Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, ‘Come and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there.””
NL Daily Devotion for Saturday, August 23, 2025
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
There was no temple left when this was written. The Romans had utterly destroyed it in 70ce. What John of Patmos is to measure is the “temple” that is God’s people. The rest of the chapter is a confusing jumble of Old Testament imagery about two unnamed “witnesses” who prophesy for a couple years, are killed, and then resurrected and ascend to heaven. Nothing is mentioned about whether or how the “temple” actually “measures up.” Maybe it was just a point of information: John was to figure out the number or “size” of the community of the faithful, rather than using measurement as a metaphor for evaluation of their faithfulness.
The modern church is a little obsessed with numbers, to be honest. We who continue to worship within mainline Protestant denominations are deeply discouraged by our falling numbers. We think “programs” can compete with the deep spiritual sickness in our society. We offer more of the same instead of being utterly transformed by faith to the point where it has a profound impact on our daily living and inspires such joy in us that we cannot keep it to ourselves. We attend and even do service within our chosen communities yet fail to follow Jesus’ call to radical welcome and a passionate commitment to facilitating the inbreaking of God’s kingdom into our current temporal reality by working for justice for the oppressed and marginalized beyond our church walls. If we are focused on how we “measure” in size and scope rather than how we “measure up” to Jesus’ call to follow his Way, then we are missing out on the kind of truly beautiful lives God offers us. There are no institutional-level answers, I don’t think. Only the commitment of individual Christians to living out their faith in vital ways, reaching out in love to others, and inviting others, by their actions, into a new way of being in the world.
Am I more concerned with the numbers in my congregation, or with the way my congregation lives its call to follow the Way of Jesus in the world?
