“Holding Fast” Colchester Federated Church, November 16, 2025, Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost (Luke 21:5-19)

Today’s Gospel story from Luke is not exactly uplifting.  It begins with Jesus hearing people talking about the temple.  We can recall that the temple was the holiest place in the holiest city of Jerusalem.  At the time, this magnificent building was at the center of the Jewish faith.  It was believed that the temple housed the very presence of God in the Holy of Holies (the inner sanctum)—the meeting place of heaven and earth.  The only person who could enter the Holy of Holies was the High Priest.  And entry into the Holy of Holies only happened once a year, on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). 

So, Jesus is hearing people admiring the glorious temple—how it was decorated with beautiful stones and decorated with ornaments that were dedicated to God.  Though Jesus says, “As for the things you are admiring, the time is coming when not even one stone will be left upon another.  All will be demolished.”[1]

One can imagine the more modern sound of a record scratching after Jesus makes this statement.  Because this would have seemed unbelievable to imagine, horrifying to imagine.  All would be demolished?  Not one stone will be left upon another in the temple?  Jesus goes on to talk about signs of unrest and turmoil.  False teachers.  Wars and rebellions.  Nations and kingdoms fighting against each other.  Great earthquakes and wide-scale food shortages.  Epidemics.  Terrifying sights and great signs in the sky.  In effect, Jesus begins to list out things that do not actually signal the end times.  Just because these things are occurring, it does not mean that Jesus’ followers should be fooled into believing that all is lost.  We remember that Jesus said earlier in Luke’s Gospel, “God’s kingdom isn’t coming with signs that are easily noticed.  Nor will people say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’  Don’t you see?  God’s kingdom is already among you.”[2]  The kingdom of God is present in the words and actions of Jesus and his followers.  This is the kingdom that we are still building when we love God, love our neighbors, and love ourselves.  

Yet most people in the ancient world believed that these signs—wars and earthquakes and famines and epidemics—signified bad things to come.[3]  Isn’t this understandable?  Frankly, when we read over the list today (in the year of our Lord 2025) this is not a happy list to consider.  When we look at the world around us, we can see wars and earthquakes and food shortages.  We just lived through a global pandemic.  And though we have done our best to move forward and reopen and rebuild as individuals, institutions, and society at large, the effects of the pandemic are still here.

Jesus moves on from these environmental and global signs of turmoil to more personal examples.  Jesus talks about people being taken into custody and harassed because of their faith.  Or there will be people brought to kings and governors because of Jesus’ name.  Some of Jesus’ followers will be betrayed by their own families and friends.  Some will be killed.  Many will be hated.  We could pass this off as metaphorical, but the uncomfortable truth is that some of this did come to pass for the earliest followers of Jesus.  There are some places in the world where people continue to be persecuted because of what they believe and because of who they are. 

As hard as this passage is to consider with the destruction of the temple foretold and the distress of the world predicted and the personal consequences of harassment and hatred people face, Jesus ends with the gentle invitation to hold fast.  Jesus must have looked upon his beloved followers with tenderness as he said, “Still, not a hair on your heads will be lost.  By holding fast, you will gain your lives.”[4]  Notice that Jesus is not guaranteeing that nothing bad will happen to his followers.  But by holding fast to what is good, by holding fast to what is true and loving, we will ultimately gain our lives.  Because no matter what happens, our lives will have meaning and purpose.

This Gospel story reminded me of a famous commissioning prayer that is sometimes said before the benediction to end worship services.  The intention is to send the congregation out to go about the work God calls us to do.  After all, church is not just a building and a place where we physically go.  We are the church as the Body of Christ.  We show this understanding when we go forth out into this world that God loved into being and put our faith into action.  The hopeful words of the commissioning prayer sometimes said in our tradition are an adaptation of Paul’s farewell to the Thessalonians.  Perhaps you’ve heard them before:

Go forth into the world to serve God with gladness;
be of good courage;
hold fast to what is good;
render to no one evil for evil;
strengthen the fainthearted; support the weak;
help the afflicted; honor all people;
love and serve God, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.[5]

Every week we gather around the sanctuary here at Colchester Federated Church and hold hands in a circle to end our time of communal worship.  This was one of the liturgical elements in worship that we delayed bringing back because of the pandemic.  And this element was brought back, only this time with huge bottles of hand sanitizer added to our sacred space to help mitigate the spread of germs among us!  This act has come to be affectionately known around here as the “circle of friendship.”  When we gather around the sanctuary and hold hands, when we reach out to one another on less full Sundays, when we keep expanding the circle and making room for one more on full Sundays, this feels like our CFC version of holding fast to what is good. 

When we leave this place, we go forth into the world not knowing what the week has in store.  Though there is power in being reminded that God’s blessing goes with us.  We see that here in this circle of friendship.  We physically hold fast to what is good.  We hold fast to each other individually, to our church family as a whole, and to this faith community both present here among us and those who are with us in spirit.  We hold fast to God’s presence in our lives.  We remember that holding fast is an invitation to not just be strengthened for our own faith journeys, but to extend that compassion to one another. 

Today we are invited to go forth into the world.  Serve God with gladness.  Be of good courage.  Hold fast to what is good.  Render to no one evil for evil.  Strengthen the fainthearted.  Support the weak.  Help the afflicted.  Honor all people.  Love and serve God.  Rejoice in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1] Luke 21:6, CEB.
[2] Luke 17:20-21, CEB.
[3] Footnote on Luke 21:8-11 in The CEB Study Bible, pg. 155 NT.
[4] Luke 21:18-19, CEB.
[5] Commissioning in Service of Word and Sacrament I, United Church of Christ Book of Worship, pg. 53.

Photo by Rev. Lauren Ostrout.