Journey to the Cross 2017, Fifth Sunday of Easter (April 2)

The Fifth Sunday of Easter                                    April 2

Reading for today:
Matthew 24:1-2
Mark 13:1-2
Luke 21:5-6

I am grateful for just a few verses today – but I note that what these few verses really introduce is the Olivet Discourse – Jesus last discourse of length before His death. That will be addressed tomorrow according to my reading plan.

What I note most poignantly is that the same Jesus who prophesied his own death and resurrection – multiple times – now predicts the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. We can’t help but know what happens, no matter how hard I want to try to experience the journey as it occurred.

What Jesus predicts – for Himself and for the temple:  both come true. To Him in very short order. To the temple in A D 70 – only 37 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem.

I’ve stood on Mt Scopus and looked down over the place where that temple once stood – and wept over Jerusalem for the pain and sorrow that was and that will be. The spot where the temple once stood has been usurped by ‘The Dome of the Rock.’ I have walked underground and touched the rock that lies beneath where the temple stood. I have stood with the women and prayed in their designated section at the Western Wall, the only part of the temple left standing – and as close as Jews and visitors were allowed to get to the original temple grounds when I went on my first trip to Israel.  [That  changed for my last trip to Israel in 2011 when we were allowed to go to Temple Mount for a brief visit.  That was amazing – including standing inside the sealed-off Eastern Gate where He will one day enter at His Second Coming.] 

It is a site with incredible history leading back to Abraham, for it is where he went to ‘sacrifice’ Isaac – where God tested Abraham’s obedience after promising him Isaac was the son through whom all the world would be blessed (because he would be the one through whom Jesus would ultimately be born.) 1000 years after Abraham, it was the site of the first temple –  Solomon’s temple – and after the destruction of that temple it was the site of the 2nd temple – the one that was last destroyed.

I have walked through the excavation where the stones from the temple are piled. They are gargantuan hewn stones. It is unfathomable how they worked the stones, and how they ever managed to raise them into place. They would have looked like ‘forever’ to the Jewish people living in what we now call 33 A D. It gives me pause.

I, too, can assume certain things are stable, reliable, absolute. Yet, the only reliable forecast for life is change – some good, some not. I am so grateful that no matter what those changes bring, I have Jesus – through the power of the Holy Spirit – to walk beside me.  Everything else changes but Jesus.  Jesus is absolute Truth and he is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Humor for today:
A pastor asked a little boy, “Son do you say your prayers every night?”

“Oh yes, Pastor. I do.”

“And do you say your prayers in the morning, too?” The pastor inquired.

The little boy quickly replied, “No, Pastor, I don’t. I’m not scared in the morning.”