Optional Memorial of Saint Clement I, pope and martyr

Lectionary: 504

While some people were speaking about how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings, Jesus said, “All that you see here– the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.”

As I understand, Israel and the region known as "the fertile crescent" are strewn with the tells, mounds, and ruins of ancient buildings. Walls used to isolate garden plots and keep wandering farm animals pent in are often made of stones from houses, churches, and public buildings. Soldiers, weary of battle, don't mind demolishing undefended buildings. 

The near- and mid-east are ancient lands occupied by long memories. A hundred miles, they say, is a long way, but a hundred years is nothing.
So the disciples understood Jesus's remark about the stones of the temple even as they trembled at their import. In fact some them lived to see Jerusalem's destruction in 70 AD; they remembered what he'd said.
Historic sites have a way of reminding us of our brief sojourn in this world. Archaeologists are continually digging up ancient ruins and piecing together images of ancient life. They pore over ruins and runes and try to understand how those ancient people thought, spoke, worked, sang, danced, ate, slept, loved and hated. 

Sometimes they discover cities like Pompeii that were destroyed in a single day by natural disasters. They also discover villages strewn with human bones, apparently destroyed by enemies in a raid, and never rebuilt. Some surrendered to climate change that had nothing to do with human technology. Viking villagers lived in Greenland for five hundred years before they were forced to return to Europe.
Cities of thousands and civilizations of millions found ways to organize and thrive without knowing Jesus of Nazareth, much less principles of "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité." And then they disappeared.
Time and history remind us that we don't have to be here. I am amused by those who suppose there must be intelligent life like our own somewhere in the vast universe. If we're here, they must be there! Somewhere! But we're not necessarily here; the Earth does not need human beings; and God does not require our worship. 

We the Church persist because the Word of God endures forever. The Spirit of God will not permit the Earth and its peoples to forget Jesus's life, death, resurrection. 

"I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.” (John 10:28-30)