33rd Sunday of the Year C

Those of you who have been to the Holy Land will have visited the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. I haven’t been there myself, but have seen it many times on Television. It’s all that remains of the Temple we read about in today’s Gospel, the temple Jesus knew well and which dominated Jerusalem in his day. It was not, however, the original temple of Solomon. It had been destroyed by the Babylonians in 580BC and rebuilt sixty years later by Ezra after the return from exile in Babylon. Desecrated by King Antiochus, one of those Greeks who came after Alexander the Great, in the second century BC, it was reconsecrated by the Maccabees, a story we can read in the two books that bear their name. But its real glory days coincided with the time of Jesus. During most of Jesus’ life, in fact, the Temple in Jerusalem was undergoing enormous expansion and renovation under Herod the Great, and, when the scaffolding was finally removed to reveal the fruits of this work, people, like those in today’s passage, came in the first century equivalent of bus-loads to look at it and be amazed by its magnificence. This magnificence was to be short-lived, however, and many of those who came to gaze would have lived long enough to see its final destruction by the Romans in 70AD, leaving only the wall which tourists visit today.

What’s hard for us to grasp, of course, is just how shocking an event this was for both Jews and Christians at that time. The Temple had been for centuries a symbol of God’s presence among his people and it’s hard to think of a modern equivalent. Maybe 9/11 was for some Americans, although I’m tempted to invite you to imagine Al Quaeda taking over Rome and burning down the Vatican. By the time St Luke wrote his Gospel it had all already happened, of course, which is why Jesus’ prediction of it in Luke is more sobre than in Matthew or Mark’s account. There was no need to lay it on thick. The event itself was horrific enough and in Luke’s own time people were still struggling to recover from it. It seemed like the end of the world to many, and yet, seen from our perpsective today, it was, in fact, a catalyst for all kinds of new things. It helped push the early Church out into the world and forced it to think more deeply about what it was about. Yes, there were persecutions, many were brought before kings and governors and a lot of them died in the amphitheatres of Rome. But in many ways the blood of those martyrs proved to be the very foundation of the Church and the endurance of so many did indeed win them their lives. Death and resurrection, after all, is the fundamental dynamic at work at the heart of everything that exists, from the most primitive form of life imaginable to the mighty cosmos itself, and what I invite you to reflect on this morning is how it is also at work in the Church today

Last Sunday evening, here in my house, a group of priests met for our regular monthly to six weekly meeting and one of those present used an image which I really liked. He told us how he had met someone who used to work in our diocese and who asked him if there were any signs of new life here. And without knowing exactly where the words came from, he found himself saying that there could not be any new life because we had not died yet. And he took the image further, describing how we are, in effect, on a life-support machine, being kept artificially alive, and that, until someone turns the machine off, there will be no new life. So what on earth was he talking about?

Well, he was talking about the situation we are facing with regard to parishes and the lack of younger priests to replace those of us who are growing older. Just a few years ago, through the process we called ‘Embracing the Future’ people all over the diocese were were asked to consider what would happen when we had one priest less in our area, two priests less and eventually half the number we had then. Many thought such a situation was years away. It’s now with us. We had nine priests in this deanery then. We now have five, one of whom one is eighty four years of age, and the present trend is set to continue into the foreseeable future. And so the bishop has asked the priests of the diocese to meet before Christmas and begin to chart a way forward. All we are doing currently is trying to keep alive a way of doing things which has no future. Some would say it is already dead and that, to mix our metaphors, we have stretched the elastic far beyond breaking point, evidenced by the fact that a friend of mine had to make a round trip of more than a hundred miles last weekend to say an evening Mass in Dumfries for seventy people. And so things will simply have to change. The traditional model of parishes with resident priests has already broken down in many places, including Mount Carmel, and the speed of change is accelerating. The question is do we embrace it or resist it. Do we recognize the movement of God in it or do we sit around waiting until not one stone of the old structure is left on another And so I leave you with some questions.

How would you feel if there were only two parishes in Kilmarnock instead of four? Suppose you had to travel sometimes to other parts of the town for Mass. Would you be willing to do it.? Would you take the huff or walk away if your favourite Mass, the one you have always gone to, had to be done away? Supposing there were no Mass in your parish while the priest was ill or on holiday and there were Eucharistic Services instead? Would you be willing to play your part in a much more lay-centred parish structure where people took real responsibility? Where these things are already happening many people have initially buried their heads in the sand or thrown their toys out of the pram, but gradually something new has begun to develop. Can you see yourself being part of that in time.

Of course change is difficult. Few people like it and something deep in us resists it. But if we have the courage to face it something new and surprising will develop. And the change happening here is nothing compared to what those people in Jerusalem faced in 70AD when the Romans were finished with them.


BIDDING PRAYERS


Your ‘endurance’ says Jesus at the end of this week’s Gospel. will win you your lives. In the early centuries of the Church ‘endurance’ often meant martyrdom. At different times throughout history it has meant different things to different people. But we pray for the grace of ‘endurance’ in our own day, the grace to remain faithful to the fundamental values of the Gospel at a time when the structures of the Church as we have known them are undergoing rapid change…………Lord hear us

Change is never easy. Something deep inside most of us resists it. We prefer things to remain the same, the way we have always known them. And so, at this moment in the long history of the Church, a history that has involved constant change, we need the courage to face the changes that are taking place around us now. We need, too, the grace to trust the God who is working deep within these changes and who longs to do a new thing in our time. And so we ask for all what we need……………Lord hear us

There are twelve places in our deanery where Mass is celebrated. In only two of these is more than one Mass celebrated each weekend and five of them are now without a resident priest. This has meant change for the people involved and some have found it hard to adapt, not fully understanding or accepting the reasons behind the change. And so we pray for all who are struggling in this way that they will come to see the good things already emerging from these changes……………………….Lord hear us

While we can often see the need for change in theory, many of us suffer from the NIMBY mentality, the not-in-my-back-yard syndrome. And so we pray that, for the people of the Kilmarnock deanery, change will not be something that just affects others. St Matthew’s is one of the two parishes in the deanery which still has more than one Mass at the weekend and we pray that, when change comes, whatever shape or form it takes, we will learn to accept it and adapt to it..………………Lord hear us.

Persecution comes in many shapes and forms. Many people in today’s world continue to be persecuted for their beliefs. whether religious, political or personal. And so we pray for them. We pray, too, for the insight we need to see how our own prejudices can often contribute to this persecution, especially in our attitudes to those whose lifestyles are very different from our own…………………………...……Lord hear us

In the second reading this week, St Paul speaks to those in Thessalonica who were sitting around doing nothing waiting for the Second Coming of Jesus which they believed was imminent. Paul tells them that, as followers of Jesus, it is their responsibility to engage with the world and its affairs, bringing to it the insights and values of the Gospel. And so we pray for the grace to do that today, to live as men and women of faith in the midst of the world…………………………….Lord hear us