Sermon

Today’s Bible readings probably don’t come in the list of the top 10 most encouraging bible verses of all time.  The Gospel reading has Jesus speaking about the overthrowing of the temple and general gloom, doom and destruction. 

But, contrary to appearances, these passages are actually filled with hope and certainty - and can be a real source of reassurance for us who are also living through uncertain times. 

Jesus’s followers had been with him in the Temple where he had been teaching people and generally challenging the chief priests and the scribes.  And people around them had been admiring the Temple - the Temple that occupied the central place in the national life, religion and imagination of Israel. It was a beautiful temple, decorated over hundreds of years to represent the heritage and story of God and his people. 

When Brenda. Godfrey and I visited the Holy Land a few years ago, we saw the bits of the Temple walls that remain on Temple Mount in Jerusalem.  They have excavated parts of the Western Wall and we went down into tunnels to look at the stones that formed the original Temple complex. The largest stone they have found is over 13m by 3m by 4m and weighs about 600 tons. It is one of the heaviest objects ever lifted by human beings without powered machinery.  

These huge stones acted as a stabiliser for the whole Temple. So imagine looking at  a stone that big and being told, ‘the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down’. Jesus' prediction would have been outrageous to Jesus’s listeners. What? The Temple? Surely not. That could never happen? This would be a bit like saying to us that Buckingham Palace will fall down, or Nelson’s column will topple over! 

The disciples would have heard Jesus’ words with the same shock that I remember as I watched on live television the airplanes fly into the tower of the World Trade Centre on 9/11 and then began to hear of attacks on the Pentagon, and thinking: ‘What’s going on? What is this? What is happening. Many asked, “Is the end of the world?”.

It’s that kind of shock for Jesus hearers. This is truly apocalyptic stuff. Of course by the time Luke wrote his Gospel the Temple had indeed been destroyed, by the Romans in AD 70, during the Siege of Jerusalem. So for Luke’s first readers, hearing Jesus make these predictions held an awful reality. What about us? 

Of course, here in Ilkley, we are not in the same kind of danger, in reality, as was experienced in the Fall of Jerusalem. But what if someone had said to you 10 years ago - Donald Trump will be President of the United States, Keir Starmer will be Prime Minister, we will have left the European Union, and the climate emergency will become so urgent that people will take to the streets in protest, bringing cities to a standstill. 

Whatever you think about all those issues, these facts would have seemed relatively improbable. And yet here we are in the midst of uncertain times. Each night the news contains another twist and turn no one anticipated. You hear this phrase quite often: ‘What next? Nothing would surprise me any more’. It could be very easy to feel a sense of doom and gloom about the days we’re living through.  

There is a sense that the British People are powerless with regard to immigration and the economy - maybe even in life in general.  That powerlessness can lead to real anxiety. Perhaps we too, with Jesus disciples might be tempted to ask; “What next? When will all this end, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?’ 

As I said, Jesus's words aren’t immediately reassuring. He predicts wars and uprisings, nation against nation, earthquakes, famines, plagues and persecution. We are seeing all those things in our world today.  It’s all very well for Jesus to say, ‘Do not be terrified’! But why on earth not? 

We might be tempted to cry. It all seems pretty terrifying! So what comfort can we glean from this rather strange passage? Because contrary to initial appearances, I think it does indeed offer us a way of seeing our present times, being prepared as Christians to face all that may come our way - and helping others to do likewise. There are 3 reasons why we should not be terrified, despite appearances. 

The first reason not to be terrified is that … 

What we are living through is nothing new. 

It feels bad. It feels worse than anything.   And it has always been that way. People worried about the future in Jesus’s day, Luke’s first readers worried about the future, and we worry about the future now.  We know the world is a pretty messed up place. 

nder if one response for us could be to set our worries into context; to give thanks for the blessings we do have, to pray for our Christian brothers and sisters around the world who experience real threat to life, and to do what small things we can towards the healing of our society, our nation, and our planet. 

A young girl was walking along a beach upon which thousands of starfish had been washed up during a terrible storm. When she came to each starfish, she would pick it up, and throw it back into the ocean. She had been doing this for some time when a man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? You can’t save all these starfish. You can’t begin to make a difference!”After a few moments, she bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied, “Well, I made a difference to that one!

The second reason not to be terrified is that …… although, as Jesus says, ‘kingdom will rise against kingdom’, he also reminds his disciples, and us, that we are part of another kingdom - the Kingdom of God.

Because we have a Saviour, Jesus, who has passed through the very worst calamity, death itself, and is now living, we know that there is nothing that holds a threat to Christ’s followers, not even death itself. The end of our Scripture Passage tells us that not even a hair on our heads will perish is a tricky one to understand, not least because we know that people do perish, even Christian people, in all sorts of tragic circumstances and that unfortunately in some parts of the world actual martyrdom is a very real threat.  

The phrase "losing hair from one's head" can clearly mean "being protected from death".  So, for instance in Acts 27 Paul tells the sailors in the wrecked ship: "Therefore I urge you to take some food, for it will help you survive; for none of you will lose a hair from your heads."  But it can also suggest that whatever the circumstances, even in death, we are seen and known and precious to God. 

So - even when it appears that nothing is sure and stable, we can be comforted by the assurance that his Kingdom will have no end, and that God is looking after his faithful people. It’s because of this knowledge that we can do a slightly strange thing in the face of all the change upheaval - and not be terrified. 

 can add a peaceful presence to our frantic world; by being a calm and reconciling, rather than provoking, presence on social media, by meeting to pray, and by bringing peace and faith to our communities in turbulent times. 

The third reason not to be terrified is that … Any upheaval and change, such as that we are living though now, gives us an opportunity to speak about the reason for our hope, and to witness to all that our faith means to us. 

Jesus says that his followers will be handed over to synagogues and prisons, and will be brought before kings and governors because of his name (which is of course what happened to Jesus himself), but that when that happened it ‘would give them an opportunity - yes, an opportunity, or some translations even say a gift - to testify’. I guess he’s right.  

The political upheaval we’re experiencing at the moment does give us an opportunity to speak about what we believe in and what we value - as every TV pundit is doing.  

Our passage is simply Jesus’s encouragement to his followers that if they are given the opportunity to testify, they can rely on the help of God’s Holy Spirit and they don’t stand alone to offer their defence. This is an assurance that when we do have to give an account of our relationship with Jesus, we don’t stand there alone to do that - we will be given the wisdom and the words to say. 

That should be a great reassurance to us. So don’t be terrified. What we testify to as Christians - whatever turmoil is going on around us - is the triumph of life over death, light over darkness, peace over war, unity over division. 

What Jesus is calling for here is a kingdom vision that takes us through and beyond any terror, a vision that meets terror with faith, trust and endurance.