Unshakable

Luke 21:5–19 isn’t about the end of the world; it’s about the end of illusion. The temple glows with power and permanence — until Jesus names its truth: all of this will fall. But beneath the rubble, something unshakable remains. This sermon calls us to faith that outlives our temples — a defiant hope in the God who still stands amid the ruins.

Transcript

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You're listening to The Word on Baker Street, a podcast from Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Bakersfield, California. Each week we share the good news of God's love through the sermons from our Sunday worship. Wherever you are in your journey, you are welcome here.

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The Holy Gospel according to Luke 21, 5 through 19. When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned and beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, 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. And they asked him, Teacher, when will this be? And what would the sign that this will be about to take place? And he said to them, Beware that you are not led astray, for many will come in my name and say, I am he, and the time is near. Do not go after them. And when you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified, for these things must take place first, but at the end will not follow immediately. Then he said to them, Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues, and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you, and they will hand you over to the synagogues and the prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare for 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. You will be betrayed even by parents and siblings, by 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 perish. By your endurance, you will gain your souls the gospel of the Lord. Please be seated. And let us pray. Gracious God, may these words in all of our meditations draw us closer to you today. Amen. Our lesson from Luke today takes place on the last week of Jesus' life. He's entered the city of Jerusalem riding on a donkey, and people are shouting, Hosanna, and waving the palm branches, and things they turn quickly. In less than a week, they go from this amazing high place to the devastation of the cross. But before things go awry, Jesus spends his days teaching in the temple. The disciples are they're there with him and with Jesus, and they're in awe of the temple. And they see this temple, and they're like, you know, wow, this place is incredible. Look at these big stones. And and to be fair, it's an amazing place. And it's not like they've spent a lot of time there. I'm sure it had this wow factor, you know, that maybe like the first time you've seen Vegas at night. Or like maybe like downtown Manhattan. I I have a friend who lives in in Manhattan, and he says that you can always tell the tourists because they're they're walking around like this. You're walking around looking up at everything. Uh and the disciples, they they see the temple. It's got it's got some of that going on. The temple was hugely important for the Jewish people. After all, you know, this is this is where God lived. The temple was first built by King David's son Solomon, almost a thousand years before the time of Jesus. It was destroyed about 400 years later by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, and then rebuilt when the Jewish people returned to Jerusalem about 70 years after that. And then fast forward about 500 years, and the temple was a shambles. The renovations that took place became the building project of all building projects. And let's just say that it uh well put a certain ballroom project to shame. And the kicker is it's not actually the Jewish people who take on the renovations, it's King Herod. The King Herod who is the bad guy from the Christmas story. He he took over the throne of Israel about 20 years before Jesus was born, and he rebuilt the temple to gain the Jewish people's loyalty. And the temple he built was phenomenal. There's gold and silver everywhere. It was more than twice the size of the original temple with massive stones of white limestone, and many of them are overlaid with gold. It was set up on a hill, and you could literally see it from everywhere. And its splendor and grandeur allowed the Israelites to reclaim the city and the land as their own. Yes, they were occupied, but this was the land of Abraham and the land that Moses had led them to. This temple, it practically glowed. And the disciples are in awe of it. When Jesus says, not one stone will be left here upon another, all of it will be thrown down. It's unthinkable. And then Jesus goes on with this ominous warning that many will try to lead them astray, and that there will be wars and rumors of wars, and nations will rise against nations, and there will be earthquakes and famines, and they they will be persecuted. And of course, the disciples can't imagine what is to come. And not merely for the temple, but for Jesus and for them, for all of it. There they are standing in the shadow of this opulent temple. It's a symbol of permanence. And Jesus knows the disciples are impressed with the stability and hope it represents. And he says, I hate to tell you this, but it's gonna come down. Here in California, we we know stone walls can come down, tumbling down any moment. Even here, you're looking around. I I hope they used a lot of rebar when they built this place. We know things can come down, but that doesn't mean we don't rely on certain things like they are permanent. And perhaps that's what makes Jesus' words so unsettling. It's something I don't like to think about. How the things that we cling to can disappear. For some of that, that means the house that we worked for. For