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Good morning reading today comes from the gospel of luke . Chapter 21 verses five through 19. And while some were talking about the temple that he was adorned with beautiful stones and votive gifts, he said As

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for the things which we are looking at, the days will come in which they will not be left one stone upon another which will not be torn down . They questioned him saying Teacher, when therefore will

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these things happen and what will be the sign when these things are about to take place? And he said, see to it that you are not misled for many will come in my name saying I am

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he and the time is near. Do not go after them. When you hear of wars and disturbances do not be terrified for these things must take place first. But the end does not follow immediately.

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Then he continued by saying to them, Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom and there will be great earthquakes and in various places plagues and famines and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven

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. But before all these things they will lay their hands on you and will persecute you, delivering you to the synagogues and prisons, bringing you before kings and governors for my name's sake, it will lead

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to an opportunity for your testimony. So make up your minds not to prepare beforehand to defend yourselves. For I will give you utterance and wisdom which none of your opponents will be able to resist or refute

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. But you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends. And they will put some of you to death and you will be hated all because of my name. Yet. Not a

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hair of your head will perish by by your endurance . You will gain your lives. Holy wisdom. Holy word! Pray with me. God help your servant, preach your word in the name of jesus

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Amen. A few decades ago, a baptist preacher told the story that seems fitting to illustrate aspects of the gospel reading today. The story was part of a sermon that was so unusually emotional that legend says

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that even the presbyterians in attendance cried, but don't worry, I'm not going in that direction. It is the story of the strange disappearance of one of the most beautiful castles in Ireland. The castle castle

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array the ancient home of the casa ray family. We went to London there, the last living heir of the castle, a family went to visit. He found the property in disrepair. The castle was

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being pillaged by scavengers. The scavengers preferred to use stones that were part of the castle structure already cut and ready to be used rather than dig and cut stones for their projects. So Lord of Londonderry waiting

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, wanting to protect his family's property called an agent and told them build a six ft wall around the castle and then he left. A few years later , Lord Londonderry returned and he found the wall.

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But no castle. He then called his agent and asked him, why didn't you do what I told you to do, the agent said, but I did. My Lord. Then Lord Londonderry asked a

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question that was obvious to him then where's my castle ? The Agent said, Oh my Lord, Would you expect me to go all over Ireland searching for stone when the best stone in the whole kingdom was

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right here next to me? He, he torn down the castle to build the wall. The thing with crumbling, contested structures like the castle is that often only those who benefit from them see their value

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and insist in their protection. Lord Londonderry might have remembered the castle casa Rey fondly and wanted to protect it. Everyone else is a little value in that structure, that they so much so that they used

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the stones that form the castle to build the wall without even noticing that this was not the plan for them. The destruction of the castle made an easier way to do the job, a just an easier

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way to to live their daily lives Here in Our Gospel, Reading in Luke 21, jesus speaks about the destruction of a structure around which many of his contemporaries constructed the identity, the Jerusalem temple. Few

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chapters before that in Luke 19 we learned that Jesus was teaching in the temple regularly and that the religious leaders were trying to find a way to kill him . He entered the temple and drove out the sellers

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. His authority was questioned by religious leaders, Jesus questioned him back, as he often did, and right before the mention of the destruction of the temple , he prayed the widow's gift, saying that her

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gift was more valuable than those of the rich people . It's only then that he speaks about the destruction of the temple is a packed chapter. The author of the the author of the Gospel of luke is

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as the american expression goes on fire here. Now the temple, this structure full of meaning, was no small building to be easily destructed or easily destroyed . Hair of the greats. Engineers had placed colossal

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stones in the structure, some waiting up to eight tons. It was an impressive building, certainly were a worthy representation of the meaning it carried for many . Yeah, Jesus has mentioned of the collapse of

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the temple meant more than the destruction of a large building. It also meant a strong challenge to the traditional system of first century Judaism with its jesus. A jewish person himself grew up and from which he

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was nurtured no reason for celebration or indifference here, A reason to mourn, but also a challenge to reimagine religious identity and practice Lutheran theologian, robert, Jensen reminds us in his insightful small book cannot in

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creed that the destruction of the temple prompted both the development of a rabbinic Judaism that offer different avenues for the maintenance of jewish identity and the, Jesus movement increasingly centered around the Eucharist as a ubiquitous temple with

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the destruction of the temple. Rabbinic Judaism in the church. For Jensen responded to an analogous lee problematic identity crisis by creating new volumes that aimed to interpret Israel's scriptures through different vantage points. The Missioner in

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the new testament, the letter, which has unfortunately been used as a foundation for weaponized forms of super session is um way too often in the text. It is when disciples were talking about the beauty of

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the temple that jesus interrupted them and said that you will be destroyed. It is when disciples are admiring an important foundation of their tradition that jesus introduced the notion of an incoming crisis that would necessitate re imaginations

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of the core of their identities. The structure to which the identities were bound would crumble. We could not be protected, its walls wouldn't save it from destruction. Physical structures of course, are often the

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manifestation of social imaginations that precede them in that once form can be, can begin being experienced as phenomena with independent meaning. This happens through a threefold process , the sociologist Peter Berger Families named externalization, objectification

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and internalization to explain how social reality, including religious identities are both both constructed, but also construct. When seen through this prism, we are not short of structures that are crumbling all around us and as

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a result are fighting desperately to survive. But Jesus dialogue partners, strangely enough, did not seem concerned with trying to protect the temple despite all of its meaning. Maybe they knew that as a colonized people

