Word to the Wise
Sunday, November 18, 2007 - Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
[Malachi 3:19-20A; 2 Thessalonians 3:7-12; Luke 21:15-19]While some people were speaking about how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings, Jesus said, "All that you see here---the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone what will not be thrown down.....
The temple in Jerusalem was a wonder to the people who visited there. But Jesus tells his listeners that this magnificent building will be torn to pieces. Some scholars would see this as a "retrojection" by the author of the gospel of the destruction of the temple by the Roman army during the Jewish rebellion -66-70AD. Still, one must ponder magnificent human structures just as one might ponder magnificent natural structures (the ocean, the Grand Canyon, the stars in the heavens). The World Trade Center seemed a solid thing till terrorists rammed aircraft into it and it came tumbling down. Rome is in an earthquake zone, just as Assisi is. Anything humans can build can be brought down by Mother Nature. Jesus is trying to remind his listeners that the temple will be destroyed but that will not be the end of time. There will be much that the Christian community will have to endure, including the loss of sacred spaces and places. What we build is a church of faith. Some of its spaces may be magnificent tributes to human art and ingenuity - indeed human prayers - but they are not built to last in God's time, only in human time. As one of the psalms says, "Unless the Lord build the house, in vain do the builders labor...." Hard as it is to imagine, St. Peter's could be reduced to rubble by an earthquake. It would be an end to a magnificent building, but it would not be the end of time nor an end to our faith! AMEN
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