24 Pentecost / Proper 28 / Year B

19 November 2006

The Church of the Good Shepherd

Wareham, Massachusetts

 

Preached by the Rev. David Fredrickson

 

As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" Then Jesus asked him, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately,” Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they well lead many astray.When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs. (Mark 13:1-8)

 

 

I remember as a little boy the first time I went into Denver, the nearest city that had real sky scrapers. I remember walking among them and looking up amazed at what I saw; massively tall structures of steel and glass, beautiful to look. As a boy, I wondered how they kept from falling over. // As a young man I remember enjoying the view from atop the Sears Tower in Chicago, the windy city. It was the first time I had ever felt a building sway noticeably from side to side. I was assured by everybody there that the sway was what actually kept the building from falling down. I believed them, but I also quickly headed for the elevator and ground level. I was similarly awed and cautious about the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center when we moved to Manhattan in the late ‘90’s. Marvels of engineering they were, yet my favorite place to view them was from the street.

As Mark tells the story, one of Jesus’ disciples was similarly awestruck as he and Jesus walked out of the Temple immediately following their encounter with the poor widow making her offering there. The disciple was like a little boy looking up at the amazing structure, pulling on Jesus’ shirt saying, “Look master, what large stones and what large buildings.” Indeed, the Temple in Jerusalem was a massive structure and one of the most opulent temples ever built. Torn down twice since King Solomon first built it, the second rebuilding was undertaken by Herod before Jesus’ birth. It was not finished until after his crucifixion. When Jesus and his disciples discussed the Temple, it was a brand new building that they were talking about. The perimeter of the building was two thirds of a mile around. The white marble courtyard walls glistened in the bright sunshine. Massive stone columns 150 feet tall lined the perimeter, holding up the porches that surrounded God’s great earthly plateau. The Temple walls were covered with sheets of gold. The Jewish historian Josephus wrote that the gold on the temple “Reflected so fierce a blaze of fire that those who tried to look at it were forced to look away…. It seemed in the distance like a mountain [he said, a mountain] covered in snow, for any part not covered in gold was dazzling white.”[i] The story doesn’t identify which disciple it was, but imagine the shock when Jesus told him that it would someday be reduced to rubble. How could that be and why? // These are familiar questions to those of us who live in the post 9/11 world.

As Mark tells it, on the Tuesday before his crucifixion Jesus left the Temple, had this mini discourse with his disciple and then gathered Peter, James, John and Andrew, the first four disciples that he called, and took them to see the view from atop the Mount of Olives, just across from the Temple. “When will this be, they asked him, and what will be the sign?” Ah yes, the sign. It is interesting, but people have been looking for signs ever since.

I know that this isn’t very scientific, but if you Google the words “End of the World,” you get over a billion internet sites that pop up. If you Google “Christian” and “Apocalypse” together you get over one million four hundred thousand sites that have something to do with this subject matter. People are obsessed with the end times just as they have always been. What is it about the end of the world that makes us so curious?

Perhaps we can best answer this question by looking back into our own collective experience. Everyone in this sanctuary watched the World Trade Center collapse into rubble. It was utter chaos. We all felt helpless. Perhaps that is why so many people sprung into action that day and in the weeks and months that followed because it was a way to regain at least a smidgeon of control over the damage done to our individual and our collective psyches.

Jesus soberly warned that the future would not be secure. “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines….” // Wars, earthquakes, famines, the rise of nation against nation, these are all things that we cannot control, things that find us hoping, even praying that they never happen to us. Yet in the grand scheme of human history, these things have and will happen and they have and will claim human lives, perhaps our own, perhaps our children’s. The bottom line for us here, and I’ve said it before, but control is simply an illusion. We all know this intrinsically, but not one of us wants to consciously think or talk about it.

Since 9/11 we have put our faith into military solutions, into politicians who have promised to keep us safe, into color-coded terror alerts, into plans to build walls meant to keep us safe from the aliens just across the border, but we all know that no matter how much money we spend, no matter who we elect to office, there is no way to obtain absolutely security. And that is a difficult thing for us, just as it was for the disciples, and everybody since, because we really want to control our own destinies.

A mere forty years after Jesus was crucified, the Temple in Jerusalem was utterly destroyed by the Roman military. The only thing left, and it still stands today, is the Western Wall, known to some as the Wailing Wall. The Temple in Jesus’ day had become an idol, an institution that existed for its own sake. It had become a place where injustice was not only tolerated, but practiced, where the poor, the widows, and the orphans were exploited and the rich were celebrated. The institution of the Temple cult had become the god providing a false sense of security to the people of Israel.

Where or in what are you and I putting our faith? Are we listening to the fear mongers, to the reporters that bring us the news every day, to the preachers who are obsessed with the end of the world and the imminent return of Jesus, to the politicians who are exploiting us for our vote? To them, our Lord Jesus simply says, “Stop, they can’t save you.” “Do not go after them, for they provide only a false sense of security that will not stand the test of time or truth.”

In John chapter 14 Jesus says to his disciples, ^“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” Fear is the enemy. It will suck the life out of us, the joy, the peace, the hope. Putting our faith into false things will not help us. People and institutions will ultimately let us down; material things will eventually prove to be unsatisfactory, governments and armies and even technology will never stand the test of time. God became a human being in the person of Jesus Christ to show us the way to real security, to bring us the good news that if we will only have the courage to let go and trust in the love, the peace, the hope, the joy, the divine logic that he lived among us, we can let fear slip away into the very depths of hell from which it came.

In Jesus name! Amen.