All these are the beginning of sorrows

 Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple.  And Jesus said to them, "Do you not see all these things?  Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down."

Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be?  And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?"  And Jesus answered and said to them:  "Take heed that no one deceives you.  For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many.  And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars.  See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.  For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.  And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.  All these are the beginning of sorrows. 

"Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake.  And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.  Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many.  And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.  But he who endures to the end shall be saved.  And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come."

- Matthew 24:1-14

In recent readings, Jesus is in Jerusalem.  He has cleansed the temple, and been quizzed by various groups of the leadership.  Over the course of the past three days, we read His great critique of the Pharisees, starting with the readings on Wednesday and Thursday.  Yesterday, He continued:  "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.  Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.'   Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.  Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers' guilt.  Serpents, brood of vipers!  How can you escape the condemnation of hell?  Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes, some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.  Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!  How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!  See!  Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!'"

 Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple.  And Jesus said to them, "Do you not see all these things?  Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down."  My study bible has several notes on today's reading.  Here, it tells us:  "This is a prediction of the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70, which sets the tone for Jesus' discourse on the end of the age (chs. 24; 25).  The New Testament describes the end time in a variety of ways, so that no precise chronology can be determined (see Mark 13; Luke 21; 1 Cor. 15:51-55; 1 Thess. 4:13-17; 2 Thess. 2:1-10; and the Book of Revelation).  Jesus' emphasis is on being prepared through watchfulness and stewardship rather than on constructing exacting chronologies.  In this chapter the end is described as a process with three overlapping stages:  (1)  the beginning of sorrows (vv.4-14), (2)  the Great Tribulation (vv. 15-28) and (3)  the coming of the Son of Man (vv. 29-31)."  It's important here that we understand the impact of Jesus' words on those listening.  The temple at this time was the grandest building project of Herod the Great, who was known as the Great Builder.  It was immense, with porticoes and porches and innovations that made it one of the wonders of the world.  Its stones were huge.  There was a rumor that there was gold between the stones, and in the siege of Jerusalem, precisely what Jesus predicted here happened.

Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be?  And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?"  And Jesus answered and said to them:  "Take heed that no one deceives you.  For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many."  Of these verses and the rest of the reading, my study bible tells us:  "The question about the signs and the persecutions is connected in Matthew with the sign of His coming and the end of the age.  The disciples dream of the hoped-for earthly kingdom, which they expect to appear almost immediately.  Jesus knows their anticipation and sets out to prepare them for what is to come.  He warns them to take heed not to (1)  be seduced by any deception (v. 5), (2)  be overpowered by the violence of afflictions which will come (vv. 6-9); or (3) stumble because of the false brethren (vv. 10-12)."

"And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars.  See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.  For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.  And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.  All these are the beginning of sorrows."  My study bible tells us that here "Jesus and the disciples are sitting on the Mount of Olives looking out over Jerusalem.  The immediate reference here is not to the wars of the world over the centuries, but to wars in Jerusalem."  The word translated here as sorrows (in "these are the beginning of sorrows") means "birth pains" in the Greek.

"Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake.  And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.  Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many.  And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.  But he who endures to the end shall be saved.  And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come."  Jesus speaks to them of what is to happen with the Church, but, as my study bible puts it, "all these calamities and tribulations will not prevent the progress of the gospel; the Good News will be preached everywhere (Rom. 10:18; Col. 1:6, 23)."

Let's consider what Jesus is saying here.  Its impact on the disciples must have been stunning to the point of numbness.  How can they take in what He is saying?  They are expecting the manifestation of a kingdom.  They trust and know He is Messiah.  But He has warned them of what is to come to Him in Jerusalem, and they scarcely take it in.  Imagine this news hitting them.  But Jesus prepares them for what is to come knowing that the birth pains of His Church will go through all of these things.  It's simply astounding to consider the kind of faith that understands both the calamity, betrayal, and tribulation coming to the disciples (including the siege of Jerusalem) and also the success of the Gospel, that it will go to all the world.  How can they, the disciples, possibly take this all in?  They cannot, but because of His prediction to them the Church did escape the great destruction that came to Jerusalem in A.D. 70, heeding the warning signs that had been told to them.  But when we imagine the difficulties of the birth of this Church, we have to understand what He calls on us to do.  Many people seem to believe that success as a faithful person is a life in which everything goes perfectly smoothly.  I daresay that if these people of the founding of the Church believed that, then there wouldn't be any Christianity.  Jesus' life itself would form simply a stumbling block, rather than this symbol of the Cross that has come to stand for transcendence and so much more.  Jesus here teaches them resilience, endurance, a kind of peace that is not dependent upon "the world," but rather on the reality of God's love and the role they play in manifesting God's kingdom in the world.  And then, beyond all this, there is the assurance of "success" -- that the gospel of the kingdom will go out to all the world, as indeed it continues to do.  As faithful, the great impact of Jesus' message here enforces the understanding of the portrait of the world at this time in which we await His return, the one given us in the parable of the wheat and the tares, in which all grow side-by-side, even within the Church itself.  Let us consider, then, what triumph and success really mean on Christian terms.  It may mean we go through many difficulties.  It may call on us to learn humility, to value the things of the kingdom beyond what amounts to success in "the world."  And yet, it is a realistic idea - an understanding of what we can control and what we cannot control.  We can choose our faith.  We can be strengthened through a faith in God's love, a kind of a joy that is not dependent on whatever picture the rest of the world might see, a peace that comes from reconciliation to that which supersedes everything else, and a knowledge that we are called upon to endure.  This is life beyond what the world presents us with, a life that takes in the reality of the world, and knows that there is more to this picture than meets the eye.  How do you find your place in the gospel of the kingdom?  What does it teach you in difficult circumstances?   When Jesus speaks of "birth pains," let us remember that difficulties, in the life of faith, are a labor toward something new, a growth, a harvest toward something we can't know until it's with us.