Homily | 🏛 When Temples Fall

2nd Sunday Before Advent

Scripture of the day: Luke 21:5-19

So I need to tell you something up front.

This homily is partly me warming up for a funeral I’m doing on Friday. My friend Eddie from high school died a couple weeks ago. He was 46 years old. Had a heart attack. Just... gone. His parents are still alive, which feels cosmically wrong.

And I’ve been sitting with these scriptures all week thinking about Eddie, and about temples that fall way too soon. I don’t have this all figured out yet. But maybe we can walk together through the dark here for a bit.

Last week, I heard stories from people here about kids who’ve grown up and left home—all that labor and love, and now they call every couple weeks. And how jarring that is.

And I’ve heard from others whose adult kids are still at home who are like, “Go ahead. Fly away. Any day now would be fine...”

We can’t win.

And as I’ve been reflecting, I keep coming back to this: We make our lives ABOUT the people we love. We turn people into temples. We pour decades into them. We learn their rhythms. We become the person they call when everything goes sideways. We find our purpose in taking care of them, our identity in being needed by them, our meaning in the daily work of loving them.

And God rejoices in this. This isn’t the problem. The love, the labor, the pouring out—that’s beautiful. That’s participation in the divine life itself.

And then they change. They move away. They get sick. They die. And we’re left standing in rubble.

In our gospel reading today, the disciples are standing there looking at the temple in Jerusalem: Herod’s temple, one of the wonders of the ancient world. Limestone blocks the size of school buses. Gold everywhere.

And they’re doing what we all do when we see something impressive: “Teacher, look at these stones! Look at these buildings! This is PERMANENCE.”

And Jesus (who wasn’t great at reading the room) just goes: “You see all this? Not one stone is going to be left on another. It’s all coming down, you guys”

(Thanks, Jesus. Great vibes.)

But here’s the thing. Jesus isn’t just talking about limestone and mortar.

He’s talking about every temple we build. Every structure we construct to give our lives meaning, security, identity.

Our kids become temples. We pour decades into them, and we find ourselves in that work.

Our parents become temples. They’re supposed to be our foundation. And when they change or struggle or let us down, the ground shifts under our feet.

Our beloved elders become temples, dear saints who’ve been pillars of our community. We found belonging in them, continuity, a living link to the past.

Our friends become temples...

Eddie was that for me. We met in grade school, but became close in high school when his family became my sanctuary during some really hard years. Their little Thomas Kinkade-esque Tudor style ranch house outside of town was where I landed when my own home wasn’t hospitable.

It was a place where I could breathe.

You might have a friend like this. Who you can communicate in half-sentences with. Who you share endless inside jokes with. Eddie knew a version me that not many people in my life now do—he knew the dorky teenager whose mom had died and whose life was in upheaval. We’d drive too fast in his GTO down country roads listening to the best (and worst) rap music the 90s could offer.

I moved away after high school. We drifted apart, but stayed in touch and always picked up right where we left off. He and his mom came to my ordination two years ago. That was the last time I saw him.

And now he’s gone. The temple that held me when I was in my teens fell a couple weeks ago. And I’m standing here in the rubble trying to figure out what that means.

Our work becomes a temple. Our health becomes a temple. Our plans become temples. Our politics becomes a temple. Our sense of control becomes a temple.

We build. We invest. We labor. We love.

And Jesus stands there looking at all of it and says, “Y’all... It’s all coming down.”

Now, you might be thinking: “Jonas, this is terrible news. Why are you telling us this?”

But I don’t think Jesus is trying to make us feel worse. I think he’s telling us the truth.

And notice, Jesus doesn’t say, “The temples are going to fall because you’ve been really bad. Or because you haven’t had enough faith.” He’s not pronouncing judgment. He’s just naming reality.

Every temple falls.

Your kids grow up and move to Portland where they go vegan and your pot roast becomes “problematic.” Your body breaks down. Your plans change. Your friends die at 46. Or younger.

Not one stone left on another.

This isn’t pessimism. This is just Thursday morning when you realize your daughter hasn’t called in three weeks. This is the afternoon your doctor uses the word “progression.” This is the evening you find yourself speaking to a photo of someone who used to sit across from you at dinner.

This is what it means to be a creature. Everything changes. Nothing we build lasts forever.

But that’s not actually the problem. Death isn’t the enemy. Our terror of it is. Our frantic grasping to make things permanent—I think THAT’S the problem. We’re so busy trying to freeze everything in place that we miss what God’s actually up to.

God isn’t in the preservation business. God’s in the resurrection business. And you can’t have resurrection without death.

Which doesn’t mean God is unmoved by people that die too young. Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb even though he knew what was coming next. Lazarus would eventually die, even after his divine resuscitation. The falling is necessary for resurrection, but that doesn’t make it less heartbreaking. God isn’t coldly orchestrating death. God is grieving with us in it, sharing the sorrow of temples that fall too soon, bearing the weight of a creation groaning for restoration.

So here’s the Advent question: What remains when the temples fall?

When everything crumbles, what are we actually waiting for? Not something we can construct or control or earn. But someONE. God-with-us. Emmanuel. Coming to us precisely in our rubble.

The world wants to skip this part. December will try to jump straight into the holly jolly’s of Christmas. But we’re not there yet. We’re sitting in the rubble for a while. We’re sitting in the dark while knowing we’re not alone.

You can’t earn permanence. You can’t construct a life so sturdy that loss can’t touch it.

Every temple falls. And God’s grace doesn’t prevent that. Grace doesn’t WANT to prevent it.

Grace doesn’t work by avoiding death. Grace works THROUGH death. Grace needs the falling. Grace takes the grain of wheat that falls into the ground and says, “Perfect. Now watch what I can do.”

We wanted grace to be a preservation plan—a cosmic insurance policy against loss. But grace said, “I’ve got something way better than keeping your temples standing. Let me show you what happens when they fall and I raise new ones.”

Which means... you were never responsible for holding the whole thing up in the first place. That’s an impossible task and it was never the deal to begin with.

What if the love we feel is already a participation in something eternal?

My love for Eddie didn’t die with him because it was never just mine. My minor love was always a sharing in God’s Major Love that holds all things. The parent’s love for their kids doesn’t evaporate when they move to Portland. The reverence you felt for those declining saints… That’s still real because it’s rooted in the divine love that holds the universe together.

In a few minutes, we’re coming to this Table.

And here’s what I love about the Eucharist: it’s the ultimate temple that fell and somehow keeps feeding us anyway.

Jesus’s body was the temple. “Destroy this temple,” he said, “and in three days I’ll raise it up.” He called it.

The body is broken. The blood, poured out.

And yet here we are, two thousand years later, still being fed by it.

The temple NEEDED to fall so it could be raised as something new. That’s how resurrection works. Not preservation. Not resuscitation. Not exemption from dying. But sinking into the ground and rising as new creation.

In a few minutes, you’re going to walk up this aisle and hold out your hands. And I’m going to put bread in them. Real bread. Bread that was wheat (or potatoes or rice in the gluten-free wafers) in a field last year. “The body of Christ, given for you.” And you’re going to eat it. And it will sink into the soil of your heart. And grow as... You. The ever-new you.

That’s the whole deal. God takes what falls and raises it. God takes what dies and makes it live.

So come to the Table. The temple has fallen. But the feast remains.

And so it is. Amen.