November 17, Ordinary 33C (Luke 21:5-19)

Since he was very young, my son has been fascinated by all things related to construction. For a while, I thought it might be just a phase, possibly induced by the relentless parade of dump trucks and diggers on pajamas, T-shirts, shoes, sheets, backpacks, and virtually every other product labeled “boys.” But his interest has stuck. As we travel our daily routes, he plays a never-ending game of I Spy with himself, scanning the scene for cranes, caution tape, and traffic barrels—and searching for those unmistakable orange and black road signs. He is not yet a reader, but he has come to recognize certain signs. “That says ‘Bump,’” he declares confidently. “Look, there’s ‘Road Work Ahead.’” When he sees an unfamiliar sign, he shouts urgently, worried that we’ll pass it by before I can read it: “Mom, what’s that sign? Hurry, hurry!”

When Jesus stands in the temple in Jerusalem and declares that it will one day be reduced to scattered stones, those who hear him are immediately alarmed—but they don’t seem surprised. Jesus’ hearers are well acquainted with calamity and crisis. They can readily imagine sudden disaster, can imagine even the destruction of the temple—the place of God’s presence at the center of the people and the nation. So they don’t waste time wringing their hands or wondering why or how such devastation might come. They just want to know when it will be coming. What are the signs?

Luke was likely written late in the first century, after the siege and destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. So the earliest readers of this text had likely seen the devastation Jesus envisions in “the days to come.” Like Jesus’ hearers in the story, Luke’s readers could easily imagine disaster knocking on the door.