Massacre of the Holy Innocents

Massacre of the Innocents, Rubens

What a horrid story St Matthew tells us in the Gospel reading set for today (Matthew 2:13-23)!

The lectionary has the reading out of order. The story comes after the wise men from the East, the Magi, have departed - but they will not arrive until Epiphany on January 6^th!

The background is this. The wise men, as we all know, had been following a star to pay homage to a child, born to be king of the Jews. When they reached Jerusalem, King Herod directed them to search for the child in Bethlehem, where the chief priests said the Messiah would be born. Herod slyly asked them to bring word back to him, so that he too could pay homage - but Herod, afraid of a rival king to his dynasty, had other, murderous ideas. The wise men went on to Bethlehem, where they were overwhelmed by joy to find Jesus with Mary his mother and Joseph. They knelt down, paid homage and presented their gifts. But they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod.

Joseph too is a dreamer. But he is also a man of action, determined to protect his family. After the wise men leave, Joseph dreams that King Herod will seek to kill the newborn Jesus, so he takes Mary and Jesus and they flee to Egypt as refugees. He is right to be afraid. Herod is infuriated that the wise men had tricked him by not returning - he doesn’t know which child the wise men came to worship, which child to murder. So he orders the massacre of every child two years old and under in and around Bethlehem – every one.

Safe in Egypt when Herod dies, Joseph dreams again that it is safe to return, and he does so with Mary and Jesus. But in yet another dream he realises that Herod’s son Archelaus, who is now king of Judea, may harm them, so he settles the family at Nazareth in Galilee.

It is a nasty tale of brutal force and the massacre of innocent children, echoing the terrible events we have been seeing in Gaza. Why should we be asked to think about massacring innocents immediately after the joy of Christmas? Where is God in this?

The answer is that Christmas is not just about the joyful birth of a child, however special.

There is more to Christmas than the baby Jesus, with his soft skin smelling of milk, nursed by his young mother Mary, with Joseph close at hand. More than the choirs of angels prompting rough shepherds to come to the crib where Jesus lay and to glorify God. More than the Magi, the wise men from the East, led by a star to give homage to Jesus and present symbolic presents.

Christmas is about God made flesh in human form as Jesus Christ, the Son of God. St John calls him the true light, the ‘Word’: ‘The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth’. But Jesus is born of Mary into a world in which great beauty is mixed with hideous ugliness.

The massacre of the innocents reminds us that Jesus Christ was born into a world just like ours, a world that is horribly broken. A world where deadly force is used to kill the innocent. A world where families are forced to flee as refugees, where they must rely on the kindness of strangers. A world where the greed of the rich and powerful impoverishes the poor and ravishes creation. A world in which Christ is crucified.

Jesus Christ came into this broken world to save it, and us.

By his life and ministry, death and resurrection, he shows us how to confront and overcome evil. He teaches us to listen to his good news. He assures us that if we repent, if we change our bad behaviour, God will forgive us. In the Christmas stories, he shows us signs that the kingdom of God has come near. In God’s kingdom, the broken world will be put back together to reflect the glory of the love of God. It is not fully with us yet, but it is near - we can see signs of it if we look with the eyes of faith, just as the shepherds and the wise men did.

Our task as Christians is to follow Jesus and work to make his kingdom, God’s kingdom, a reality. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit will be with us to help us and guide us. Like Joseph we must dream dreams to understand what must be done. And like Joseph we must act on those dreams.

I shall finish in prayer with a Collect of the Word

Almighty God, 
you have shed upon us the light of your incarnate Word:
may this light, kindled in our hearts, shine forth in our lives;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen

Nicodemus visits Jesus

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan on Sunday 8th March 2020, the 2nd Sunday of Lent

Today I want to reflect on Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus as recorded by John in the Gospel reading (John 3:1-17)

Jesus uses that conversation to teach Nicodemus – and through him ourselves – some great truths, which are crucial for the later development of our Christian faith and Trinitarian theology.

