Worship - 16 November 2025

Summary of this week's theme

I doubt that any of Jesus’ disciples were archaeologists.  If they had been, they would have known that even great buildings fall and need rebuilding.  It takes constant labour to keep an impressive structure standing, even without earthquake or fire. We all remember the shock of seeing Notre Dame in flames. Buildings may be symbols of human achievement, but they also remind us of our fragility.

Shelley’s poem Ozymandias captures this perfectly: the pride of a ruler who imagined his works would last forever, now reduced to ruins in an empty desert.  It is a vivid reminder of the arrogance of the powerful, who forget both their mortality and their fallibility.

This leads us to Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple - a temple built by Herod, more for his own glory than for God’s.  Luke writes with the prophets echoing behind him, prophets who spoke to frightened, hungry, divided people living in anxious times.  They proclaimed God’s dream: a world of justice, peace, and hope.  And when the people asked ‘When will this happen?’ the prophets replied, ‘When we make it happen - when we walk in God’s ways.’

Jesus offers the same message, with one important caveat: we cannot bring about God’s dream by constructing temples - literal or metaphorical.  We humans build many kinds of temples: of learning, of social systems, of pastoral programmes, even of religious institutions themselves.  These can become monuments to our own efforts, even when we claim they are for God.  And God watches as these temples crumble - sometimes through neglect, sometimes because we tear them down ourselves.  Some of them must fall, for the sake of humility.

This brings us to Safeguarding Sunday.  Safeguarding exists because the Church has built temples that harmed rather than protected: the temple of denial, the temple of deference, the temple of institutional pride.  These needed to be thrown down - and still do.  Leadership failures and painful reckonings remind us that without safety and truth, no institution deserves to stand.

Human constructions inevitably fall.  But one temple cannot be destroyed: the temple of Christ’s body, raised in three days.  This is where our hope lies, not in human achievement but in God’s power.

The prophets’ dream comes closer whenever we invest ourselves in it. Jesus’ parables invite us to participate in building the living, organic temple of the Church - a temple that endures not through stone or status, but through humility, imagination, and love.

As Robert Bridges put it:

What with care and toil he buildeth, / tower and temple fall to dust. / But God’s power, hour by hour, / is my temple and my tower.