The New Yorker expressed the free-floating anxiety of these days with a cartoon of two office colleagues discussing the end of Daylight-Saving Time: “It’ll be so nice to have that extra hour this weekend to dread the fall of democracy.”

But. Last Wednesday morning dawned with neither our greatest fears nor our highest hopes realized. Voting went relatively smoothly, those who lost their bids for office actually conceded, the election deniers did not create a “red wave,” and democracy, so far, has lived to fight another day. As Thomas Friedman wrote on Thursday, “…we may have just dodged one of the biggest arrows ever aimed at the heart of our democracy.”

It was all rather…unexpected. 

So, let’s talk about the Gospel.

“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.”

Today’s Gospel’s exchange between Jesus and his disciples alludes to the coming of the Son of Man at the End of Days. He speaks in great detail of political and geological upheaval, and the dangers and challenges that his followers will face, yet he comforts them (somewhat) by telling them that they can trust in the Spirit’s guidance in the time of trial: 

“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 contradict…”

The one thing Jesus doesn’t tell his friends is exactly when to expect this time of disaster, when the very foundations of their world will crumble–when these events that portend both an ending and a beginning–will take place. He tells them what to expect, but not when. 

Which is appropriate to where we are in the liturgical year; in a season known as Kingdomtide, which lasts from the end of All Saints through the Feast of Christ the King. This is why the vestments and hangings in the church are red. It is a time when we ponder eschatology–the End Times– and the meaning of the coming Reign of Christ (whenever that will be). We will be engaging with this for the next few weeks, but for today it is enough to know that this is our liturgical context, to see this scene of Jesus in the Temple through a Lukan lens, and let it all entwine with this moment in which we find ourselves after this past week; this moment when many had worried that a great ending was at hand and then, unexpectedly, it wasn’t. At least not yet.

So, let’s talk about Herod the Great. 

Herod, the King of Judea under occupation in 1st century BCE, lurks throughout this passage, because he was not just a Roman collaborator; he was a builder. He was widely known for innovative design, major infrastructure renovation, and projects on such a massive scale that “Herodian architecture” was actually a thing. The most well-known of his projects was the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple to more than twice the size of the original, which had been torn down by the Babylonians at the time of the Exile.

In today’s passage Jesus and his disciples stand in the middle of Herod’s masterpiece, oohing and ahhing over the grandness of the building and its colonnades and porches. Construction had begun in 19 BCE and wasn’t totally completed until 83 years later, well after Herod’s death.

It was destroyed by the Romans less than a decade after its completion. 

“…not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

The tension in today’s verses lies in the interrelationship between Jesus’ descriptions of turmoil and chaos, and what Luke was communicating through this story to his early Christian audience in order to encourage them. Luke has Jesus predict events for his disciples that Luke and his community had already experienced; a time of traumatic destruction, violence, division, and persecution–the end of their religious/ worshiping world as they had known it. Luke knew that these were events that would either form, or deform, his community. So, he described Jesus speaking of an even greater eschatological Ending; speaking frankly, yet offering hope, comfort, and courage.

“…not one stone will be left upon another…”

Yet,

“…not one hair of your head shall perish.”

How little we know. Jesus’ disciples stood in a Temple that was on borrowed time, but they didn’t know how little. Herod the builder could never have imagined that his masterwork would last for so few years. Luke’s community had been through so much that they were learning the wisdom of expecting the unexpected. 

So should we. We have discovered this week that expectation, particularly in the form of worry and anxiety, is a waste of imagination. But that is not the most important lesson here. The future holds what the future will hold, and especially when it comes to the End Times, Jesus calls us into trust and courage (not to mention another sermon for another day.) But what does Luke tell us today about how we are called to live into this moment of the unexpected? 

Actually, we are called to nothing different today from what we would be called to do had last Tuesday’s results fulfilled our worst fears. Because God’s call is consistent, even (or especially) in the presence of the unexpected. The poor are still poor, the hungry are still hungry, the marginalized are still targets of the callous and the cruel, and the Earth is still heating up. Just because we dodged an arrow aimed at the heart of our democracy, as Tom Friedman put it, doesn’t mean that we should for even one moment be complacent. Because the earthly foundation–as the Gospel says,  “…these things which you see…,” and upon which we stand, remains in earthly peril.

In the book, Braiding Sweetgrass, that our Wednesday book group has been discussing, Robin Wall Kimmerer tells a story that involves a game of chance– tossing peach pits painted black on one side and white on the other. The player at the end of the game with all of one color facing up is the winner (sort of like a combination of craps and Othello…). Here’s the story: 

“The twin grandsons of Skywoman had long struggled over the making and unmaking of the world. Now their struggle came down to this one game. If all the pits came up black, then all the life that had been created would be destroyed. If all the pits were white, then the beautiful earth would remain. They played and played without resolution and finally they came to the final roll. If all came up black, it would be done. The twin who made sweetness in the world sent his thoughts out to all the living beings he had made and asked them to help, to stand on the side of life…[I]n the final roll, as the peach stones hung for a moment in the air, all the members of Creation joined their voices together and gave a mighty shout for life. And turned the last pit white. The choice is always there.”

We have a choice. We always have a choice, just like the early followers of Jesus, to be formed or deformed by any moment that confronts us. As creatures of God, it is part of our human nature to be able to choose whatever we want, yet as Christians and as citizens of Creation we have a responsibility to choose wisely what kind of future we desire, and to bring it to fruition. 

The arc of history may bend toward a Reign of Christ that is a reign of justice, healing, and reconciliation, but the work is not all God’s to do. We are called to shout for life, to face the expected and the unexpected alike with creativity, courage, and hope. 

What might that look like? According to legend, Martin Luther was asked what he would do if he learned that the world was about to end. He said, “If tomorrow is the Day of Judgment, then today I want to plant an apple tree.”