Nicodemus finds it hard to understand what Jesus is saying – as we may too – because Jesus is speaking in the language of metaphor. It is as if  Jesus is speaking in riddles! ‘Being born from above’; ‘entering the kingdom of God’; ‘the Son of Man’; ‘being lifted up’; ‘having eternal life’: What in heaven’s name is Jesus talking about? Let me try my best to tease out what his words mean to me.

We should start with the kingdom of God, I think – what did Jesus understand by it?

The key I think is in the prayer he taught us: ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.’ I feel sure we enter the kingdom of God when we do God’s will here on earth, as it is done in heaven. But that ain’t easy – we have to resist our human impulses to do what we want, not what God wants. We can’t do so unless something changes us to be immune to human wilfulness. That change is like being ‘born anew’.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that ‘No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above’.  Now ‘born from above’ can just as well be translated as ‘born anew’ – and that is the sense in which Nicodemus correctly understands it. He understands the need for it, but he does not understand how to achieve it. ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old?’ he asks. ‘Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’

So Jesus explains, ‘No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit’. We need to be washed clean of our wilful natures which lead us into sin – that is what baptism symbolises. But we cannot by ourselves surrender our will to God’s will. For that we need God to take the initiative through the power of his Spirit. Only then can we surrender ourselves to God’s will completely, without reservation.

In NT Greek the same word ‘pneuma’ is used for both wind and spirit. Jesus says, ‘The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ He is telling Nicodemus that he doesn’t need to understand how the Spirit works, he just needs to know that it does work.

There’s nothing very difficult about any of this from Jesus’ point of view, I think. This is just how human beings are made psychologically – it is a plain observable fact, an earthly thing - not a deep truth, a heavenly thing. But Nicodemus just doesn’t get it. ‘How can these things be?’ he says in exasperation. And Jesus chides him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? … If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?’

But I think Jesus likes Nicodemus, and is enjoying their conversation.

Because Jesus does indeed go on to tell Nicodemus – and through him us too - about deep heavenly truths, theological truths.

‘No one has ascended into heaven’, says Jesus, except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man’.

‘The Son of Man’ is a typically Jewish way of saying ‘the ideal man’ – in other words, the perfect model of what God has created a human being to be, whether a man or a woman. Jesus is saying that for the ideal man to go up to God, he must have come down from God in the first place. And he clearly understands himself to be the Son of Man, the ideal man, who has come from God.

‘And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness’, says Jesus, ‘so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.’

Moses lifting up the serpent refers to a strange story in the Book of Numbers (21:8-9). On their journey through the wilderness, the people of Israel complained about their hardships since they left Egypt. God sent a plague of deadly serpents to punish them. When the people repented and cried for mercy, God instructed Moses to raise an image of a serpent on a pole in the centre of the camp, which healed those with snakebite when they looked at it.

Jesus is saying that he, the ideal man, is destined to be lifted up – on the cross and to God in heaven - to bring eternal life to those who believe in him, just as the image of the serpent healed those who came to it.

But what does Jesus mean by ‘eternal life’? We must distinguish it from ‘everlasting life’, I’m sure. Everlasting life might just as well be an everlasting hell as heaven. Duration doesn’t matter - eternal life is surely to participate in God’s life, full of the joy and peace and love that can only be found in God’s presence.

‘For God so loved the world’, says Jesus, ‘that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’ Those of us of a certain age will recognise these as the first of the ‘comfortable words’ in the traditional language of the communion service. In these words, Jesus reveals to Nicodemus – and to us – that Jesus the Son of Man, the ideal human being, is also the only Son of God. The breadth and depth of God’s love for the world – for you and for me and for all creation - is shown by the gift of his only Son.

‘Indeed’, Jesus continues, ‘God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him’.

Our loving God seeks to save us through the gift of his Son, not condemn us. He makes it possible for us to reconcile ourselves with God by aligning our will with God’s will, in imitation of his Son, the ideal human being, Jesus Christ our Lord.

John does not tell us what Nicodemus makes of all this.

You might expect Nicodemus to have taken umbrage when Jesus chided him. But he didn’t.

John goes on to tell us (John 7:50-53) that Nicodemus defended Jesus in the Jewish Council when there was a move to arrest him. And after the crucifixion Nicodemus helped Joseph of Arimathea to bury Jesus, contributing the expensive embalming spices (John 19:39-40).

