23rd Sunday after Pentecost
November 16, 2025
Luke 21:5-19

The audio of this sermon is available here. The video of the worship service from Trinity Episcopal Church is available here.

They should’ve seen it coming. For the people of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, the ancient Jews, the Temple was the sacred dwelling of God’s very presence. Adorned with gold and jewels, they said it was blinding in the noonday sun. But as the disciples are gawking at it, Jesus gives them a dire prediction – “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” (Luke 21:6).

This is shocking for the disciples. They want to know when all that will happen. They want to know what sign there will be that the time is near. They cannot conceive of a world, of a time, of a circumstance in which that magnificent building would be thrown down. But that’s precisely what happens, not more than forty years after Jesus. 

And truly, they should have seen it coming. At the time of Jesus, when he offered this prediction, Jerusalem was an occupied city; occupied by the Roman Empire. Tensions were brewing. Jewish revolutionaries, loathing their imperial occupiers, were already waging a campaign of violence against Roman soldiers; today, we might call them “insurgents.” On the other hand, other Jewish leaders were happy to go along with the Romans; maybe they had given up on independence, maybe they thought it would be good for them. Today, we might call them “collaborators.” Politically, socially, the whole place was a tinderbox. That is why Jesus was crucified. The Romans didn’t want anybody upsetting that delicate balance of power. And forty years after Jesus, when the whole city breaks out in open revolt, the Romans burn down the Temple; in a way, they crucified the entire ancient city of Jerusalem. No one should be surprised that the Romans did all that; perhaps we should be surprised that it didn’t happen sooner. They should have seen it coming.

But you never really see it coming, do you? Even when you have all the evidence, even when all the signs are pointing that way, we humans, stubborn as we are, refuse to see it coming. 

This is something that has happened in our own collective history, too. Think of America in 1860. The signs of Civil War were all there. A country divided, half slave states, half free states. Bleeding Kansas; the Fugitive Slave Act; and a looming presidential election. They should have seen it coming.

It happen on the levels of nations, and it happens on personal levels, too. You have your own stories, as do I. I was a senior in college, but I felt terrible. Constant thirst, nagging headaches, rapid weight loss. All the signs of a major health threat, but I didn’t pay any attention. I should’ve seen it coming, but I didn’t. Not until I had my physical exam to get into seminary did the doctor call me to tell me I had juvenile diabetes. The signs were all there, but I refused to see them.

You think that things will never change but, in hindsight, it was all too obvious, the signs were all there. We should have all seen it coming. Like those first disciples asking Jesus, we wonder: “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” (Luke 21:7). All of us, on the personal, familial, and social level, ought to be ready; to be looking for the signs of upheaval.

But why? Why do we miss these obvious signs? Well, it just seems to be part of the human condition. We are so afraid, so fixed in our ways, so accustomed to the way things are, we cannot conceive of things changing. Oh, maybe some little tweaks here and there. But we cannot envision wholesale upheaval. Just as the disciples could not imagine that the Temple would be thrown down, though they should have seen the signs. Just as the disciples could not fathom that Jesus himself would be crucified and rise again, though he had kept telling them. 

And today, we could come up with the running list of signs that we should be paying attention to. Of the things that we ought to see coming. Politically, socially, ecologically, financially. But that’s a different sermon for a different day. Today, in this lesson, I don’t think that’s what Jesus is getting at. He’s not trying to make his disciples more informed, reasonable people. He’s not giving his disciples a crystal ball to look into the future. No, he’s trying to inspire them. To give them hope. So that when things do happen, when everything does go up in flames, they’ll have the courage and the faith to face it.

As he said to his disciples – “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 contract. By your endurance, you will gain your souls” (Luke 21:13, 14, 19).

The Church is not here to just give you more information; to tell you what to think; to convince you of anything. The Church is here to provide fellowship and grace and mercy so that when your Temples do come crashing down, when your life is burned up, when the Romans come marching in and tear down what you thought was sacred, you will have the people and the community and the faith to get through it. As the Church, my Christian brothers and sisters were there for me, when my world came crashing down. As the Church, even in the midst of bitter acrimony in our history, has continued to worship the Lord. The sign that we see, they are not only warnings of what might come, they are a call upon our lives to remain steadfast, vigilant, to endure with Jesus. That’s the lesson for today. “By your endurance, you will gain your souls.” 

And so, as your priest, I have one word of exhortation for you – pray. Pray. In every moment, for all things, pray. When you see the signs of a politically fractious society, pray. When you see the signs of environmental degradation, pray. When you see a record stock market index but see so many still hurting, pray. When you see the signs of the times, and you are worried, scared for what tomorrow might bring, pray. When you are joyful, grateful, when you stand in God’s grace and mercy, pray. In our Trinity book club we are reading a book on prayer, and the author, a priest and monk, makes a great point.¹ He says, “Every scrap of wood burns in a fire.” So do not think that to make a fire of prayer, to light the fire of Jesus in your life, that you need to set aside hours and hours of silence to pray. To build the fire just right. No, every scrap of wood burns in a fire. So throughout the day, just throw on little scraps of wood to the fire, offer up those short prayers. And if you add up all the five second prayers over the course of a day, you might just find you’ll have prayed more than if you set aside a certain amount of time. As you see the signs of the times, each and every moment, offer a little prayer, a little scrap of wood onto the fire, and soon you’ll have a life blazing with the glory of God. 

So that, when things do happen; when we all have to face the next social upheaval, the next financial crash, the next hurricane, the next diagnosis, when your family falls apart, when your kid gets sick, when your job doesn’t work out; when your life unravels at the seams; “when not one stone will be left upon another,” you will have something still burning, still bright, still ablaze – a life with Jesus. A life that can never go away. For it is by your endurance that you will gain your souls.

1. Gioia, Luigi. Say It to God: In Search of Prayer: The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book 2018. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2017.  ↩︎