Bearing the Beams of Love

Luke 21:5-19

Jesus stands before the dazzling Temple built by Herod—a monument to power, wealth, and ego—and warns that even this glorious structure will crumble. Father Mark explains that biblical prophecy is not fortune-telling but a call to see the present clearly. Prophets reveal the gap between God’s hopes for humanity and our actual behavior. Destruction only comes if people refuse to change; the real purpose of prophecy is to open the door to transformation. Like Jonah’s warning to Nineveh, Jesus’ words are meant to shake us awake, not to doom us.

The sermon turns to the challenge of self-change. We instinctively try to correct others, but Jesus insists that real clarity begins with removing the “log” from our own eye. It is painful to shed comfortable habits, political certainties, attachments, or ways of seeing the world—and yet that is where spiritual freedom lies. Jesus redirects our attention away from the glittering symbols of worldly power and toward the deeper, unseen reality of God’s kingdom already within and among us. Our vision—what we choose to notice—shapes our life.

Father Mark closes by reminding the congregation that we gather in church to learn how to see through the lens of God’s reign. In a world full of conflict, greed, division, and evasion of responsibility, the Church remains one of the few places that consistently teaches forgiveness, repentance, love of neighbor, and the counter-cultural way of Jesus. By pledging our time, talent, and treasure, we commit to “bearing the beams of love” in our lives and community. And in doing so—even in small ways—we participate in changing history by first allowing ourselves to be changed.

Scripture quotations are from New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.