Nicodemus may even have become a disciple of Jesus, and he is considered a saint in both the Orthodox and RC churches.

So to finish

Let us give thanks for the insights – both the earthly and the heavenly truths - that Nicodemus prompted Jesus to reveal about the relationships between God, his Son, his Spirit and human beings like you and me. They are at the heart of our Trinitarian faith.

And let us pray that the Holy Spirit may instil in us trust in God’s promises made through his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’

God of mercy,

you are full of tenderness and compassion,

slow to anger, rich in mercy, and always ready to forgive:

grant us grace to renounce all evil and to cling to Christ,

that in every way we may prove to be your loving children;

through Jesus Christ our Lord

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever. Amen

Jesus & Nicodemus

Address given at Templederry, Nenagh & Killodiernan on Sunday 12th March 2017, the 2nd Sunday of Lent, year A

Today I want to reflect on Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus as recorded by John in the Gospel reading (John 3:1-17)

Jesus uses that conversation to teach Nicodemus – and through him ourselves – some great truths, which are crucial for the later development of our Christian faith and Trinitarian theology.

Nicodemus finds it hard to understand what Jesus is saying – and we may too – because Jesus is speaking in the language of metaphor. It is as if Jesus is speaking in riddles! ‘Being born from above’; ‘entering the kingdom of God’; ‘the Son of Man’; ‘serpents being lifted up’; ‘having eternal life’: What in heaven’s name is Jesus talking about? Let me try my best to tease out what his words mean to me.

We should start with the kingdom of God, I think – what did Jesus understand by it?

The key I think is in the prayer he taught us: ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.’ I feel sure we enter the kingdom of God when we do God’s will here on earth, as it is done in heaven. But that ain’t easy – we have to resist our human impulses to do what we want, not what God wants. We can’t do so unless something changes us to be immune to human wilfulness. That change is like being ‘born anew’.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that ‘No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above’.  Now the Greek phrase translated as ‘born from above’ can just as well be translated as ‘born anew’ – and that is the sense in which Nicodemus correctly understands it. He understands the need for it, but he does not understand how to achieve it. ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old?’ he asks. ‘Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’

So Jesus explains, ‘No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit’. We need to be washed clean of our sinful natures – that is what baptism symbolises. But we cannot by ourselves surrender our will to God’s will. For that we need God to take the initiative through the power of his Spirit. Only then can we entrust ourselves to God completely, without reservation.

In Greek the same word ‘pneuma’ is used for both wind and spirit. Jesus says, ‘The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ He is telling Nicodemus that he doesn’t need to understand how the Spirit works, he just needs to know that it does work.

There’s nothing very difficult about any of this from Jesus’ point of view, I think. This is just how human beings are made psychologically – it is a plain observable fact, an earthly thing - not a deep truth, a heavenly thing. But Nicodemus just doesn’t get it. ‘How can these things be?’ he says in exasperation. And Jesus chides him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? … If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?’

But I think Jesus likes Nicodemus, and is enjoying their conversation.

Because Jesus does indeed go on to tell Nicodemus – and through him us too - about deep heavenly truths, theological truths.

‘No one has ascended into heaven’, says Jesus, except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man’.

‘The Son of Man’ is a typically Jewish way of saying ‘a representative man’. Jesus is saying that for a representative man to go up to God, he must have come down from God in the first place. And he clearly understands himself to be the Son of Man, the representative man, who has come from God.

‘And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness’, says Jesus, ‘so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.’

Moses lifting up the serpent refers to a strange story in the Book of Numbers (21:8-9). On their journey through the wilderness, the people of Israel complained about their hardships since they left Egypt. God sent a plague of deadly serpents to punish them. When the people repented and cried for mercy, God instructed Moses to raise an image of a serpent on a pole in the centre of the camp, which healed those with snakebite when they looked at it.

Jesus is saying that he, the representative man, is destined to be lifted up – on the cross and to God in heaven - to bring eternal life to those who believe in him, just as the image of the serpent healed those who came to it.

