The Abomination that causes Desolation
“In those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and never will be.”
In the Christian imagination, the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem is often used as study in the apocalyptic destruction and desolation forecast by the prophetic voice. A typical example: here is Wilhelm von Kaulbach, The Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus (1846). Within the chaos of terror and violence, we see the convergence of heavenly and earthly hopes and fears. The family finding peace in prayer, as well the breaching of the walls; the angels carrying away the vessels of the divine presence, as well illuminating the heroic struggles of doomed martyrs…
Such depictions help us to recognize that these prophetic utterances are not obscure projections of future events, but descriptions of things that happened within history, particularly in the suffering of the People of God — and especially, in the death of Jesus on the Cross as the archetypal consummation and fulfillment of these struggles. Yet they also describe something outside of history: a contest that occurs in an unseen dimension whose coordination with our own experience as persons and peoples is unclear. As such, however, it also describes ongoing patterns that we perceive in history: the pride and pomposity of the powers and principalities of this age that set themselves up against God and against his Kingdom, and the suffering of the People of God in the midst of a broken and agonistic age.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
— Hebrews 10:31
Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Texts for This Week
Prayer
Stir up, O Lord, the wills of your faithful people, that bringing forth in abundance the fruit of good works, they may be abundantly rewarded when our Savior Jesus Christ comes to restore all things; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
We lay our broken world …
A choir assembled at St. Ninian’s Cathedral in Perth (Scotland) sing Anna Briggs 2005 hymn for the inimitable BBC church music program, Songs of Praise. The full segment involves an interview with the erstwhile Bishop of York, John Sentamu, reflecting on the horror of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, which claimed the lives of 23.
