November 16, 2025

I had a moment of extreme contradiction in my life just a couple of weeks ago. It was a particularly difficult and challenging Wednesday morning. Anna was more restless and active than normal, and it took everything I had to get her up, dressed, and out the door for school. If memory serves correct, I think it took me four different tries to make sure I had everything in the car as we were leaving. Once we got there, I remembered something else. A second time, a third time, a fourth time. It was ridiculous. And then that night, as I was trying to go to sleep, my mind decided that it was going to go through the greatest hits reel of the most extreme embarrassments I've ever had in my life. And there that morning, I could not remember the simple things I needed to get out the door. And that night, in the greatest, most minute detail, I could replay these events that have occurred 20, 25, 30 years ago. It's so very fascinating how we so very often are able to think about those things.

One of those memories that stuck with me was, and I will confess to you it's one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, was an occurrence I had in 2006. I was hired for a call center, and we were selling business lines of subprime credit to small businesses in French Canada. I did that job for exactly two days before I was offered another job working in a grocery store. And to this day, I regret that I just never showed up again. I did not talk to the very lovely lady who was my supervisor. I did not say, "Hey, here's what's going on." I just didn't bother ever going back there again. And sometimes, in the depths of those dark nights of restless sleep, I think about how I probably let that lady down, the way in which I should have handled that so much better. But how many of us have had that moment of clarity, of places where we came up short, didn't do what we should have done?

That was the kind of capstone on a fairly difficult and honestly one of the darkest periods of my life. I had just finished my sophomore year of college. I had what I now recognize as a major depressive episode that spring. And this was a small liberal arts college, very intimate, very close-knit community. And my gracious professors gave me a list of incompletes at the end of the academic year as I had all these outstanding term papers that I just hadn't been able to muster the energy to complete. And I got a very lovely letter from the provost explaining that if I didn't resolve this, I would be put on academic probation. And my parents, my stubborn parents, who would not leave me behind, sat me down that summer and made me resolve all of that. So I got a second very lovely letter at the end of the summer telling me that I was back in good standing and all was well.

But I needed some kind of break. I needed some kind of change of pace, some kind of reorientation. And that fall, I took a semester off from college. That fall, I had that momentary experience with the call center, ended up taking this job with this grocery store. This grocery store that was the budget kind of bargain grocery store in our college town. And I ended up being there for two years. And that place, that place of landing in the midst of brokenness, ended up being an experience of redemption for me. Fraught as I was, tied up in knots as I was about all the places of brokenness in my own life, I encountered people on the margins who were struggling and wrestling just to get by in their day-to-day life. And it kind of put a lot of my own challenges in perspective. It gave me a sense of what redemption and resurrection can look like. It empowered me to go on and do everything I've done in my life. I really, to this day, think that that was a turning point for me. That experience of being in a place where I really saw how difficult life can really and truly be.

And I bring that, I bring that to mind this morning because of the admonition we hear from Jesus in this section from Luke. The destruction of the temple is not only the physical prophetic witness of Jesus, but metaphorically, it's the admonition, the preparation that Jesus is giving us to recognize that all of the temples in our lives are unstable, are impermanent, are only the concrete real thing that we experience them to be for a season. And none of them have the staying power that the true and lasting things of the kingdom have.

In his introduction to the works of the Episcopal lay theologian William Stringfellow, the United Methodist pastor Bill Wiley Kellerman observes: "When Jesus looked upon Jerusalem, he did indeed foresee the destruction of the temple and city. In the movement he brought to town, he set before the city a real alternative to its destruction. He could read the signs of the time. He did so in tears, weeping for the women and children who would be caught in the crush of historical events. In the coming collapse, not one stone would be left upon another. In times of tragedy, theological innuendo penetrates the headlines. In point of fact, there are many ways in which such tragedies offer us literally an apocalyptic glimpse into America. Apocalyptic in its sense of unveiling, revealing, Exposing the apparatus and machinations of history."

And that's kind of a heady, very academically worded reflection on our passage from today. But I think it has a real true and heavy weight for us. The reality. The reality that what we experience is that loss of stability. That loss of stability in the things of concreteness that we have put our trust in. The many times in which we fall prey to this same inclination in our lives, seeing our jobs, our political structures, our larger societal dynamics as being things of lasting and permanent substance. Things that we can put the full weight of our trust in. And yet, inevitably, inevitably, in ways big and small, they can come up short. And there's a brokenness. There's an incompleteness. Many times. In many ways. There's a sorrow, a pain, a physical, objective suffering.

You know, thinking about the light at the end of the tunnel, the great and glorious joy of the coming kingdom, it's the promise of our faith. But it can very often be a promise that seems far too distant. Far too uncertain. Far too optimistic. But it is the truth of our faith. It is the place of stability in the midst of an unstable and chaotic world. My colleague Ben DeHart up in New York City, who I have quoted before, really cut to the heart of that reality earlier this week. He reflected: "There are days when the life you knew is simply gone. The marriage won't heal. The diagnosis won't reverse. The person you love isn't coming back. The job that gave your days shape has ended. Your own body has quietly betrayed you. You stand in what used to be your life, and the temple, the structure you built everything around, is now rubble."

"We all have temples. But Jesus doesn't say how to rebuild. He doesn't say how to get back to normal. He doesn't even say how to avoid more pain. He says don't be led astray. Don't chase false messiahs. Don't surrender to fear. There will be wars. There will be betrayals. There will be suffering. Some of you will die. And then, right there, he says, but not a hair of your head will perish. It sounds like a contradiction, but it's not. Because the promise isn't that death won't touch us. The promise is that death won't have the last word."

And this year, this year in particular, I think that that hits home for us as a community, especially powerfully. The ways in which our lives have been upended. The ways in which so much of our stability has been thrown into chaos. And Jesus does not shy away from acknowledging the brokenness and the pain and sorrow that that brokenness brings forth. But what he promises is that that place of darkness is not the final word. And I think for many of us today, that is the word needed. That is the truth that we need to hear in this time of great uncertainty.

In just a couple of weeks, we will enter our season of Advent. And Advent has always had this dual focus. The more prominent, the more popular, the easier focus is on the first incarnation. God coming among us in the pure, the simple, the beautiful birth of a baby. But there's always a dual emphasis. Not just on that first coming of God in the incarnation, but on the second coming. In Christ's ultimate return. In the eschaton. The ending of all things, and the setting of all things to right. And in this particular year, the things of lightness, in both senses of that word, the things of joy, the things of happiness, the things of light in the midst of darkness, may seem very difficult to hold on to. May seem ever more difficult to cultivate. And yet, in the midst of that challenge, we have this promise that the darkness, the oppressive darkness, will not be the final word.

And so no matter how dimly that light comes forth this year, it is still present. It is still among us. It still has a quiet vitality. That if we let ourselves focus, if we give ourselves the space, if we pause and return, we might hear that still small voice of compassion, of love, of assurance that things will be better. That the new dawn will come. And it may not be soon. It may not be in a timeline that we want it to be. But it will be. The lasting and permanent reality.

And so today, friends, as we come to the beginning of the close of our season after Pentecost, as we begin to turn our eyes more fully towards Jerusalem, as we begin to enter that time of intentional and purposeful waiting on the coming of our King. Let us bring the fullness of who we are and where we are in our time of struggle and turmoil today. Let us be authentically present to all of the challenges and difficulties that we are facing in this moment. Let us bring all of that, all of that into a space, a space of gentle holding, recognizing that Christ, even in this time of darkness, is still inviting us through the brokenness to the other side of new life and transformation. And may we hear that assurance of ultimate victory. Even now, in this time of struggle. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.