is when.  When will the bad things happen? When will we be affected?  If we know when we can protect ourselves and preserve a remnant of who we are.  Yet no time is given and even it was, the people would not believe because hearing or seeing, we would simply say, “That would never happen to us.”  

However, it does happen.  In the year 70 AD or CE, the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed a second time.  The temple is destroyed and the place where people could go to experience God was no longer that building.  No longer could you go to the place where your mother, father, grandma or grandpa went to worship. No longer could you feel connected as you did with your whole community, with the ancient past.  

Now, what will you do?  For many of the people still gathered and became people not the Temple but of the Word.  The Word of God, the very thing that they did not listen to, is now the very thing that binds them together.  However, for those who believed in Jesus Christ and declared him as their Savior and Lord, they were met with anger, hate, judgment, persecution, and feared for their very life.  Yes, to be a Christian could lead to your death. It was not until around the year 330 AD or CE that the Roman Emperor declared that the whole Empire would now be Christian that Christians were no longer persecuted publicly, at least with their life. 

This message could scare us, it could be something that we hear and we say, “Nope, not going to believe that God would do that to me, do that to us.  Nope, Never.” However, places of worship are simply buildings but it is truly the people that bring it to life. It is the people who walk the halls, that brings energy and life to the words that are spoken here.  It is our hands and feet that move us from being scared within our own homes of the world that would seem to destroy us, into looking and seeing the hope and grace within the world that God is calling us to deliver.  

To truly think about this again, God becomes flesh and walks among us delivering a message.  Now it is a message that we do not want to hear but guess what, God is God, and you are not. So you may want to listen and realize what that means.  Now whether we are in first-century Jerusalem, fourth-century Rome, or even today, this message speaks to every church. We are not just buildings, we are people who are here to listen to God’s Calling, to have our hearts and minds aligned with what God is calling us to do, all for the very purpose of serving others who are in need, who have not heard of God’s love, who are suffering in this world.  

Now please note clearly, the work of your salvation is complete, that was done upon the cross, the work of the church continues in every age, every generation until the coming of Christ again.  Amen.