We stood side by side in silence at the bottom of the massive steps. It was at the end of a long journey: only a few days on the calendar, but months in planning and years in prayer. My friend, Whit, who co-led our Diocese Pilgrimage to Montgomery and Selma with me last month, and I stood side-by-side at the base of the massive white marble steps that lead up to the Alabama State Capital in Montgomery after spending days deep into our country’s history of racial violence and segregation. The rest of the pilgrims were milling about, taking it in, reading placards, or taking pictures, and one of them snapped a picture of Whit and I standing at the base of the steps. I can’t tell you what Whit was thinking; we’re both quiet people, and were pretty exhausted in every way at this point, but I was struck by the futility of the beauty and strength of such a building and how when the folks arrived that day in March of 1965, how the mass of folks who gathered along the way were not allowed to even stand on these steps. All I could think after spending days upon days walking and praying in that way, was what use is such a building if it cannot even handle the weight of those people demanding a new beginning and change?
Friends, we have just one Sunday left before we enter into Advent and begin a new Liturgical Year, and today we prayed one of my most favorite collects of all time. It highlights that all holy Scriptures are written for our learning, and in this prayer, we ask God to help us to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them. I like to imagine us all sitting with our sacred texts, taking notes, praying through them, then promptly folding the page up and putting into our mouths so that we might literally digest them. (If only it were so easy.) We ask this in our prayer so that we might be so bold and confident as to embrace and to hold fast to the blessed hope of everlasting life, which is known to us through Jesus Christ. And I love that we pray this collect – intentionally asking God for this grace on a day when we hear such wild, apocalyptic scriptures.
But we must remember that “apocalypse,” at least when it comes to Biblical text, means “to reveal,” and that what Christ is describing here is not how things ought to be or how things will be, but revealing a truth about the nature of the world. The scene of our scriptures are set by noting the beauty of the stones and the magnificence of the temple, powerful in its own right, and yet Jesus doesn’t hesitate to remind the disciples gathered that these are just a pile of stones that will come crumbling down eventually.
As someone who likes to be prepared and who has also stood in beautiful churches, temples, and buildings, I can hear the anxiety begin to creep into the crowd’s voice as they ask, “Teacher? When will this pile of stones and crumbling thing happen, exactly??” And because I grew up as an Evangelical kid in the 90s, I cannot hear this passage without a certain sort of ominous and threatening tone. There is no hope for anyone who is not ready at all times because “the time is near!” Nation will rise up against nation, wars, insurrections, famines, and plagues – these are the signs that end is near. Christ then says that we ought, despite all the war and famine and plague, be able and willing to give a defense of our faith, in other words, we are called in our scripture passage today (which we are supposed to inwardly digest, by the way) to be confident in Christian calling, no matter what is happening in the world around us.
One writer and theologian that I consistently return to, especially when I don’t particularly like the apocalyptic taste of a set of Scriptures is Debi Thomas, a lay leader in her Episcopal parish in California; she wrote about this passage by saying:
For me, this is the great challenge of the Gospel. Not simply to bear the apocalypse, but to bear it well. To bear it with the courage, calm, and faith Jesus calls me to practice in this passage. . . In this troubling context, it’s easy to despair. Or to grow numb. Or to let exhaustion win. But it’s precisely now, now when the world around us feels the most apocalyptic, that we have to respond with resilience, courage, and truthful, unflinching witness. It’s precisely now, when systemic evil and age old brokenness threaten to bring us to ruin that we have to testify without fear and without shame to the Good News that is the Gospel. What’s happening is not death, but birth. Yes, the birth pangs hurt. They hurt so appallingly much. But God is our midwife, and what God births will never lead to desolation. Yes, we are called to bear witness in the ruins, but rest assured: these birth pangs will end in joy. By our endurance, we will gain our souls.[1]
Debie wrote this reflection six years ago in 2019, well before we really knew how extensive COVID would be, or what wars would ignite and be raging as we pray together in this building this morning. Yet, it could have been written yesterday. It is an unfortunate truth that we seem to be living in a consistently apocalyptic time these days.
After looking on the internet for a while, I’m not sure if I made it up, but I have this memory of an image of a man holding a sign that is one of my favorite mental images. It is sort of a classic apocalyptic street preacher; one who has all kinds of signs and warnings posted up around him, but the biggest one, instead of reading what one might expect about the end being soon, it read, “Warning! The Beginning Is Near!” The beginning is near, and while the apocalyptic text reveals to us the birth pains of the new heaven and new earth, Christ also assures us that by our endurance, we will gain our souls. By our working together for the goodness of those made in the image of God, the beginning of a world that does not degrade those who fall below and behind emerges; by our endurance, the beginning of a world that values the full spectrum of all of God’s good gifts erupts; and by the grace of God, our souls will be saved in this beginning. Thanks be to God!
A sermon delivered on November 16, 2025 for Proper 28C on Luke 21:5-19 to the people of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Lexington, KY.
[1] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2451-by-your-endurance
Becca Kello 