But what does Jesus mean by ‘eternal life’? We must distinguish it from ‘everlasting life’, I’m sure, which might just as well be hell as heaven. Duration doesn’t matter - eternal life is surely to participate in God’s life, full of the joy and peace and love that can only be found in God’s presence.

‘For God so loved the world’, says Jesus, ‘that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’

In these comfortable words, Jesus reveals to Nicodemus – and to us – that Jesus the Son of Man, the representative human being, is also the only Son of God. The breadth and depth of God’s love for the world – for you and for me and for all creation - is shown by the gift of his only Son.

‘Indeed’, Jesus continues, ‘God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him’.

Our loving God seeks to save us through the gift of his Son, not condemn us. He makes it possible for us to reconcile ourselves with God by aligning our will with God’s will, in imitation of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

These words of Jesus surely do express a deep heavenly truth!

John does not tell us what Nicodemus makes of all this.

You might expect Nicodemus to have taken umbrage when Jesus chided him. But he didn’t. John goes on to tell us (John 7:50-53) that Nicodemus defended Jesus in the Jewish Council when there was a move to arrest him. And after the crucifixion Nicodemus helped Joseph of Arimathea to bury Jesus, contributing the expensive embalming spices (John 19:39-40). Nicodemus may even have become a disciple of Jesus, and he is considered a saint in both the Orthodox and RC churches.

So to finish

Let us give thanks for the insights – the heavenly truths - that Nicodemus prompted Jesus to reveal about the relationships between God, his Son, his Spirit and human beings like you and me. They are at the heart of our Trinitarian faith.

And let us pray that the Holy Spirit may instil in us trust in God’s promises made through Jesus:

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’

Expectations

Address given in Templederry, Nenagh & Killodiernan on Sunday 11th December 2016, the 3rd of Advent.

In today’s Gospel (Matthew 11:2-11) we have heard a question and an answer.

John the Baptist sent some followers to ask Jesus this question: ‘Are you the one who is to come’ – meaning the promised Messiah – ‘or are we to await another?’

And Jesus answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’

This exchange raises three questions for me, which I want to explore with you:

1.      Why did John ask his question?

2.      What did Jesus mean by his answer?

3.      And what does this mean to us as Jesus’s disciples 2000 years on?

As a starting point let’s put ourselves in John the Baptist’s shoes – let’s imagine what it was like to be him.

John is under house arrest in the great fortress of Machaerus, on a barren hilltop looking out over the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley to the Judean hills and Jerusalem in the distance. King Herod Antipas has imprisoned him for publicly denouncing Herod’s illegal marriage to his brother’s wife.

It must have been hard for John to be so confined in prison – he was an outdoors kind of man, used to living in the open air of the desert, sleeping under the stars. I imagine a wiry, weather-beaten, driven man pacing up and down in his quarters. He is frustrated and longs to return to his old ministry, to continue preaching repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and hell fire for those who do not listen, like a prophet of old.

John is convinced that God has called him to announce the imminent arrival of the promised Messiah, who will usher in the Kingdom of God, in which God’s people will flourish in justice and peace. And John believes his cousin Jesus is that Messiah. Remember, when Jesus came to him for baptism John saw the dove descend on him with his own eyes, and heard with his own ears the voice from heaven say, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’.

John’s disciples, when they come to visit him in his prison, tell him that Jesus is gathering his own disciples and travelling around preaching to crowds, just like John. But, they tell him, there is no sign of Jesus behaving as a Messiah should behave. Their expectation - and John’s - is that the Messiah will act like a king and lead an army of the people to overthrow the unrighteous and bring in God’s Kingdom of justice.

So why did John send his disciples to ask Jesus his question? We shall never know for sure. Some people suggest John wanted his disciples to see Jesus for themselves, so that they too would come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah. Others suggest that John had begun to question his own belief that Jesus is the Messiah and is looking for reassurance. But most likely, I think, is this - John is impatient to see the Kingdom of God. He expects to see it, and by his question he seeks to encourage Jesus to fulfil his own expectations of the Messiah – essentially saying ‘Come on Jesus, time to start acting like a Messiah!’

