23 Pentecost (Proper 28), 2025-C: Jesus' Way of Love

Lectionary: Isaiah 65:17-25; Canticle 9; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19 

En el nombre de Dios, cuyo camino de amor es nuestro camino de vida… 

In the name of God whose Way of Love is our way of life. Amen.

Today’s readings offer us one of Jesus’ most important teachings covering so much of our basic belief – who he is, who we are because of who he is, and how we live because of the presence of his spirit in us.

Here’s the background…

The temple Jesus and his disciples are standing near in our gospel story is the 3rd temple built in Jerusalem. The first, built by Solomon, was destroyed by the Babylonians who sent the Jewish people into exile. When they returned from exile, they built a second temple, inferior in quality and aesthetic to Solomon’s temple, but it’s what they could manage with their post-exilic resources.

This second temple was destroyed by Herod who built a bigger, better, more lavish temple in its place. It was massive - 15 stories high, with huge gold plating on the outside, so when the sun shone it was too bright to even look at it! The inside was furnished lavishly as well. This third temple represented the epitome of earthly wealth, power, and splendor. 

This is the temple Jesus predicts will be thrown down in the days to come, not one stone being left upon another. The question is: is Jesus talking about the actual building or what it represents? Knowing Jesus, it’s both.

But there’s another temple being referenced here. The temple of God is the dwelling place of God, so this third temple is Jesus himself, the Incarnate Word. And if we believe in what Jesus did at Pentecost, breathing his spirit into us, there’s yet another temple: us. This is one more instance of Jesus talking about a single, tangible, earthly reality while at the same time, deepening and broadening it to include comprehensive, cosmic, and eternal truth.

On this, his final journey to Jerusalem, Jesus is continuing to teach his disciples how to live in the world as followers of his Way of Love.

The destruction of their beloved, historic building, even with the promise of a bigger and better one, is disconcerting. Many of us had a similar experience recently when bulldozers tore down the east wing of our White House. (Photo credit: Jacquelin Martin/AP)

Like us, the Jewish people hadn’t been informed or consulted about it. A single powerful figure, in this case, Herod, made the decision, made plans for rebuilding, and chose the timing on his own, so part of the discomfort was the surprise of it, and seeing the walls come down felt like a cultural ravaging. In addition, some voices complained that while the building was aesthetically beautiful, it was spiritually bankrupt, intended to cover up Herod’s hypocrisy and growing oppression of the Jewish people over whom he was tetrarch.

Upon hearing Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the temple, the disciples asked if this would be the start of the “end time.” What would be the sign? How would they know?

End-time teaching, also called apocalyptic teaching, was common, and we need to remember that Jesus’ followers started as followers of John the Baptist, who was an apocalypticist.

Apocalypticism was originally meant to provide hope and comfort in the midst of hopelessness and suffering, but fear, mostly stoked by religious leaders, distorted it into a threat that has been wielded against the very people it was designed to comfort - then and now.

Repent, John would exhort the people. Change the way you are living for this is an age where good and evil are in a battle. We could say the same about now, couldn’t we?

But we don’t repent in order to be rewarded with the other good people or to avoid punishment with the other bad people. We change the way we live so that we can live more fully in the Way of Love, as a people reconciled by Jesus to God and one another.

My proclamation of the Good News is this: God always acts with love, out of love, and toward love. When there is suffering, whether due to natural or human-made disasters, God is present, aware, and already acting to redeem.

Has there ever been a time in history when there was no suffering, or plagues or famines? …No natural disasters or wars? No. Neither, it seems, has there ever been a time in history when people weren’t trying to figure out how to survive an apocalypse.

Jesus says, when you see dreadful events happening, “Do not be terrified... the end will not follow immediately.” The epistle writer urges the church in Thessalonica, who had been waiting for the apocalyptic second coming of Jesus that never happened, not to be idle – not to sit back and just wait for the end to come. Do your work, the writer says, “do not weary in doing what is right.”

Jesus says, prepare to be betrayed, even by family and friends because of your association with me and my way. When that happens, use it as an opportunity to witness.

An example of how transforming witnessing can be is found in an old Indian story about Maskepetoon, a Cree Indian chief, whose father was murdered by a Blackfoot Indian during an ongoing war. When the two tribes gathered to forge a peace treaty, one of the warriors present was the man who had killed the Chief’s father. Maskepetoon, who had only recently been converted to Christianity, went up to the man who murdered his father and said, ‘You killed my father…now you must become a father to me... wear my clothes, ride my horse [and] tell your people that this is the way Maskepetoon takes revenge.’ (Photo credit)

That’s a far cry from how the world generally responds. One of the best examples of how the world usually responds is Inigo Montoya from the movie "The Princess Bride" who repeatedly said, “Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!”

As followers of Jesus’ Way of Love, we are called to be steadfast in our faith, aware that along this Way we will meet up with inhospitable neighbors, friends and family who betray us, enemies, and injustice at the hands of earthy authorities.

Our faith assures us, however, that God is always with us, in us, redeeming all things. That assurance enables us to live our lives in peace – the kind of peace that isn’t attached to circumstances, which may be good or bad at any moment in time.

We live with the peace that our salvation, the final judgment of God, has already happened in Jesus, and it is a judgment of forgiveness, reconciliation, and abundant love. Therefore, freed from the need to earn our place in eternal bliss, freed from the need to judge and fix other people, we can be kind and generous toward everyone. We can be gentle with ourselves as we grow in our faith and gentle with others who are growing too.

As we grow in faith, we also grow in wisdom, so we can hold our tongues when we want to lash out - especially on social media.

The keynote speaker at our convention yesterday, Dr. Catherine Meeks, said, “Think about someone who gets on your nerves. Then think about how much they are like you;” reflecting something about you to you, like a mirror.

That is wisdom.

Jesus’ Way of Love is a path of agape love - love that reflects God’s love for us, love that puts the needs of the other first. It’s the kind of love Jesus demonstrated for us on the cross.

As followers of Jesus’ Way of Love, we are already in the life eternal, because we are bearers of the
eternal presence of God here, now, and forevermore. Jesus has come again - into us - at Pentecost.

So, we don’t live in order to get to heaven one day. We live to bring heaven to earth right now.

Like the church in Thessalonica, we just need to get on with our work loving one another, feeding the hungry, sheltering the unhoused, clothing the poor, protecting the exposed and oppressed, and visiting the lonely.

We must grow together until we can love even the ones we don’t want to love – because we know that everyone is God’s child, and therefore, our kin in the family of God. As Dr. Meeks said, we made up all the categories that divide us, so we can unmake them.

Let’s get to it. Amen.