others, it's the job we hoped that would last, or the parent we thought would always be there to lean on, or the partner who's gone now. It's a body that doesn't hold up anymore, or the security we never really had. It's the friendships that have faded, the dreams we had to put aside, the version of our life we we thought we'd be living by now. Some losses come slowly, some they come all at once. But all of us know what it is to have something that we counted on crumble. Even the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, all of it can shift, all of it can break, and when it does, we learn sometimes painfully that not everything we hold is meant to hold us. And so I wonder what large stones do we need to keep standing in our lives? What do we treat as eternal that simply isn't? What has to stay in place for us to feel enough, to feel safe enough to trust God? Is it our home? Our health? The safety of our family, the stability of our church, or even our denomination, a healthy economy, safe schools? What is it? The disciples are they're gazing at this temple, a beautiful temporary thing that they had come to rely on. Notice Jesus doesn't say the temple's wrong. This this place he, it's a place he chose to teach. I think he really loved it. What he says is that the temple and everything it represented, it's not the ultimate sign of God's faithfulness. And the same is true for us. There is nothing wrong with wanting our families healthy or our congregation to strive or our streets to be safe or our lives to be steady. But these things are not eternal. These things cannot carry the weight of our hope. They cannot love us the way God loves us. But Jesus was right about the temple. The temple his disciples were so impressed with was destroyed in 70 AD. All that is left is a wall, the wailing wall. But it wasn't God who destroyed it. It was Rome. And Jesus was right. There were wars and rumors of wars, insurrections, earthquakes and plagues, famines and persecutions. It was true then and it is true now. We know this. Even with the ceasefire, the people of Gaza still suffer immeasurably. The Ukraine war goes on and on. Syria faces imminent famine again. People still struggle to recover from the wildfires that swept through Los Angeles this last January. And when I think of all the things that we have prayed for this last year, the earthquakes, several shootings, immigration crisis, the ice raids, the detention centers, famines, downed airplanes, massive floods, more fires, hurricanes. It's a lot. And we can be certain that these floods and famines and earthquakes and droughts and these wars and these rumors of wars will continue, and there will be destruction and there will be false prophets, and all of this will happen, and it will continue to happen. And the thing is, very little of it has or will have anything to do with God. Because God doesn't cause it, God bears it. God bears all of it, all of our cruelty to one another, all of our suffering. That's what the cross is all about. God who became flesh and took all of our violence and all of our hatred and all of our chaos into his own body. The flesh of God, made flesh, bore all of it on the cross so that it is finished. God no longer meets us in the shiny temple of a ruling political or religious power, but in the very body of Christ, in all of the ways of speaking of the body of Christ, and the body of Jesus' own flesh, and the body of the bread of our table, and in the body that is all of us, the church. Death and violence are disarmed, and we get grace in exchange. This is the eternal yes of God. Jesus in this text is saying to his disciples that the temple where they place their hope will be torn down, but that doesn't mean that hope itself will be torn down. Because Jesus is a new temple. And when the temple of Christ was torn down, the temple rose again, and with him our hope. Because it is God, not the symbol of God that lives, and it is God, not the institutions related to God that lives, and it is God, not the place where we experience God that truly endures. This is the God that lives in each of us. A few weeks ago, we celebrated Reformation Sunday and we sang, A Mighty Fortress is our God. It's a hymn that Martin Luther wrote, and we we sing it every year. And every year I I mostly think of it as this old hymn that we need to get through, you know, a mighty fortress is our God. But you know, this year we we sang and so many of the stanzas hit me. I mean they rang so true to what seemed to be going on. It's like they could have been written for today. Not only is it the God was our fortress, but He breaks the cruel oppressor's rod. And there was like these hordes of devils are filling the land and all threatening to devour us, but we don't have to tremble. Unmoved, we stand, they can't overpower us. And then the hymn continues. A thing that is temporary, our goods, honor, child or spouse, though life itself be wrenched away. They cannot win the day, the kingdom is ours forever. A mighty fortress is our God. This is our hope that we build our faith on. Not in walls or wealth or institutions, but in a God who bears our suffering and remains steadfast even when the world shakes. The heart of God is unshakable. Even when the mountains tremble and the temple falls, God's love endures. The temple will fall. Empires will crumble, congregations will change, but God's love remains, holding us, sheltering us, calling us to trust again. And that's the fortress that we lean into. That's the promise that cannot be torn down. Amen.

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Thanks for listening to the Word on Baker Street. If this message has spoken to you, share it with a friend. More sermons and reflections can be found at emmanuelbakersfield.org. May God's grace and peace be with you today and always.