Holy Communion for the second Sunday before Advent: celebrant the Revd Tola Badejo. Junior Church takes place at the same time in the hall.

First reading: 2 Thessalonians 3. 6-13
Gospel: Luke 21. 5-19

In AD 70 a Roman army destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, in the course of suppressing a revolt against their rule; they also levelled most of the rest of the city and killed or enslaved many of its inhabitants. Jesus spoke his prophetic words about the destruction of the Temple some forty years before the event occurred, but Luke (and possibly Mark, who includes a similar passage) wrote them down in its aftermath. The Gospel accounts are therefore set against a background of intentional, violent destruction on an extreme scale.

Early Christians undoubtedly believed that these and other terrible events were harbingers of the end of time and the second coming of Christ. Now, we might take a different lesson from Jesus's words: faith does not protect us from challenges, but rather supports us in facing them. The epistle looks at Christian responsibility from a different perspective: each must contribute to the community as he or she is able, and take from it no more than they genuinely need.