The Rev. Brandon C. Ashcraft
Trinity Church in the City of Boston
Isaiah 65:17-25 / Luke 21:5-19
23 Pentecost / Proper 28C (November 16, 2025)
Refuge Beyond These Stones
My athletic career ended before it began. In my first soccer game at age six, I scored a goal for the other team. Along with being hopeless at sports, I had zero interest in hunting, fishing, or cars. Simply put, I did not fit the deep South’s mold of a typical boy, which often made life awkward. But my experience at church was different. At church, my interests were affirmed, and my gifts were celebrated. I was comfortable in my own skin. Church was my refuge. Even now, pictures of that church in my mind bring a warm rush of nostalgia.1 All Saints Episcopal Church in Tupelo, Mississippi, where I worshipped from 1984-1996. The worn red carpet. The wood-paneled hymn boards. The prayer- and incense-soaked pews.
Whether it’s a quaint parish church in small-town Mississippi, or an architectural wonder in Boston, many of us come to church seeking refuge from a confusing and turbulent world—shelter from the storms of life. But this morning, as he teaches in the Temple, Jesus challenges our notion of church as a refuge. In Jesus’ day, Herod the Great oversaw enormous renovations to the Jerusalem Temple, all designed to inspire awe and wonder. It was the largest structure of its kind in the Roman world. Its exterior walls had been overlaid with so much gold that viewing them in direct sunlight could reportedly lead to blindness!2 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 8, Chapter 3, Section 2. But while those around Jesus are mesmerized by the Temple’s display of pomp and power, Jesus sees a façade.
Here at Trinity, we know something of the awe and wonder a sacred building can inspire. Right now, in fact, we’re hosting a series of Visioning Parties to plan the 150th anniversary of our historic church building.3 The consecration of the current building took place on February 9, 1877. So when today’s lectionary hands us a passage about the collapse of a historic church building—it’s like the lectionary has a bad sense of humor!
On top of the Temple’s destruction, Jesus forecasts wars, earthquakes, famines, and plagues, and the historical record bears out his predictions. The Temple was famously demolished when the Romans besieged Jerusalem in 70 AD, and ancient historians describe widespread famines not long after Jesus’ death.4 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 20, Chapter 2, Section 5. That means that by the time Luke’s community wrote this passage down, the events described had already taken place. For them, this scripture was less about predicting the future and more about making sense of the present. Two thousand years later, our world is no less tumultuous than theirs was. And like them, we long to make sense of our own modern-day mayhem. So how does Jesus help us do that?
If it’s refuge we’re seeking, that’s not what Jesus seems to be offering. Instead, Jesus casts chaos and confusion as the very context for witness —“an opportunity to testify.”5 Luke 21:15 (NRSVUE) Its vivid, end-of-the-world imagery is why this chapter of Luke’s Gospel is often called the “Little Apocalypse.”6 Freedman, David Noel, Gary A. Herion, David Frank Graf, J. David Pleins, and Astrid B. Beck. The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary. Volume 2, New Haven, CT (Yale University Press; Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021), 1081–1084. The word “apocalypse” understandably makes many of us shudder, because our cultural references—movies, books, video games—have a doomsday vibe. We hear “apocalypse” and we think zombies, alien invasions, and comets colliding with the earth. But the literal meaning of the word points to something deeper. Apocalypse means unveiling.7 Topical bible: Apocalypse. Biblehub.com. Accessed November 16, 2025. https://biblehub.com/topical/a/apocalypse.htm. Revelation. Biblical apocalypse is not intended to be oppressive or scary; it’s intended to clarify. It reveals what is real and true, even when it’s hard to hear. And in today’s text, Jesus is honest about the fragility of even our grandest man-made structures. Jesus normalizes chaos as the way of the world. And Jesus calls us to testify – to proclaim Christian hope – in the midst of that chaos.
No wonder this unveiling makes us uncomfortable; it refuses to sugarcoat the sheer amount of suffering in the world. That very suffering is often what people cite to suggest God doesn’t exist. But the God of the Christian scriptures never promises a life without suffering. Over and over again, Jesus refuses to evade it. He even invites those who would follow him to pick up and carry a cross. The life of Christian discipleship, then, necessarily brings us into and through discomfort and disorder. And in that very place, the apocalyptic Jesus we meet today is also the pastoral Jesus, because he refuses to leave us without hope. “I will give you the words,”8 Luke 21:15 (NRSVUE) he says. “Not a hair of your head will perish.”9 Luke 21:18 (NRSVUE) “By your endurance you will gain your souls.”10 Luke 21:19 (NRSVUE) Our Christian vocation is to endure in this world, with this kind of turmoil—but with a hope-filled vision of this world’s destiny in God. Thankfully, we don’t have to wonder what that destiny looks like.
When Jesus calls us today to endure and to testify, he does so with a head full of the Prophet Isaiah, whose words we also heard this morning—the same Isaiah who heralds God’s promise of “a new heaven and a new earth”—where every tear is wiped away and justice and peace prevail.11 Isaiah 65:17 (NRSVUE), paraphrase This hopeful promise of restored creation has sustained people of faith for centuries, through every heartache and hardship imaginable. It’s no surprise that mourners often choose this scriptural language for Christian funerals.12 The Book of Common Prayer’s liturgy for the Burial of the Dead includes Isaiah 25:6-12 and Revelation 21:2-7 among the appointed readings of scripture, which echo themes of Isaiah 65:17-25. It’s an image we can cling to in our deepest grief. This capacity to imagine a hopeful future is essential to the Christian life—a life lived on the border between two worlds: the world as it is, and the world as it should be. Our confidence in God’s promised future of renewed creation empowers our witness to a world that can’t see beyond the headlines. This glorious building is a training ground for that witness. A sacred container for the word and sacrament that nourish our hope, so that, when we emerge from the protective cover of these stones into a chaotic and confusing world, we can endure…we can bear witness…we can testify to that hope.
The warnings Jesus sounds today do not diminish my childhood notion of church as refuge. They simply speak a fuller truth, because Jesus loves us too much not to tell us the truth. Church sanctuaries are not an escape hatch from the world, but they do offer us refuge: a refuge in Christ. Refuge in Christ offers no guarantee that we will emerge from the world unscathed. Refuge in Christ draws us into the life of the One who, at the last day, will make all things new. Amen.