Service for November 16 Twenty-Third Sunday of Pentecost
Sermon for November 16, 2025 Twenty-third Sunday of Pentecost
Isaiah 65: 7 For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. 18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating, for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight. 19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it or the cry of distress. 20 No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days or an old person who does not live out a lifetime, for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. 21 They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22 They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat, for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. 23 They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity,[c] for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord— and their descendants as well. 24 Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. 25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.
The people around Jesus are admiring the architecture and Jesus reminds them of how fleeting such things can be. The temple, its construction begun by Herod before the birth of Christ was a marvel of the ancient world. We think of King Herod as the enemy of Jesus but in the ancient world his reputation was as a builder: one who reshaped Jerusalem with huge building projects. “This massive structure,” Jesus says, “is not permanent. It looks solid and sturdy; something to admire but it’s all an illusion. Before long, it will seem as if the whole world has come to an end.”
The two readings we hear today are a form of writing called apocalyptic literature. The word Apocalypse comes from the Greek for “revelation” or something “being torn aside” or revealed. Apocalyptic language about “end times” is usually written during crisis in order to help its original audience make sense of difficult experiences. In the ancient world, apocalyptic language generally appealed to those on the margins of society. For those people whose lives were miserable because of the Empire’s oppression apocalyptic writing gave hope that the Empire might not last forever.
And sure enough that very temple Jesus and all those awestruck disciples were standing in was rubble within 40 years after Jesus spoke these words when the Romans destroyed it and much of Jerusalem. Luke wrote his gospel 10 to 20 years after that destruction. He’s reminding the early church that Jesus knew that the temple was not immovable; not indestructible, despite how spectacular and immovable it seemed to be. Luke was reassuring the people who felt that everything they thought was certain in their lives had crumbled into nothing: the temple, Jerusalem. They must have thought the world was ending. So Luke reminds them of Jesus standing in the middle of the temple saying, “the time is coming when not even one stone will be left upon another. All will be demolished.” The temple, Jerusalem even the Roman Empire won’t last forever.
And Jesus says, don’t lose hope.
Another thing to remember about apocalyptic writing like this passage in Luke and in the Isaiah reading is that is assumes that there are always two layers to reality – the material and the spiritual and that the two realities are linked. The material and physical existence is linked with the deeper reality of the heavens and, especially related to the ongoing conflict between good and evil.
Jesus redirects the disciples shifting the focus from signs and explanations to the disciples’ own lives; to their faith journey in the midst of this world with its upheavals and distractions, its suffering and despair. Jesus diverts attention from the “apocalyptic” events that fascinate us still. He says, “Beware that you are not led astray” by a useless, empty, and simplistic equating of current events with the End Times. There will be wars, there will be insurrections, there will be earthquakes but these are not to terrify you or render you inactive. But before all these things occur, you will be persecuted. That’s what is important. Your faith and the faith of the community gathered for worship.
Jesus says that our faith and our time are not to be squandered looking for signs and living in fear. Instead Jesus says, live your life of faith in ways that testify to the world that God is the only one who is eternal; who is immovable and unshakeable; the only one who can truly anchor your life in the midst of the turmoil of this age and this life. Jesus says, it is only God and God’s wisdom that can guide you and your faith community in the midst of this and all of life’s challenges.
I’ve often wondered about the truly terrible things people have suffered throughout history and wondered how they must have felt about what was happening. In the midst of terrible circumstances: war, genocide, famine, what must that have been like for the regular people experiencing it all? Did they think, “Surely this is the worst it has ever been! Surely, this is what the Bible was talking about, “Nations and kingdoms will fight against each other. 11 There will be great earthquakes and wide-scale food shortages and epidemics. There will also be terrifying sights and great signs in the sky.”
That must have seemed to be coming true at times during WW1 and 2; during the genocide in Rwanda; as shells were falling in Syria recently; and so many times and places throughout history.
Surely no one has felt more terror or has been more certain that the end times had arrived or cried out to God to set everything right again, more than those who were hauled off to concentration camps in Nazi Germany.
I recently read the story of a Jew, now living as a baker in the New York neighborhood of Crown Heights who told a story of surviving a freezing night in a rail car on the way to a concentration camp. As Alan Storey says in our Manna and Mercy study, “I don’t know if this story actually happened this way. But, I know it’s true.” The baker, Yankel tells his story: “We were on the train, in a boxcar, being taken to Auschwitz. Night came and it was freezing, deathly cold, in that boxcar. The Germans would leave the cars on the side of the tracks overnight, sometimes for days on end without any food, and of course, no blankets to keep us warm,” he said. “Sitting next to me was an older Jew – this beloved elderly Jew - from my hometown I recognized, but I had never seen him like this. He was shivering from head to toe and looked terrible. So, I wrapped my arms around him and began rubbing him, to warm him up. I rubbed his arms, his legs, his face, his neck. I begged him to hang on. All night long; I kept the man warm this way. I was tired, I was freezing cold myself, my fingers were numb, but I didn’t stop rubbing the heat on to this man’s body. Hours and hours went by this way. Finally, night passed, morning came, and the sun began to shine. There was some warmth in the cabin, and then I looked around the car to see some of the other Jews in the car. To my horror, all I could see were frozen bodies, and all I could hear was a deathly silence.
Nobody else in that cabin made it through the night – they died from the frost. Only two people survived: the old man and me… The old man survived because somebody kept him warm; I survived because I was warming somebody else…”
Yankel the baker ends the story by saying, “Let me tell you the secret of Judaism. When you warm other people’s hearts, you remain warm yourself. When you seek to support, encourage and inspire others; then you discover support, encouragement and inspiration in your own life as well.”
I don’t know if that story really happened that way. But, I believe it’s true. Not only for Jews but for Christians as well and for all people. When terrible things happen that feel as if they are the end of the world Jesus counsels us not to let our fear distract us from the truth of who we are and who God is. Instead, whatever is happening “…will provide you with an opportunity to testify. [Jesus will] give you words and wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to counter or contradict."
Sometimes when it seems as if the world is falling apart and surely only God can make things right the “words” we are given by Jesus are not spoken words but embodied words. The words of warming another human being’s body keeping them alive and in the meantime saving ourselves.
Sometimes the words are truth spoken in the face of lies as when 2 million + people sign a petition demanding that Rodney Reed not be executed as the state of Texas was about to do despite the fact that by many measures he is an innocent man who has suffered grave injustice being sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit.
Sometimes the words we are given are truth spoken by a child who can see more clearly the truth that so many of the adults in power around her are unwilling to see: the truth that earth is in grave danger of becoming uninhabitable by humans; the truth spoken by Greta Thunberg who has said, How dare you?” She said, “This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!
You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”
Sometimes the words Jesus gives are words of hope and consolation as are the prayers that we all have prayed surrounding those we love who are struggling with illness or depression or addiction or the effects of cancer treatment or racism or to those who are mourning. We tell them we love them and that we are holding them in prayer before our God who calls them beloved and walks with them in their suffering; who no matter how this chapter of their lives is resolved will hold them and walk with them into the new creation that only God can promise. The new creation of Isaiah in which, “No one will ever hear the sound of weeping or crying in it again.” Where, “No more will babies live only a few days, or the old fail to live out their days. They won’t labor in vain, nor bear children to a world of horrors.” The new creation where “Wolf and lamb will graze together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.”
Jesus counsels us that no matter what we see around us we are to continue to live our lives trusting God with our hearts and with our lives. We are to continue to live our faith in God doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly with God. Isaiah turned to poetry in the face of mystery.