LK 21: 5-19 

Laterally Luke… Pentecost + 23…Revised 2019 

Jesus has been sitting by the Temple treasury. (Or, in the vestry as the Treasurer counts the weekly offerings?) Observing. The incident of the poor widow - let’s call her ‘Leah’ - flows into what He says about the Temple & its grandeur. To focus on buildings rather than people is still an issue that dogs us.

Jesus discerns in His ‘spiritual genes’, God’s ‘genes’, what’s going to happen if the Jewish leaders, church & civil, keep going the way they’re going. But they do.  And it does. For this question to be valid for today’s congregations, it must lead to responses & strategies that will enable Church not only to change & survive, but be resurrected in our rapidly changing circumstances. Jesus isn’t on about us losing our lives so much as our gaining them! Not by trusting in, sheltering in, church buildings but by becoming relevant.  Gaining people’s confidence & trust in a God relevant today. 

Church means those who gather in Jesus’ Name, rather than applying to buildings. Being Church is about who gathers, what we do & how we do what we do when we gather. What we do when we go out from our gathering as Church ‘in there’ to being Church ‘out there’. The end of the world as we know it is closer to hand now than it was for both Jews & new Christians ‘back then’. Nothing is going to slow down for us. All is going to keep changing faster than most of us can keep up with - or want to! Some of these changes will Bewilder us. Threaten us. Scare the pants off us. Frustrate us. Make us feel Helpless. Left Behind. Lost. That’s the bad news. But there is Good News! 

Jesus’ picture of the Temple in ruins back then, & social change happening faster & faster now, are wake up calls to our need to become a new Church. Taking new shapes. Helping us live Jesus-like lives.  Attracting & encouraging others to join us in living Jesus-like lives, too. Gathering with us as God’s faithful people. Living as His Spirited Body in our not necessarily brave new world. 

The precarious outward appearance of ‘Leah’ is in contrast with the inner faith that leads her to be so generous to God. She becomes a symbol of what Jesus goes on to say: Disaster may be looming, but, “By your perseverance you will gain your lives!” Let’s all persevere to become that new Church of new people, & do it the new Jesus Way. That will undoubtedly mean changes. Are we up for them? Take heart; God is!

Brian 

Afterthought: Years ago, I am standing outside a church where I was then PP. It was being renovated & covered with scaffolding in the process. A passer-by asks me, “Are you pulling the church down?” I’ve long pondered whether in the light of the church’s apparent irrelevance to her, we should have been doing just that - in some meaningful sense!