The disciples point out the buildings of the temple, and Jesus answers that 2"there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down." He said just days earlier that Jerusalem's house was left desolate (Matthew 23:38). He leaves the temple here and does not teach in it again in this Gospel. The structure the disciples cannot stop admiring will not last, and Jesus says so without raising his voice.
On the Mount of Olives they come to him privately and ask when the temple will fall and what will be the sign of his coming and of the end of the age. They have joined two questions into one, and Jesus spends the discourse sorting them apart. His first word is a warning: 4"See that no one leads you astray." Many will come in his name claiming to be the Christ. Then he lists wars and rumors of wars, famines, and earthquakes. A hearer could easily take such a list as a countdown, and Jesus says the opposite: 6"See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet." He names the fear and tells the disciples how to hold it.
He calls it all 8"the beginning of the birth pains." Birth pains are real, they intensify, they arrive in waves no one can schedule, and they end with something being born. Wars and disasters are the painful texture of an age that is moving toward its delivery, whether or not any generation can read the clock.
The warning then turns personal: 9"you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake." Betrayal, false prophets, lawlessness, and love growing cold fill the next verses. Persecution for his name is the same identification with Christ that runs through every martyrdom in the church's history. Jesus gives his followers a promise to hold: 13"the one who endures to the end will be saved." Salvation here is the place the endurer arrives, still belonging to him.
In the middle of a list of warnings, Jesus names the one thing that marks the end, a gospel proclaimed to all nations. Every other item on the list is something to endure without reading too much into it, and this one is a task. He tells the disciples what to do while they wait: endure, and go. The suffering of verses 9 to 13 and the proclamation of verse 14 sit in one paragraph because the first so often carries the second into new places.
Jesus goes first on this road. He will be handed over to death within days of speaking, and he will rise. His followers can endure their tribulation without despair because his own tribulation ended in resurrection.
Pray this week for one place the gospel has not yet been proclaimed, and for the people who are carrying it there at a cost, and ask what part of that task is yours.
Prayer
Father, when the world feels as if it is coming apart, teach us to see it as the painful shape of an age moving toward what you have promised. Give us endurance that outlasts fear, and use even what we suffer for your name to carry your gospel further than comfort would. We trust the end to you, because we already trust you with the cross that came before it. In Jesus' name, amen.