Now let’s look at Jesus’s answer

From earliest times the children of Israel looked forward to a time when God would come to put right all injustice. Despite their trials and tribulations, they did their best to follow God’s law and they were sure that God had chosen them and loved them specially. So they fully expected that God, the God of righteousness, would act to restore their fortunes as God’s chosen people. And they came to believe that God would do so by raising up a Messiah, an anointed one, who would usher in God’s kingdom of justice.

But how would they know when the Messiah was arriving? And what would God’s Kingdom be like? Prophets tried to imagine it - the OT is filled with their attempts to put it into words, in catalogues of amazing things that would occur when God sent his Messiah to establish his kingdom. We have heard 2 of them today, in Psalm 146 and in the 1^st reading from Isaiah (35:1-10). Here are some of Isaiah’s words again:

‘Here is your God. He will come with vengeance,

with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.’

Every religious Jew of Jesus’s time would be able to quote some of these wonders and signs. So Jesus answers John’s question by quoting from Isaiah - not just from the passage we heard, but others too:

‘The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.’

‘Look and see’, he is saying, ‘I am doing what the prophet says the promised Messiah will do’. John and his disciples would have understood very clearly that Jesus is claiming that he is indeed the Messiah, ‘the one to come’.

And Jesus prays a blessing on those who are not offended by his claim. Jesus does not live up to the popular idea of the Messiah leading an army to overthrow the unrighteous and impose the Kingdom of God on the world, because that is not what Jesus has come to do. He is an entirely different kind of Messiah. And there were many who took offence at him.

So, what does this mean to us as Jesus’s disciples, 2000 years on?

John and his disciples could see with their own eyes the first signs of God’s Kingdom breaking out around them, in Jesus’s ministry. They could also see how few had yet experienced it. But they lived in expectation and hope that God’s Kingdom would spread to the whole world.

From apostolic times, through the insight of St Paul, the Church has seen itself as the body of Christ on earth. The Church has continued Jesus’s ministry to spread God’s Kingdom, following his great commission to the Twelve, ‘Proclaim the Good News: the kingdom of heaven has come near. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons’. The Church has never ceased to look forward in expectation and hope to growth of God’s Kingdom, and its final completion, to be marked by the return of Christ in glory. And for all its many faults, over the centuries the Church has by God’s grace done so much good work to build the Kingdom – healing the sick, freeing the slaves, relieving the poor, educating the young, acting as a yeast in society to make things better – as well as proclaiming the good news. But we all see how much more there is still to do.

The fact is God’s Kingdom is not like an earthly kingdom. It cannot be brought into being in an instant by winning a battle or voting in an election. It is a continuing process, a growing organism. Jesus is the kind of Messiah who forms God’s Kingdom through the action of many willing, loving, human beings – his disciples - by showing them what it looks like, and what they must do to make it grow. And this will take time. We cannot know when the Kingdom will be complete, but we can hope that it is soon and pray ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’

So it is right that in this Advent season Christians should not just look back at the baby in the crib, but also look forward in expectation and hope to the continuing growth and final completion of God’s Kingdom. Let us resolve to do our bit to further it, and pray for God’s help doing so:

O Saviour of the world,

lifted up on the cross to draw people of all races and nations to yourself:

bless the witness of your Church in this and every place,

and help us to finish the work you have given us to do in the world for which you died.

We ask it in your name, our living and victorious Lord. Amen

Remembering and the Kingdom of God

Address given at Templederry on Sunday 13th November 2016, the 2nd before Advent and Remembrance Sunday.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Today I wear a white poppy in my father’s memory.

He was dragged unwillingly into the maelstrom of the 2^nd World War. As a Chaplain to the Forces he landed in Normandy on D-day, he was there at the crossing of the Rhine, and he ended up in the ruins of Berlin. He spoke little about his experiences, not to me nor to most others I think - but they marked him. He felt it right to wear a red poppy on Remembrance Day, in memory of his comrades who died, and in memory of the scenes of murderous destruction he had witnessed. I thank God that my life has not been scarred by war in the same way his was.

Many people choose to wear a red poppy today, but not all do. We should be mindful of the sensitivities of others, particularly here in Ireland. I choose to wear a white poppy, as a personal commitment to peace and to challenge any attempt to celebrate war.

