Imagine, you standing in front of Duke Chapel. You just finished seeing all the stained glass, someone was playing the organ inside, and you are looking at the sculpture of John Wesley. You feel a deep sense of awe in you. The birds are chirping and the flowers are blooming. Then a stranger comes up to you and says: “This whole thing, it will be gone soon.” You would probably be caught off guard and think, this dude is crazy. That feeling is only a fragment of the weight of Jesus’ words in our Gospel reading. Before this, in Luke’s Gospel, most of the narrative is the journey of Jesus teaching and healing on the way to Jerusalem. And here, Jesus, the migrant traveling teacher, has just reached the end of his journey. He finally reaches Jerusalem and he reaches the epicenter of the religious life of his people: the temple.
A few chapters before our text in Luke 19, Jesus finally reaches the city. When Jesus sees Jerusalem, Jesus weeps and cries out in lament: “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! They are hidden from your eyes.” He then says the city will not have one stone upon another. This text mirrors our text. Then he reaches the temple, Jesus drives out those selling things in the Temple saying: “my house shall be a house of prayer; but you have made it a den of robbers.” Then Jesus begins a long string of teaching at the temple. Our Gospel reading is one of those teachings, where to paraphrase, Jesus says: The riches of the temple will be no more, violence on violence will be unleashed, false prophets will try to lead you astray, you will suffer–even to death because of following me, you will be placed before rulers and authority in conflict, but not a hair on your head will perish. I believe Jesus is doing two things here: 1. Foreshadows the destruction of the temple which does happen 40ish years after Jesus’ death by the Romans in the year 70. 2. Critiquing the political religious establishment, and directly contrasting it to his peaceable kingdom and calling his disciples to live into this kingdom.
Jesus is carrying on the tradition of his people: embodying the role of a prophet. As God-incarnate, Jesus is the prophet of all prophets. To follow Christ is to seek to imitate Christ. As disciples, we seek to imitate the prophetic ministry of Jesus and I believe carrying on this ministry through the power of the spirit is desperately needed in our time.
Traditionally, Jesus is often thought of having a three-fold office: prophet, priest, and king. Mennonites also emphasize a fourth office: Jesus as teacher. Jesus is the priest of all priests, teacher of all teachers, king of all kings, and prophet of all prophets. In this reading, we see the prophet of all prophets, prophesying at the footsteps of the temple.
As I sought to make sense of Jesus as the prophet of all prophets. I looked at the writings, Rabbi Abraham Heschel who I was introduced to in seminary. Heschel is one of the most prolific writers from the Jewish tradition in the 20th century. One of his greatest contributions was his writing about the prophets. Not only did Heschel write, but he lived his writing, he marched side by side with Dr. King in the civil rights movement and he believed King embodied the spirit of the prophets. Here’s what I learned from Heschel:
1.Prophets sadly are often simply viewed as fortune tellers. Heschel helped me see that characterization misses the heart of a prophet. When the prophet speaks, they are speaking to the present moment of political and religious establishment and to the moral state of a people. Their words are a matter of life and death. The prophet begins with a message of doom and then moves to a message of hope. In this, the prophets’ life and soul are at stake in their words and from what unfolds from their words. Their proclamation cuts to the very heart of life and it echoes for generations. Prophets employ notes one octave too high. Even today, we feel the weight of Jesus’ words hitting notes that are an octave too high to our ears and these words cut to the very heart of conscience.
When Jesus prophesies about the destruction of the temple. He is warning the people of their path, and sadly, this happened in 70AD. In the generation following Jesus’ words, the temple is destroyed by the same empire that built it: the Romans. Jesus is warning his people, violence only breeds more violence. It is a message for Jesus’ time. But, as one of my Old Testament professors explained to me, although prophecy is largely for the present moment, it offers a typology or a pattern of the way of God and the way of the world that echoes well beyond the present moment of the prophet. And Jesus’ prophecy is a pattern history knows too well.
The difference between a false prophet and the prophet of God is simple: the false prophet is wrong. As the false prophets’ words echo, history sees they missed the mark. Oftentimes, this missed mark is the prophet only speaking of prosperity and maintenance of the status quo. When you look at the prophetic witness of the scriptures you will find there is a demonic or distorted element when someone claims to be a mouth piece of God and only speaks of prosperity and maintenance of the status quo in our world of exploitation and violence.
