Not One Stone
Luke 21: 5-19
“Not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”
The Jerusalem Temple was the center of Jewish worship and civic life, the place where heaven met earth, the most permanent thing they knew. By the time Luke’s gospel was written, these words of Jesus had come true. In 70AD, the Roman Empire completely destroyed the Jerusalem temple. The center of Jewish life and the hopes of the restored kingdom were thrown to the wind, as was the Jewish Diaspora throughout the known world.
Today, we’re watching institutions we thought were permanent reveal themselves as fragile and impermanent. We’re watching the precarious work toward peace unravel in Gaza, in Sudan, in Ukraine while the world looks on, unable to stop the devastation. In our own country the cracks in our democracy are more evident now than ever before.
And here, in this room, we’re living it too. I’ve told you I’m leaving Tyson House as your chaplain, and what the future holds for this community is, at present, unclear. This particular configuration of our community, this season we’ve shared, is coming to a close.
And so we ask the question the disciples asked: “Teacher, when will this be? What will be the sign?” What’s next for us? How will get through this? We want to know the timeline. We want to see what’s coming next. We want, if we’re honest, some way to prepare, some way to control, what happens next.
But Jesus doesn’t answer that question. He refuses to give them (or us) a roadmap or a timeline. They wanted a hero; even an underdog hero would do. An Aragorn from Lord of the Rings returning to claim the throne. A Katniss Everdeen winning the Hunger Games. A Harry Potter defeating the Dark Lord. They wanted a Messiah, literally, someone to restore the Jewish kingdom, to defeat the Empire, to make everything right again.
But what Jesus gives them is not exactly what they were hoping for. He does tell them what they should expect: wars, insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues. Nation rising against nation. And then, closer still: persecution, betrayal, arrests. You will be handed over to authorities and prisons. You will be brought before kings and governors. You will be betrayed by parents and siblings, by relatives and friends. This is collapse, chaos, and betrayal; the unmanageable time when everything you thought you could count on falls apart.
But then, in the middle of that litany of catastrophe, Jesus makes a promise: “This will give you an opportunity to testify. So, make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.”
Do you understand what he’s saying? Don’t prepare your defense. Don’t script what you’ll say ahead of time. Don’t try to manage the timeline or control the outcome. This doesn’t mean we are to do nothing. It means we do the work that’s right in front of us: we serve those in need, we love our neighbors, we care for the oppressed. We are quietly faithful. And when time collapses around us into crisis, when the moment arrives that we can’t rehearse for, the Advocate will meet us there in that work we are already doing, in that faithfulness.
The Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the very heart of Christ, is your defense attorney who will speak on your behalf. Not because you’ve prepared the perfect argument. Not because you’ve rehearsed your lines. The Advocate speaks because the verdict is already in. The Resurrection is the new reality, and God’s judgement is Love. The Holy Spirit advocates for us as we live into that reality; as we love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. The steadfast faithfulness, the love, the care, the welcome, the solidarity, the healing that you as disciples are called to each and every day then, becomes the testimony.
At Disciples Together this week, we discussed the difference between chronological time, and something the Church calls kairos time: eternal time, the time of the Resurrection that breaks in, where past and future collapse into the present. This is what it means to live in the “eighth day.” The week has seven days: creation’s rhythm, the cycle of work and rest that orders ordinary time. But the resurrection happened following the Sabbath day of rest; and the early Christians recognized it not just the beginning of a new week, but the dawn of the new Creation, a completion of the original Creation; the eighth day. The day beyond the cycle. The day that doesn’t belong to the old order but breaks out from the inside.
And that one day casts its light across all the others. Every day now lives in the resurrection’s glow. The sacred has pierced the ordinary. The eighth day has already ruptured time, and we’re learning to inhabit that ruptured time, that redeemed time, even while the seven-day world continues to grind on around us. We hear the words of Jesus this evening: “they will put some of you to death,” and in the next breath say, “not a hair of your head will perish.” We endure the old cycles of betrayal, violence, and greed not by our own strength but by trusting that death is not the end of the story. The end is here, but so is the beginning! The Alpha and the Omega!
So, what does that mean for us, here, now? It means that, yes, change is the world’s only constant. It means we don’t get a five-year plan for Tyson House (we barely get a 6-month plan as it is!). We don’t get a roadmap that tells us exactly how this transition with chaplains will go or what comes next with this building. What we get is the promise that the Spirit is already here, already at work, already speaking words we haven’t learned yet.
It means when the world’s institutions shake, when the fragile peace breaks, when the structures and securities we counted on reveal their impermanence; we don’t have to pretend we have the answers. We trust the Spirit to show up as we diligently do the work that’s in front of us to do.
That is why we come to this Table week after week. Because the Eucharist is where we rehearse this reality, where we are drawn back into it. Here, both past and future become present. Here, the Resurrection is not just a memory but an encounter; we know that death is not the end because Christ is risen and present! Here, we live into the eighth day. Every Sunday is Easter! Every Eucharist is Pentecost! Every time we gather at this Table, we practice living from the verdict that’s already been rendered: Christ is risen, and we are raised with him in Baptism. Through those waters you are adopted and called beloved.
This Table survives every temple’s collapse. Christ’s presence doesn’t depend on any particular institutional configuration. The bread is broken, the cup is shared, and we discover again that we are held in a time that the world cannot understand or destroy.
“Not a hair of your head will perish,” Jesus says. “By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
They can take everything (our buildings, our institutions, our chaplains, even our very lives), but they still can’t touch what matters. Not one stone will be left upon another, and yet not a hair of your head will perish. They can kill the body but they cannot destroy the soul held in God’s hands. The verdict is already in. The eighth day has already dawned. You are held in a time the world cannot touch.
This is not a denial of our mortal fate. This is not pretending death isn’t real or that stones won’t fall. Beloved, the Advocate, the very Spirit of Christ, is already working, the Resurrection has already happened, and you, even in the rubble (especially in the rubble!) belong to the future that God is making.
Image: “Impermanence and Hope” by Tim Engelhardt. Acrylic on Canvas. 2024. https://www.engelhardtdesigns.com