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 

 

Yesterday we read that, as Jesus was disputing in the temple with the religious authorities, 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 these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood 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 is a prophecy of the destruction of the temple that was to be fulfilled in 70 AD at the Siege of Jerusalem.  The text references the adornment of the temple with beautiful stones and donations.  We should remember that this is the temple as it was expanded and rebuilt into one what was considered one of the architectural marvels of the world, by Herod the Great (also known as Herod the Builder). 

 

 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."   My study Bible comments that the Scriptures describe the end times in a variety of ways, so that no precise chronology can be determined (see Daniel 7 - 12; Mark 13; Matthew 24; 1 Corinthians 15:51-55; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-10; and the Book of Revelation).  It notes that Christ's emphasis is on watchfulness, and the practice of virtue rather than on constructing timetables of things that have not yet happened.  Here in Luke's Gospel, Jesus first warns His disciples about what is to come in their lifetimes.  He warns them not to be deceived by false reports of His Return, and that they are not to be terrified in hearing about wars and commotions, for these must come first before the end.   He then goes on to describe the tribulations that will come as we await His Second Coming.  

 

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."  All of this period in which we have lived the Christian era is included in the tribulations Christ describes.  My study Bible comments that these wars include the Roman destruction of Jerusalem (when the temple was destroyed, and not one stone was left upon another, but all was thrown down.  It says that wars are not a sign of the imminent end, but of the opposite -- that the end is not yet (see 1 Thessalonians 5:1-3). 

 

"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."   And here is the tribulation for the Church, again, covering the entire period of the Christian era, and not simply a specific final time before His return.  This persecution of course began in the earliest period of the Church, but it yet continues today, even as the gospel has spread to the world.  Certainly most of those to whom He was speaking, with the exception of John the Evangelist, would go on to martyrdom.  John himself was in exile, even as the Church was persecution in the synagogues and by the Romans.  But let us pay close attention to what Christ tells us about times of persecution:  they are an occasion for testimony.  

"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."  Here Christ's prophecy becomes even personal.  In the Letter to the Hebrews, St. Peter writes, "For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12).  If the word of God is truth that cuts deeply into the heart of each one, then we understand how also it may cut between ourselves and even those most closely bound to us in a worldly sense.  Here Christ is preparing the disciples for the type of hatred and betrayal to come.  Of course, we might wonder at this seeming contradiction, that some will be put to death, yet not a hair of your head shall be lost.  But in so doing, we lose sight of the Kingdom among us, and that so much emphasis is placed on the eternal reality of that Kingdom, and not on the events of this world which so often deceive, and mask the true work of God going on "behind the scenes," so to speak.  Those who follow Him, as is evidenced in the Epistles of St. Paul, do so with the understanding of the eternal nature of life in that Kingdom, and not simply a temporal existence.  St. Paul writes to the Thessalonians of those brothers and sisters in the Church who have passed ("fallen asleep"), "But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus" (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14).  

 

 Jesus' final words in today's reading are, "By your patience possess your souls."  These are words that are addressed to us in our modern world today as much as they are to Christ's disciples during this final week of His earthly life, as given in today's reading.  What does it mean for us, "By your patience possess your souls?"  First of all, Christ's warnings about wars and upheavals, natural disasters of all sorts, famines and pestilences, still apply to us.  We see them every day, and we cannot help but hear about them the more the world is interconnected through mass telecommunications of all sorts.  Moreover, lest we who live in countries where we are quite free to practice our faith forget, persecutions of the Church continue into the present day and have never stopped.  In the previous century, many of those persecutions came at the hands of governments and political movements opposed in principle to religion.  The twentieth century's first great persecution, indeed that which would produce the term "genocide" as a legal term defined in the law, was the persecution in the Ottoman Empire of its Christian populations during the years of World War I, beginning in 1915 with the Armenian Genocide.  Today even a nominally Christian country has moved to ban a rival Church during a period of war, perhaps portending a new involvement to manifest divisions in the Church through warfare and the manipulations of governments.  Moreover, and perhaps far more threatening in effect, today our brothers and sisters in the Middle East continue to suffer under attack from armies of extremists bent on exterminating all those who do not share their nominal sectarian beliefs.  Such extremist militias are even sent to other countries across Africa, striking terror into the Christian populations there, using rape, murder, torture, and abduction of child soldiers as their weapons, even using slavery as a means of procuring wealth.  In these ways, in headlines we can read in today's news if we but look to find them, the Church and Christian believers still suffer under persecution and tribulation.  As we head toward the celebration of the birth of our Lord, and we enter into the Christmas season, keep a special place in your prayers and hopefully also in your charitable gifts for those brothers and sisters of ours, all over the world, and perhaps in a different denomination from ourselves, who suffer tribulation for their faith.  Let us, together with them, share in their suffering if we might in order to help alleviate their pain and the destruction to their communities.  For Jesus preaches not only to those who suffer, but to all of us who must share in the message, "By your patience possess your souls."   Let us through our compassion participate in prayers for our patience, extended to each one through all of us, even across the world to the faithful who suffer today.  We all must come to understand the ways in which we are meant to participate in the sacrifice of the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1:19-21, Revelation 13:8).   For in this way shall we possess our souls, and gain the peace of Christ that passes all understanding, if we abide in His love -- and for one another -- as He has taught us to do.