There's something big going on here -- Jesus is telling us that the most impressive and permanent things in the world around eventually going to fade away. All the things that we associate with power in the world will one day be just remnants. It's hard to believe, and yet it's true. At some point, the Babylonian empire was the most powerful empire in the world. Or at one point, someone who lived in Egypt would never have believed that the Egyptian empire would shrink. And yet it happens -- time passes, empires pass, ages pass -- so what remains? How do we know what to cling to?
The disciples, naturally, are eager to know when the end times will come. They want to know what to look for. Jesus, however, is trying to give the disciples confidence. He's trying to give us confidence -- remember, Scripture doesn't speak only to that specific time and place -- it speaks to every time and place. So we can read this thousands of years later and know that Jesus wasn't just talking to the Roman empire, but he's talking to our nation as well -- it will pass away, but the Kingdom of God remains forever.
How do we know this?
Because we worship a Savior who died and then rose again. It hangs on that -- Jesus' demonstration that he is stronger than death. Death may claim much else that we think is powerful in this world, but it cannot claim Jesus, because he is stronger than death, and because it cannot claim him, we can trust that we who are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus will one day experience death and resurrection for ourselves. We will triumph over death, because Jesus triumphed over death. This allows us to look into the chaos in the world around us and trust that it is not a final end.
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