This morning’s Gospel reading is Luke 21:5–19:

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 that will not be thrown down.”

Then they asked him, “Teacher, when will this happen? And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?” He answered, “See that you not be deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and ‘The time has come.’ Do not follow them! When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for such things must happen first, but it will not immediately be the end.”

Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place; and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.

“Before all this happens, however, they will seize and persecute you, they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons, and they will have you led before kings and governors because of my name. It will lead to your giving testimony. Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand, for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute. You will even be handed over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends, and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but not a hair on your head will be destroyed. By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”

What does it mean to serve the Lord? What does He ask of us? Our salvation journey as God’s children repeatedly raises this question, and just as repeatedly shows us getting it wrong. Today’s Gospel reading provides an indirect lesson on our ongoing blindness and why we lead ourselves astray by relying on our own merits.

Today’s first reading comes to us from Malachi, a passage from the prophet that simply promises justice to those who do the Lord’s will. This is a simple reminder that His children should not look to temporal and human forces for ultimate justice but instead to the Lord. This subtle point — more implied in this passage than explicit — also undergirds Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel from Luke.

Better for this message and today’s Gospel, however, are the prophecies of Jeremiah, which dealt directly with the perversion of Temple worship. In his time, Jerusalem was in the process of falling to the Babylonians, mainly because the Judeans of that era had fallen into the sin of idol-worshipping the Temple rather than the Lord it served. The kings of that era assumed that the Lord would not allow the Temple which held His presence to fall to the enemy, and in that arrogance, repeatedly and constantly rejected the Lord’s leadership in favor of their own worldly ambitions.

In Jeremiah 7, the Lord speaks through Jeremiah to warn the Judeans that they’ve gotten this backwards. The Temple serves them, not the Lord, who is not bound by His own creation nor what His own creation constructs. Their reliance on the Temple has become idolatrous, Jeremiah warns, and it’s not the first time that the Lord has seen this kind of defiance:

“‘Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the Lord. 3 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. 4 Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!” 5 If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, 6 if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever. 8 But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.

9 “‘Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury,[a] burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things? 11 Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the Lord.

12 “‘Go now to the place in Shiloh where I first made a dwelling for my Name, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel. 13 While you were doing all these things, declares the Lord, I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen; I called you, but you did not answer. 14 Therefore, what I did to Shiloh I will now do to the house that bears my Name, the temple you trust in, the place I gave to you and your ancestors. 15 I will thrust you from my presence, just as I did all your fellow Israelites, the people of Ephraim.’

This brings us back to today’s Gospel, where Jesus warns against the same kind of blindness when it comes to the Temple. Not for the first or last time, Jesus tries to instruct the disciples and others in Jerusalem that the Temple is not an eternal dwelling — not for them, and certainly not for the Lord. His eternal dwelling is elsewhere, and all the adornments of the Temple matter not a whit in that calculation.

However, Jesus also wants to emphasize that this world isn’t our eternal dwelling either. Just as the Temple will be destroyed — which happened within a generation of Jesus’ teaching here — so will our world, or at least our conception of it. And for that matter, so will our own bodies on this side of the Kingdom. This is a fallen world and we live fallen lives within it. The only path to salvation is not in material goods or institutions, not even in families and nations, Jesus teaches us. We will not see true justice through any of those, just as Malachi prophesies in today’s first reading, let alone true mercy.

Instead, Jesus teaches, we must persevere in our adherence to the Lord’s will and His Word, regardless of how the world receives it. For those who experience persecution for that perseverance, Jesus promises that even though some will be put to death for their faith, “not a hair on your head will be destroyed.” That promise does not apply in this fallen world nor is it guaranteed by what we make in this world.

In fact, it didn’t even apply to Jesus Himself in this world. Despite being without sin and having committed no crime, His devotion to the Father’s will led Jesus to His death on the cross. Yet Jesus rose from the dead in a sanctified version of His body and rose in it to Heaven, to rule in the Father’s name and provide us with the sacrifice necessary to enter into Heaven bodily ourselves. This is the justice and mercy to which Jesus refers and which Malachi prophesies — not on this Earth but in the Lord’s sanctified creation in the next, where our wills align with His perfectly through the grace of the Holy Spirit.

The choice laid out by Jesus and the prophets is clear. Either we trust in ourselves and the work of our hands, or we trust in the Lord who made us and the Creation in which we live. One path leads to destruction and death in this world no matter which we choose, and the other to eternal life.

So why not choose eternal life?

The front-page image is “Jesus Among the Doctors” by Paolo Veronese, c. 1560. On display at the Museo del Prado. Via Wikimedia Commons. 

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.