Homily, November 16, 2025, Rev. Holly Cardone
Always Faithful
November 16, 2025
The date for the writing of Luke’s gospel is around 85ce. That means Luke is telling the reader this story of Jesus, as someone who knows what has happened. The temple has been destroyed by the Romans. Jerusalem ripped apart. The Jewish people are grieving. With this story, Luke is helping people make spiritual sense of something that has shattered their community, their lives, everything they know and believe about God. Luke isn’t predicting the destruction of the temple, he’s helping people make sense of the temple already destroyed, and the Jewish people already dispersed.
Some people are standing around the temple with Jesus, they are awestruck. The temple is enormous! They’re pointing at the massive stones, mesmerized by the way the sunlight hits the white marble, and the sparkling gold you could see for miles. The temple wasn’t just a building for the Jewish people. It was their religious center, their national pride and their spiritual anchor. The temple is where God dwelled among them. And Jesus says to them, “Oh, all this. It’s all coming down. Not one stone will be left on another.”
Before the destruction of the temple in 70ce, the Zealots were organizing the resistance and trying to incite a rebellion in Rome. Here’s the scene. The Jewish people were living under a tax burden that was intense. It weighed on every part of life: toll bridges, crop taxes, property taxes import and export taxes, sales taxes, and then special taxes every time Rome had a building project or financing campaign. And Rome hired locals, Jewish people, to collect these taxes, and the tax collectors often skimmed off the top, stealing from the friends and neighbors. The Zealots were a radical anti-Roman Jewish movement, committed to overthrowing Rome. Consequently, Rome retaliated, destroying the temple, and killing somewhere between 350,000 and 1 million Jews.
So, when Jesus is talking about wars and insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues, political turmoil, people know what he’s talking about. Jesus is speaking to people who know first hand, suffering, instability and oppression.
“Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues, dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.”
Apocalyptic language. That’s what Luke is using. We hear the word apocalyptic and we think, the end of the world. Armageddon and asteroids headed for earth. We think of cults, zombies and the Left Behind series that sold 80 million copies. But apocalyptic literature in Jesus’ world wasn’t about predicting the end of civilization. It wasn’t fear-mongering or threatening. It was a pastoral word. It is using symbolic and dramatic imagery to “pull back the curtain” or revealing the spiritual truth about something. Pulling back the curtain to reveal God’s activity, justice and purpose in the world.
Jesus with this extreme and dramatic language is saying don’t panic. Don’t be terrified. God is still God and God is still working in the world. This stuff has always happened, war and famine, natural disasters and insurrections, oppression and injustice, but God is always present. God is faithful in every age. Even when the structures collapse and the temple stones fall away and your personal world seems to have fallen apart and is now unrecognizable.
People are impressed with grandeur, buildings and gold and permanence. But just before this scene, chapter 21 of Luke opens with the story of the widow putting two small coins in the treasury after the rich had put their gifts in the temple treasury. The rich gave from their abundance, but the widow gave everything, sacrificing all she had.
Human achievements are temporary, but small, quiet acts of faithfulness endure.
It is so easy to spend our lives accumulating, striving, and working toward things that won’t last, our reputations, our possessions, our status, our images. Jesus reminds us to pay attention to the small acts of love, service, generosity, courage, especially when they cost you something.
In our reading this morning Jesus isn’t trying to frighten his listeners, although it feels like that. He’s preparing them for reality: hardship, instability, loss, challenge, but also, the fierce unwavering present of God right in the middle of it.
God is right in the middle of everything. All the time. Richard Rohr has this beautiful line where he says Christians have spent so much time waiting for the “Second Coming” that they’ve missed the first, and third. He says Christ is not an event we wait for, but a presence always coming toward us, always showing up, always revealing God in every person and every corner of creation.
That’s what Luke is trying to convey to his readers. Christ is always coming towards you. Always showing up. Always revealing God in every person and every corner of creation.
The invitation for us is to live less centered on ourselves and more centered on one another. To not look for Christ in the second coming, but in the here and now. To look for Christ in your neighbor, in the one who is vulnerable. The one who needs your presence today.
And when buildings are torn down, and stones fall, the temple crumbles and the world shakes, God is, was and always will be faithful.
Amen.