The end is near! I remember the first time I saw someone with a sign that said this, as they were parading up and down the street near my office and telling every passerby who would listen that all the signs pointed to the end coming very soon. That was about thirty years ago. While I do agree with them, that the end will one day come, it is absolutely not for us to know, or really even to speculate when that might be. It will come in Gods own time, and as part of His ultimate plan for salvation.
In our Gospel reading today, our Lord startles his disciples a bit by telling them about the destruction of the temple that is to come, and how their will not be one stone left upon another. For them, this sounded very much like the end of things, and they responded immediately wanting to know when this would happen and what signs to look for to foretell its coming. On the whole this is a pretty understandable reaction, given the significance of the temple to the Jewish people. It was a place of worship, but it was also far more than that, it was a place of identity for a people who were living under the occupation of the Roman empire, and who were very much afraid of losing their identity as a people and a nation. The temple represented to them a powerful physical manifestation of who they thought they were as a people. The thing is, whether for the Jewish people of that time, or all of us now, our identity as a people, and as believers in God, is not predicated on any physical construct or manifestation. We place far too much significance on things like this, because as human beings, we seem to crave comfort from the imagined permanence of such things. Whether they are a temple or church building, a city designated as the capital of a nation, or even our own bodies as the personal structure that we hold dear. Yet none of these is really representative of who and what we are. We are Gods people, and our focus needs to be on Him alone, and on maintaining ourselves in such a way as to be more concerned with His plan, and for salvation than anything else in our lives. Temples whether made of stone, or wood, or flesh will come and go, the only permanence is achieved in belief, love, and faith in our Lord.
In our second reading today, Saint Paul tells us of something else that we need to be cautious of, and that can be a byproduct of focusing too much on things beyond our control. That is the tendency to begin too much analysis of others and feeling as though we need to point out to them all that they are doing wrong, sometimes in a rather public way. He speaks of those whom he labels as busy bodies. I can’t even imagine what he would think if he had a chance to experience social media today. It sometimes seems to be the ultimate platform for busy bodies, and those who would rather spend their time critiquing the actions of others rather than focusing on their own conduct. It’s easy to fall into this kind of behavior, it requires less effort overall because it does not necessitate change within ourselves, only the verbalizing or typing of our analysis of the actions of another. This is something that can be incredibly toxic and is vastly different than sharing with someone privately a concern we have for them as our brother or sister in Christ because we seek to see them on the path to salvation. It is true we are called to hold one another accountable, and if we do not do so, we are not caring for others as we should, but this must be done with discretion and empathy toward the other person. What we should seek to achieve is loving correction, and it is what we should be open to ourselves as humble followers of Christ.
We are all seeking out a road to salvation, and our journey is long and filled with ups and downs, but it should not be a lonely one. We have our Lord who is with us every step of the way, and we should have one another if we stay constructively focused on the present and strive together to assemble our own temple structure built of the loving bonds between those of us who as living stones comprise the body of Christ.
The Deacons Bench 