2. Heschel says the prophet is an iconoclast. The prophet challenges that which appears holy and revered. The prophet challenges beliefs cherished as certainties, and challenges institutions endowed with supreme sanctity. The prophet exposes these establishments as scandal. The prophet critiques what society deems as the highest good. This is the very heart of what Jesus is doing. The temple was not simply one building among others. It was the very epicenter of religious life and it was built by Herod I, the Roman ruler of this province. This temple was reconstructed under the Roman occupation of the Jewish people to meet their religious needs. This temple possessed a grandiosity: possessing gold plates, white marble, and it was double the size it previously was before the Romans. People from all over this time’s known world would travel from far and wide to come and worship. Jesus stands in the face of the epicenter of the religious political establishment and says, not one stone will be left on another.
At the heart of our tradition, the Anabaptist tradition, is the claim that Gospel narratives tell the story of how Jesus’ kingdom or politic of enemy-loving put one in direct opposition to the political establishment of the world. This is the heart of Jesus, the prophet of all prophets. The luxurious temple only alienates those who are suffering most. Jesus clearly displays this at the start of Luke 21. Jesus teaches that the poor widow with 2 copper coins has given more than all the rich and their lavish gifts. She has a beloved place in Jesus’ kingdom, but not this temple. Jesus prophetically critiques the meaninglessness and scandal of when wealth and worldly power are brought together with religion. Behind Jesus’ words is a subtle message: it doesn’t matter, if this temple is gone, this lavish building built by the state is meaningless within the economy of my kingdom. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from his prison cell in Nazi Germany, wrote that being Christian in the world-come-of age or post world war II (what he calls religionless christianity) will be limited to two things: prayer and righteous action among humanity. Where all Christian thinking, speaking, and organizing come from this prayer and action. It is where we proclaim the word of God that the world will be changed and renewed by it. It will be a new language, perhaps quite nonreligious, but liberating and redeeming, as was Jesus’ language. Those words capture the heart of the embodied life of faith that Jesus prophetically calls one into. Faith unbound by worldly power and wealth, faith untainted by mammon.
3. Heschel says the prophet’s opposition is a coalition of callousness and established authority. The purpose of the prophet is then to conquer callousness, to change the inner person as well as revolutionize history. Ultimately, for Heschel, the prophet discloses divine pathos. In other words, the prophet reveals and lives out of living care of God. The prophet breaks down callousness, disclosing the consuming fire and everlasting love of God bound to history and bound to concrete human life. The prophet can not separate human life from God’s presence. I find it no accident that, in our text, Jesus tells his followers that following him will put them face to face and in conflict with the rulers of the religious and political establishment. When Luke’s narrative gets to Acts (the part 2 of Luke’s Gospel), you literally see this happen in the narrative.
In my study of the history of the church, and global christianity, in every time and context of the church, there are martyrs. In our contemporary context, Dr. King is an example of this. The Anabaptist tradition has a very rich history with this. The church in Korea, the home of my roots, also has a very rich history with this. Many of the prophets are martyrs. At the heart of these people is a life grounded in conviction, courage, and truthfulness. They live something that transcends death. They understand what a wise person once told me: “there are things worse than death.” That kind of life and virtue grounded in the kingdom of Jesus is the prophetic revolution that cuts to the heart that unfolds on to the wider world. This is central to what Jesus teaches and prophecies here: his disciples are those grounded in the pathos of God. This revolutionary prophetic spirit, proclaiming the pathos of God puts us in places where we on our own accord would not go: like the capital in DC, the capital in Raleigh, the streets of Durham, other places of government, seeking places to care for the suffering, and many other places this church has gone.
Cornell West claims there are two Christianities: Prophetic Christianity and Constantianian Christianity. Constantinian Christianity is a corruption of the faith by imperial power centered on the work of emperor Constantine who oriented and popularized the church’s life being grounded in the sponsorship of the imperial power of Rome. Christianity then centered on doctrine rather than practice, and maintaining the status quo rather than contrasting it. May you know Prophetic Christianity and have the courage like Jesus to reject the meaninglessness of Christianity mixed with wealth and worldly power. May you know the kingdom politic that as prophet Isaiah proclaims is new heaven and new earth. It is where the lamb and wolf eat together and the lion eats straw rather than consume its fellow creatures. It is where the politic of war, violence, and cries of despair contrast the politic of Jesus’ kingdom. May we continue the ministry of Jesus and the prophets through the power of the spirit, seeking a Christianity that is not shallowly founded in luxurious temples and worldly power. It is desperately needed in our time and place.