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within a powerful empire, they would stand little chance against those who would destroy the temple. Or maybe they just accepted what Jesus was saying and just wanted a heads up. When will this happen and how

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we will know it's about to happen, that's their concern now, Jesus eventually gets to that, but in our text for today, he warned his disciples of a few dangers. He tells them to not

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be fooled by false teachers. Those who often appear in times of crisis, he tells them not to be afraid during times of crisis, he tells them to prepare to be persecuted and maybe even killed and

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he tells them to persevere And within those warnings, Jesus tells his disciples that they will be betrayed by parents and brothers and relatives and friends. Now, those of us who live in the heart of empire

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and benefit from different versions of its protection has imbalanced imbalanced on the basis of race, gender, class and sexual identity. As those protections maybe might be too many steps removed from the text to share an

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analogous context for jesus warnings. Perhaps a closer context than ours. From where to read the text was that of the Campesinos of Solon economy. Do you know their story In 19 in the 1960s Roman,

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Catholic poet and priest Ernesto Cardinal went to the Salon Salon, Tanami islands in the archipelago in the south of Lake Nicaragua and established a parish that became a site for semi money from a semi monastic community of

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artists and passwords now introduced liberation theology to the people of Solon economy and he often went over scripted passages with them and recorded their exchanges which are accessible in english in a book called The Gospel in Salon Autonomy

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. There is no discussion of luke 21 5 to 19 in the Gospel of Salon Tanami, but the Nicaraguan Campesinos did discuss Matthew 10 34 to 37 in which jesus says that he came to bring divisions within

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families Attacks the shared connections with Luke 21 16, you will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends and some of you, they were put to death. The commentary of the Salon

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Tanami peasants give us a glimpse into Jesus's mention of division between relatives for the sake of the Gospel. From the vintage point of people living in a context of oppression ridden Somoza regime, which was criticized openly

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by Cardinal. Eventually the Nicaraguan National Guard issued a warrant for cardinals arrest, occupied the island, transformed the church into a prison and destroyed much of the Campesinos and the artist's work Commenting on the reason for

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family betrayal and 10or from Salon Tanami said this division within families has to happen and whenever there are new ideas that go against tradition, the parents are almost always in favor of the traditional ways and the new

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ideas are against them, Laureano jumped in. It seems that jesus sees the division is going to cause families will be mailing a division between generations and it's because the young people are the ones who are almost

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always with the revolution and not the older people Ernesto contributed that division in families of which Jesus spoke was clearly in cuba at the time of the revolution, many families were divided and whenever there is a revolution

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this has to happen, Leonel asked how long until you reach unity, right, because it can't always be like that division happens so that later there will be unity, a final peace and then Armando said

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. But meanwhile Jesus comes to break the unity of the family which was considered a very sacred thing and since the family is the basis of society, he comes to upset all of society here. He publicly

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declares himself a disturber of social peace. The rebellious Campesinos of salon Tanami so clearly in scripture that Jesus was a revolutionary, a disturber of the peace. Sometimes it takes one to know one, you know

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, and they interpret the division in families that Jesus talks about in different parts of scripture as a manifestation of the willingness of people in the jesus movement, not only to accept ideas about new social structures,

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but also to act upon them. This is a central message in our reading today is that the status quo was going to be dismantled in ways that called for radical re imagination. The temple would crumble calamities

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would come and social peace would be disturbed in the midst of disturbances. The gold standard for ideal behavior , als endurance, the ability to stand hardship to sustain prolonged stressful activity, the willingness to hang on

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because you know, as we continue to face the challenge of rethinking crumbling social structures, there will be resistance and we are called to persevere as we attempt to follow jesus faithfully. People we trust in love

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might turn against us. We are called to hold on calamities around us, might tempt us to follow . Opportunists who want to capitalize on power vacuums, we are called to resist the temptation to follow false

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teachers, Those who often promise big and fast success or point to greatness is that never were jesus warned his disciples that important structures were crumbling as they do periodically. And there was also a call to rethink

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religious and other social structures around which his disciples identities as well as aspects of his very own now have been constructed, The court remains for us today and I'm sure you can think of a thing or two

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that could use some reimagining part of the issue with that is that when meaningful structures, structures that they constructed, it is often unclear what comes next. The illusion, willing Jennings capture a fundamental reason for

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this lack of clarity when he wrote that and I quote him, we live in a defeated conceptual moment when so many surrender their imaginations to working inside the ideas of race, religion and nation as the most

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rational way to think collective assistance and for people to know and announce themselves, it may be impossible to escape these ideas in the world order form through modern colonialism and connected through education. But the more urgent

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question is whether we should continue to surrender our imaginations to them, It resembles insidious question can the subaltern speak maybe louder after the table is cleared? To be clear. The particular example of the destruction of

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the temple itself is a condemnable act of imperial violence against the group of colonized people. The world is a complex place with lots of evil to go around . So much so that even colonized people sometimes oppress

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each other if given the chance. So the message remains for those on the bottom of social structures, those bearing the brunt of the oppressive weight. News of their destruction can also be a ring of hope

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for a world as yet to come. A world in which they can live their lives to the fullest or at least get a little closer. So here , jesus is called to rethink structures sometimes willingly,

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sometimes as a result of the actions of the powers that be. Here's his here he's called to endure faithfully. The difficult times that often result from the crumbling of what lies behind, and to quote the

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gospel writer, not a hair of your head will perish by your endurance. You will gain your lives a strange hope from our Lord and savior, jesus christ whom Armando from Salon Tanami called a disturber of

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the peace. May God give us hope, strength