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THIRTY-THIRD
SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (Year
C) 17th November
2019
A reading
from the Holy Gospel according to Gospel Luke 21:5-19
When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned
with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, Jesus said, “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.” They
asked him, “Teacher, when will this be and what will
be the sign that this is about to take place?” And
he said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many
will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The
time is near!’ Do not go after them. “When you
hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for
these things must take place first, but the end will not
follow immediately.” Then he aid to them, “Nation
will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there
will be great earthquakes and in various places famines and
plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs
from heaven. “But before all this occurs, 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 my name. This will give you an opportunity
to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense
in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none
of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.
You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives
and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You
will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of
your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your
souls.”
APOCALYPSE NOW!
We
are drawing now to the end of the liturgical year. We have
come full circle from last year’s Advent celebration
of Jesus’ first coming to an eager anticipation of
his ultimate appearance. We have experienced the love and
the life of Jesus in every aspect of his incarnate existence.
We are faced with the reality that the cross is still a powerful
part of our experience and that the full knowledge of the
resurrection is yet to be ours.
For that reason today’s readings place before us those
sections of scripture that refer to the end times. The readings
assure us that there will be a just culmination of all our
efforts. No matter how powerful evil may seem at present,
goodness will never be overcome by evil. This is the message
of the cross that resides at the heart of our hopes. Christian
end of time literature, or what is known as Christian apocalyptic
literature, was not so much concerned with predicting the
future as interpretation, lending perspective to help people
to understand their struggles as part of the birth pangs
of the ‘end’. By their endurance and constancy
in the Lord, the faithful could meet the end with confidence
and not fear, joy and not dread. At the time of Luke’s
writing the Christian community of the 80s was already experiencing
its share of the cross in the form of persecution from both
Jewish and gentile sources.
Today’s Gospel (Luke 21: 5-19) was occasioned by an
admiring remark about the temple’s beauty. Herod the
Great’s work at renovating the temple was still in
progress during Jesus’ earthly ministry and was only
completed 30 years after the events of Good Friday in 63
AD. Seven years later it was utterly destroyed by the Roman
army under Titus. This is how Josephus, the Jewish historian,
described the temple: ‘The exterior of the structure
lacked nothing that could astound either mind or eye. For
being covered on all sides with massive plates of gold, the
sun was no sooner upon it than it radiated so fiery a flash
that people striving to look at it were compelled to avert
their eyes, as from the rays of the sun’.
No wonder the disciples were awe-struck. Given this description
of its magnificence, it is not surprising that the temple,
even though incomplete, evoked the admiration of those who
saw it. So Jesus’ prophecy about its destruction came
as a shock to his listeners. Naturally the first reaction
to such a statement was to ask when it would happen and how
they could recognise the onset of such a calamity. Jesus
also predicted war, earthquakes, pestilence and famine; events
that unfolded in the decade preceding the destruction of
the temple, well before Luke wrote his Gospel in the 80s.
So we ask what meaning do these events relate to us today?
Well, what is important for us to remember is that, while
these particular crises of which Luke wrote have now passed,
the struggle to survive the forces of evil remains an ever
present reality. At the outset Jesus counselled us ‘not
to be misled’, - that when suffering comes there will
be support for the faithful and that Jesus would give us ‘words
and wisdom’. Persecution would give us an opportunity
to be witnesses to Him, by acting in a way that testifies
to our fidelity to what we truly are. But for all of us,
the advice was and remains the same – confident hope,
joyful anticipation, and patient endurance, spell not merely
survival but victory and salvation.
Kevin
Lyon
Archdeacon of Glendalough
