When the Temple Falls

A homily for the Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Tine (Year C), on Luke 21:5-19 and influenced by John D. Caputo's writing on the insistence of God.

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, Jesus said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?”

And Jesus said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.

“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.”

Then Jesus said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.

“But before all this occurs, 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.

“This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defence in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.

“You will be betrayed even by parents, by brothers and sisters, and 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.” ―Luke 21:5-19

They stood marvelling at the temple that day—the shimmer of its limestone blocks, the gleam of gold from its offerings, the solid reassurance of a world they believed would endure forever. And Jesus, with that disquieting clarity that strips away our illusions, murmured: “The days are coming when not one stone will be left upon another.”

A terrible sentence—unless you recognize it for what it is: an opening. A thin fissure where the future seeps through. Jesus is not stirring fear but telling the truth our bones already know: nothing we fashion, however cherished, lasts forever.

So the people ask, When? When will this happen? For when the ground quivers, our instinct is to clutch at certainties. And sure enough, snake-oil salesmen appear with their programmes and charts, hawking easy answers to still the quake. But Jesus warns us not to follow them. The quake is not the problem; it is the announcement that something is stirring. Beneath the rubble lies a call—an invitation to pay attention, to move beyond fear, and to step into what is being born rather than chase illusions of control.

For the kingdom does not advance like the armies of empire or the opportunists who circle declining church numbers, selling quick fixes for their own gain. It comes quietly: a gentle knock, the faint insistence of a possibility we never imagined—one that asks us to love, and in loving, to risk everything.

Yes, the world is changing. The church is changing. Your life and mine are changing. Some changes come as gifts; others arrive like thieves in the night, stealing what we cherished and shaking the floors of our certainty. We all know these days. We each have stories: the death of a loved one, the diagnosis, the divorce, the failed business, the lost job. The day you realized you were living someone else’s life. The day addiction was named. The day you became caretaker to the one who once carried you. These are the days our temples fall—not only the ones built of stone, but the ones built of hope, identity, and dreams.

And our temples fall not only in private grief. As a parish, a church, a nation, we see stones loosening everywhere: Declining attendance numbers, our children telling us that they are spiritual not religious, strained budgets. A church that is no longer the church of our childhood. Economies that shudder at the whisper of tariff walls. Nations flexing their military muscles. A world groaning with war and rumours of war, famines, earthquakes and typhoons in various places. The old securities crumble and give way.

We shake our heads and whisper, “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” But every temple, no matter how beautiful, carries the seed of its own impermanence. And so Jesus asks us: What will you do when the temple falls?

Our impulse is to lunge into the future—predicting, strategizing, demanding guarantees. But the future is a story we haven’t yet been given. The only place the impossible God arrives is the present moment, even when that moment is thick with dust and fear.

We look for scapegoats — someone to blame, or even to demonize. We look for someone or a group who does not look, think, act, or believe like we do. Someone to exile, to condemn. It gives us the illusion of control. But Jesus refuses that path. So must we.

Some people will simply give up and walk away in despair. They can see nothing left. All is lost and the situation is hopeless. But Jesus refuses that path. So must we.

Some will become angry, resentful, and fight back. Others will say this is God’s will or worse maybe even God’s punishment. Many will look for easy answers, quick fixes, something that will prop us the old structures and ways of doing things. But Jesus refuses those paths too. And so must we.

For Jesus is not afraid of falling stones, and neither should we be. He knows they are not the end. He knows resurrection begins precisely there. The call is not to panic, fight, or despair, but to endure—to show up with love in a world breaking open.

Be still, he says. Do not be led astray. Do not live by fear. Endure. Stay present. Stay awake.

For if we cannot find God amid the rubble of our present, we will not find God anywhere. John Caputo might say: God does not come sweeping in to stop the stones from falling — God comes in the falling itself, in the trembling, in the call that rises from the dust:

What now? Who will you be? What new thing might you dare to hope?

And here, in the ruins, Isaiah’s voice shimmers through the smoke: “I am creating new heavens and a new earth… be glad and rejoice in what I am creating.”

Creation, re-creation, new creation—God’s work is never finished. And Jesus tells us how that work unfolds in us: “By your endurance you will gain your lives.” Endurance does not mean hardening our hearts; it means keeping them open. It means remaining faithful to the call of love when we cannot see the outcome. It means trusting that every act of compassion, every choice to forgive, every small gesture of beauty is building a new temple out of human hearts.

That is the miracle hiding in the ruins: when old walls fall, the Spirit finds new places to dwell. God rebuilds quietly, insistently, without fanfare—in the present moment, in our willingness to stay vulnerable to the call.

Endurance is not gritting our teeth. It is staying vulnerable to the call. It is offering God the fallen stones of our life, one by one. And stone by stone, God rebuilds. Stone by stone, God shapes a new beauty. Stone by stone, the ruins become a rising.

Until at last we see that: we are the temple — not the structures we clung to, not the certainties we carved, not the systems we hid inside. But us—living stones, trembling with possibility, porous to the Spirit, open to the event of God.

We can all tell the story of the day our temple fell. But that is not the end. The deeper story—the gospel according to you—is the story of how God met you on the ground, knees dusty, hands shaking, and began to lift the stones with you.

This story is sacred. Real. True.
Trust it. Tell it. Live it.
And let your life become the new temple rising—stone by trembling stone—
from the grace hidden in every fall.