It is surely right to remember our family and friends who have suffered in war – for they are part of us. It is right to remember the horrors of war – lest by forgetting we allow them to happen again. But how we remember is important, I think.

Jesus proclaims, ‘the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe in the good news’ (Mark 1:15). War is the very opposite of the kingdom of God. Our remembering should be mingled in equal measure with repentance. We need to repent the very human tendency - which we all share - to hate those not of our tribe, to treat them as enemies, who all too often we seek to kill and maim in war. And we should not let others manipulate our remembering to reinforce the tribal instincts that promote war.

Let us join together in faith and penitence in a moment of silence, in remembrance of all those who have died, been maimed or suffered in war; men, women and children; whether military or civilian; on whichever side, and on no side.

silence

Ever-living God, we remember those whom you have gathered from the storm of war into the peace of your presence; may that same peace calm our fears, bring justice to all peoples and establish harmony among the nations, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

What a beautiful vision of the kingdom of God Isaiah (65:17-25) paints in today’s OT reading!

The Lord is ‘about to create new heavens and a new earth’, says Isaiah. ‘No more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.’ It will be a place of peace, in which, ‘the wolf and lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox’. ‘They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord’.

For the Jews of Jesus’s time, the holy mountain was Mount Zion, one of the hills on which Jerusalem is built, with the Temple at its summit. Herod the Great had extended, adorned and beautified the Temple in the years before Jesus was born. Judging by the remains excavated by archaeologists and descriptions from the time, it must have been a stunning building.

I imagine that visitors must have seen the Temple as like a foretaste of Isaiah’s new creation, a model of what the kingdom of God would be like when it was realised on earth, a monument to peace and plenty for all.

But Jesus did not see the Temple in this way, as the NT reading (Luke 21:5-19) tells us.

For Jesus, the kingdom of God that he cares so passionately about – his kingdom – is not built of stones, no matter how magnificent. His kingdom is not of this world, as he later tells Pilate at his trial. He recognises that the Temple with all its sacrifices and taxes is an unsustainable burden on God’s people, and he knows all material things turn to dust in the end. So, when he hears some people admire the Temple, ‘how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God’, he publicly foresees its utter destruction. And of course, he is proved right – some 40 years later it is indeed destroyed in the course of a Jewish rebellion against Roman rule.

Some who heard Jesus miss his point completely. They ask him to tell them how to know exactly when this will happen. Many people in Jesus’s time were just as consumed with apocalyptic fears about the end-times as some folk are today. But Jesus does not feed such fears. Instead he warns them not to believe people who claim to be able to forecast such things. And he tells them not to fear that the end is imminent, even when they hear of awful events, such as ‘wars and insurrections’, ‘earthquakes’, ‘famines and plagues’.

Then with amazing frankness, Jesus uses the occasion to teach his disciples what is in store for them. Jesus knows that the political and religious authorities are determined to put him out of the way and the end game is upon him – in just a few days he will be seized, tried and executed on the cross. And then the authorities will turn on his disciples. ‘Before all this occurs’, he says, ‘they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name’.

But Jesus promises to help them to hold on to and testify to the values of the kingdom of God which he has taught them – that is what matters, whatever may befall them. ‘For I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict’, he says. ‘You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls’.

Many people today fear for the future, just as they did in Jesus’s time.

·         They fear Brexit. They fear the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. They fear the consequences of changing climate. They fear their children will be poorer and less healthy than they have been. But disciples of Jesus in every age – including ours - should not be terrified. The apocalypse we dread is not imminent. Jesus reassures us.

·         However, like Jesus’s disciples of old, we must accept that our road will not be easy and there will be trials ahead. But Jesus promises to help us proclaim the values of the kingdom of God. If we stand by the kingdom of God here in Ireland today, we’re not likely to be killed for it, though we may well suffer in other ways. But to proclaim the kingdom is our duty as disciples.

·         Desertion in the face of the enemy is shameful. By our endurance we will gain our souls, as Jesus tells us.

To suffer or die for the kingdom of God is not the worst thing that can happen to us.