The Moment of Searing Perspective: 33rd Sunday OT

The Prophet Malachi stands as the last in his line: the last of the Prophets to write before the coming of the promised Messiah. In fact our first reading was almost the final words of the Old Testament, down to the last few verses. The Old Testament finishes like the New Testament does: with a reminder of judgment and finality, an apocalyptic message because what we see and know will someday end. You don’t have to live in the ‘end times’ for this to be relevant to you, because we will each experience our own end.

These writings are not meant to terrify or panic, unless your life has gone so far off the path that you need terrifying. For most of us they are meant to refocus us on the eternal things, the things that last. Jesus introduces this apocalyptic subject kind of out of the blue as people are looking up at the magnificent Temple. Maybe they’re tourists, or pilgrims, gawking like tourists and pilgrims do. They’re admiring the Temple when Jesus says out of the blue, “All of it will be totally destroyed; there will come a time when not one stone will be left upon another.”


This is a little strange. Imagine you’re with a pilgrimage to Rome and your group is standing in St. Peter’s Square, staring, pointing, chattering with excitement and delight, and you jump in “Hmmph, someday it’ll be destroyed.” Talk about a wet blanket - nobody’s going to want to sit with you at dinner. 

And who could blame them? We don’t want to go through our lives obsessed with the fact that most everything we see is passing like a shallow breath. But in this particular moment, Jesus finds it appropriate to remind them that our perspective can be far too short if we forget about time and endings and contingency.

We could take this very personally and literally, I think. We know something about Temples being destroyed. Now that some time has passed, I’ll tell you that I worried in the days and months following that destruction about some of the expressions of grief and desperation I was hearing. Grief and sorrow were absolutely appropriate, without a doubt. But there’s a level of sorrow, a depth of sorrow, that is just out of proportion for a passing, worldly thing. Sometimes people seemed to feel they’d not just lost a church, that they’d lost Church. Maybe we could have used a visit from the Lord beforehand to remind us that stones stacked one on another are not something that should be counted on. Fr. Don Abell was often quoted in those days, “The Church isn’t the building, the Church is the people.” 

It’s kind of like if someone’s pet dies, and it just totally destroys them for months and months. You think, “pets are great, and affection for them is great, but it seems like something got a little out of balance here.” We’re putting so much effort into building a new church, and I’m happy to be part of it even though I know it won’t last forever. We’re in a church now that won’t last forever. A parish is an administrative unit of the One Church that won’t last forever. These are things we know well. 

But obviously we aren’t only talking here about Temples and buildings. That is the occasion for Jesus to make a point, and it’s one that we can identify with pretty well, but we’re really dealing with a larger point about the nature of mortal life. From cradle to grave we have to let go of things. Humans don’t like to let go of things. There’s nothing un-Christian about disliking a change. There’s nothing un-Christian about wishing it were otherwise. But there is something un-Christian about getting out of balance over passing worldly realities vs. true eternal reality. That’s what we want to avoid. That’s what, I think, Jesus was getting at as they looked up at the Temple. The Temple was good. The world is good! It speaks everywhere of its Maker. Enjoy the passing things of the world. Appreciate them. But don’t let them occupy that place in your heart that should belong only to the eternal. What’s eternal? Love is eternal. The people around you are eternal.

My Dad, in his work, has had the privilege of accompanying a lot of people at the end of their lives. Now I share that privilege. But even growing up I could see how that changed him, as it changes funeral directors, and priests, and others who deal with death very regularly… there’s a certain gift of perspective to be found there. But sometimes, say I was playing the X-Wing video game for a ridiculous amount of time, he’d walk by and say, “Steven, I’ve never heard anyone say on their deathbed that they wished they’d spent more time blowing up video-game spaceships.” Ooph. It was exactly the same move that Jesus made at the Temple that day. It felt like a wet blanket on my fun, but I needed it. I was out of balance, out of perspective, and his words were obviously true.

I call it the “deathbed test,” and I suggest it for all areas of life. Think about just this last week, these last seven days. What did you do with it? Will you care on your deathbed? In that moment of searing perspective, will it matter?

There’s a danger here, and we have 2nd Thessalonians to address it. The danger is that we could use all this as a reason to shrug and sort of just check out of life. Because, you know, what difference does it make? I spent a crazy amount of my last two weeks working on filling, patching and smoothing the concrete under the drive-through at St. Mary’s. It’ll just have to be fixed again. What difference does it make? It seems some Christians in Thessalonica were thinking this way. It’s all passing. Therefore it doesn’t finally matter. Therefore I’m not going to work today.

St. Paul is not impressed. He’s pretty blunt about the whole thing. Anyone who won’t work, shouldn’t eat. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you there’s a difference between “can’t work” and “won’t work.” Well, anyone who won’t work shouldn’t eat. Paul lays it down clearly and with a big authority bomb: “In the Lord Jesus Christ, I order and call on these people to go on quietly working.”

My first job in high school was lifeguarding. It was a rewarding job. Keeping kids safe. It wasn’t hard to see it as important work, worthy of my time and my fullest efforts. Not so my first job in college, at the grill at the dorm food court. Hour after hour, there’s a reason that “flipping burgers” is a cliche for a job that might not be so rewarding. Well one day I had a kind of epiphany. I am making a turkey windsor sandwich. The person who eats it will probably not consider it a life-changing experience. My making of this sandwich will not be remembered next week, much less next year. But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I make the best sandwich I can. In a few hours I’ll be doing triple-integral calculus for quantum mechanical chemistry and I’ll feel like I’m big stuff. Right now I’m making this sandwich and I can do it badly or I can do it well. And I decided to make the best sandwich I could, from then on. That I wouldn’t think the work was beneath me, or unworthy of my time and effort. People who came to that counter would get the best sandwich I was capable of making. And I promise you, that will seem important on my deathbed.

Malachi and Luke give us hard reminders of what lasts and what doesn’t, the eternal perspective that a Christian should never forget. Paul reminds us that what we do here still matters. This is what I’ve called the ‘deathbed test.’ If Jesus should return at the end of this week, or if you should find yourself at your personal end, what will matter? What will still seem important?


Generosity. Honesty. Perseverance. Kindness. Courtesy. That you lived for others more than for yourself. That whatever work you were about, however grand or however humble, you did it well. That the people you loved knew you loved them. That you didn’t take for granted one moment of the extraordinary grace and beauty and astonishment of this world. Your homework for the week is to fill out the list for yourself.

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