By your patience possess your souls

Then, as some spoke of the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and donations, He said, "These things which you see -- the days will come in which not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down."

So they asked Him, saying, "Teacher, but when will these things be?  And what sign will there be when these things are about to take place?"  And He said:  "Take heed that you not be deceived.  For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am He,' and, 'The time has drawn near.'  Therefore do not go after them.  But when you hear of wars and commotions, do not be terrified; for these things must come to pass first, but the end will not come immediately."  Then He said to them, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.  And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven.  But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons.  You will be brought before kings and rulers for My name's sake.  But it will turn out for you as an occasion for testimony.  Therefore settle it in your hearts not to meditate beforehand on what you will answer; for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist.  You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death.  And you will be hated by all for My name's sake.  But not a hair of your head shall be lost.  By your patience possess your souls."

- Luke 21:5-19

In our current readings, Jesus is in Jerusalem.  He teaches daily in the temple, and has been disputing and being tested by various members of the ruling religious Council, as they wish to put Him to death.  But they fear the people, who love to listen to Christ.  Yesterday we read that He said to them, "How can they say that the Christ is the Son of David?  Now David himself said in the Book of Psalms:  'The LORD said to my Lord,  "Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool."'  Therefore David calls Him 'Lord'; how is He then his Son?"  Then, in the hearing of all the people, He said to His disciples, "Beware of the scribes, who desire to go around in long robes, love greetings in the marketplaces, the best seats in the synagogues, and the best places at feasts, who devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers.  These will receive greater condemnation."  And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites.  So He said, "Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all; for all of these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had."

Then, as some spoke of the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and donations, He said, "These things which you see -- the days will come in which not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down."  This prophecy of the destruction of the temple was fulfilled in AD 70, when it was destroyed by the Romans.    It was rumored that the temple contained gold between the stones, and so this prophecy by Christ came quite true.  Only one retaining wall remained of the entire magnificent temple structure, which is today called the Western Wall (or Wailing Wall).

So they asked Him, saying, "Teacher, but when will these things be?  And what sign will there be when these things are about to take place?"  And He said:  "Take heed that you not be deceived.  For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am He,' and, 'The time has drawn near.'  Therefore do not go after them.  But when you hear of wars and commotions, do not be terrified; for these things must come to pass first, but the end will not come immediately."  Then He said to them, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.  And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven.  But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons.  You will be brought before kings and rulers for My name's sake.  But it will turn out for you as an occasion for testimony.  Therefore settle it in your hearts not to meditate beforehand on what you will answer; for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist.  You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death.  And you will be hated by all for My name's sake.  But not a hair of your head shall be lost.  By your patience possess your souls."  Christ's description of the destruction of Jerusalem -- and the time of the destruction of the temple -- is mixed with images of the end times of all of history.  It contains warning to the disciples of what is to come in their own lifetimes, and in the lifetime of the Church and her faithful.   My study bible comments here that the Scriptures describe the end times in a variety of ways.  Therefore no precise chronology can be determined (see Daniel 7-12, Mark 13; Luke 21: 1 Corinthians 15:51-55; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-10; and the Revelation).   Through all things, Jesus' emphasis to His disciples -- and therefore to us -- is on watchfulness and the practice of virtue; my study bible notes that this is deliberately in contrast to constructing timetables of things that haven't yet happened.  In the eyes of the Church, we are and have been living in "end times" since the death of Christ and His Resurrection.   Christ gives first priority to a warning about deception by a false Christ.  The warning of wars of course refers first of all to the coming destruction of Jerusalem, but it also characterizes all of history since.  My study bible comments that wars are not a sign of the imminent end, but rather of the opposite -- that the end is not yet (see 1 Thessalonians 5:1-3).  All the calamities and all the opposition to the Church does not stop the spread of the gospel; frequently the persecution against the Church increases the number of souls being converted.  Finally, if we can but imagine what the destruction of the temple and the city would have meant to the Jews of Christ's generation, and that includes all of His followers, we could merely get a glimpse of the total devastation -- on so many levels -- He is prophesying for them.

Perhaps the most important emphasis here is on persecution as an occasion for testimony -- and Christ's emphasis that in the midst all of this violence, hatred, opposition, and destruction, as His followers we must "by your patience possess your souls."   He speaks even of the persecution by those who are closest to us:  parents, brothers, relatives, and friends.  While there may be few of us who can say this is literally true in their lives today, for those to whom He spoke and the generations following it certainly proved true according to the stories of early martyrs that we have.  But in our own lives, we may find similar conflicts and choices present themselves to us -- just not in the same formal settings involving state power (although this may still be the case depending upon where we live around the world).  He gives us a warning, but His emphasis is not simply on the opposition we will encounter to our faith.  His true emphasis here is on the opportunities to which we must remain alert and awake.  We are to endure and remain in our faith through our patience.  How can He say that through all of this persecution "not a hair of your head will be lost" after He has said that some will be put to death?  Jesus gives us an image of the soul:  intact, whole, fully within the grasp of God, and our own choices for faith.  We note that He teaches:  "Therefore settle it in your hearts not to meditate beforehand on what you will answer; for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist."   The striking tone of this particular instruction is not so much that He will give us our words in response to persecution, but rather that we are to settle it in our hearts not to meditate beforehand what we will answer.  That is, we are not to approach persecution with tremendous anxiety or even planning.  We are to remain alert, awake, in the here and now, to His Presence with us -- and remain fully dependent upon that awareness and understanding.  This is an instruction for courage, steadfastness -- the opposite of fear and panic.  Our faith is to keep us secure within its very reality in our hearts and in the presence of the kingdom of the gospel.  It is this place for which we prepare and study and pray; this condition of our hearts throughout the entirety of our lives for which we struggle as faithful -- for which we attend worship, pray, read and study Scripture, and meditate on His words and His presence in our lives.  These are words to take us through all things, and not merely times of overt and outward persecution.  They become a code for how we are to conduct the whole of our lives, and through all the struggles we may encounter in our lives.  It is a prescription for a particular attitude of trust in Him.  If we are dealing with terrible personal struggles, financial troubles, illness or death of a loved one, family strains -- we can read these words and understand that we are meant to have a type of patience in the midst that passes through all of these things.  We return -- even for the moments we are able -- to trust in Him to lead us through.  In all of our personal struggles, He says to us, He is there with us, and this is the one fact of which we must not lose sight.  At all moments, we are offered this choice.  We are to be mindful of His presence.  It will give us our patience, our endurance, our way of going through whatever it is -- and so it has proven true for so many of us and through so much struggle throughout the generations of faithful.  Christ's deep well is there to draw upon when all else has failed.