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My sermon for...well...today. The text is Mark 13:1-8. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." Jesus speaks these words about the Temple of Jerusalem, a massive edifice dedicated to the cultic worship of God, the sacrificial system of ancient Israel, enshrined in stone. The Temple was truly impressive, especially considering the relative insignificance, in terms of worldly power, of the nation that had built it. The Jewish people, living between Egypt and Syria, had for centuries struggled in the shadow of those two powers. By the time of the second temple, the one that stood in Jesus' time, Rome was master of Judea. It was under Rome's sponsorship that Herod became King. We'll hear more about King Herod in a few weeks, but it's worth noting for today that he was one of history's great builders, on a scale never seen before in Judea and rarely equalled since. He built fortresses as large as mountains. He built palaces, including one perched mind-bogglingly at the very edge of the towering plateau of Massada. He even built an entire city, on the least inhabitable stretch of Judean coastline, just to prove that he could. He was a man who liked to make an impression, usually one of awe and wonder. Every project was more grand and ambitious than the last, and the scale of his building was only matched by the scale of his arrogance. And so, when Herod decided that the Temple needed an upgrade, it wasn't just a new roof and a coat of paint. All that remains today of Herod's Temple is the Western Wall, the so-called "Wailing Wall", but even that remnant is impressive. The stones are massive, just as the disciple notes. That wall is just a retaining wall, built to turn the small Mount Moriah into a vast, level platform. On top of that rose the huge Temple itself, made of gleaming white marble, much of the surface covered in gold - it must have been astounding when the sun hit it. When complete it was one of the most impressive structures in all the Roman Empire, which is truly saying something. This was no ordinary building - it was the House of God. The disciples were right to be impressed, as Herod wanted them to be. The Romans, however, were less impressed. When Jerusalem revolted in 70 AD, Roman legions took the city and ruthlessly put down the insurrection. Then Emperor Titus, perhaps tired of this troublesome corner of his empire, ordered the entire city levelled, including the great Temple. Nothing was left but the city walls, to be used by the Roman garrison. Imagine that for a moment - nothing left of Oakville except maybe the Q.E.W. All that remained of the Temple was the great platform, too huge for even the Romans to dismantle. Sacrifice to God was finished, the symbol of God's power demolished. It was a crushing blow for the Jewish people, and the end of their existence as a nation until 1948. It's commonly believed that Mark, whose gospel we read today, wrote around the time of this destruction. He wrote for Christians who still considered themselves Jewish and his gospel reflects the attitude of a community experiencing enormous loss and a crisis of identity. How could the Almighty, the all-powerful God of Israel, allow this to happen? How could God allow this grand Temple to be destroyed? Such a beautiful building, devoted to the worship of God - how could God let the Romans destroy it? Perhaps you're ahead of me on this one - perhaps God had other ideas about what constitutes glory. Perhaps a building that had been constructed to prove King Herod's power was not the sort of temple God had in mind. Perhaps we humans had, once again, placed too much importance in the work of our own hands. Just before today's gospel reading, Mark records Jesus' scourging of the Temple, his rejection of the prideful priests and the system of money and power tied to Temple worship. He has just taught that love for God, love for neighbour and love for one's self are all more important than sacrifice and burnt offering. And he has just said that the poor widow, who gave a mere pittance, was more generous in her poverty than the wealthiest contributor to the Temple. Balanced with these teachings, is it any wonder that Jesus seems relatively unconcerned about this mountain of a building? And yet, to the Jewish and Christian communities of the first century, it was a major catastrophe. Imagine how we might react if this building, our own House of God, met a similar fate? St. Cuthbert's is nowhere near as solid as the Jerusalem Temple. What would we do if it crumbled to the ground? How did Judaism react? No Temple, no sacrifice - the Jewish faith was forced to redefine itself. No longer able to point to the House of God, Judaism found that God was present in the synagogue, in the Torah, in daily prayer and in the simplicity of a Seder meal. They discovered, as we undoubtedly would, that the congregation was the true Temple. St. Cuthbert's isn't bricks and mortar, it's the community gathered to worship. The loss of a building, even one blessed by years of prayers by faithful souls, does not destroy the church. But we have other temples, too, not made of bricks or wood or stone. Like many faiths, we build temples around the way we approach God. We call one temple Anglican, another Roman Catholic, another United Church, etc. We build temples and call them national churches, dioceses, parishes. We build committees and guilds and associations. To whom are they devoted? In whose honour have they been constructed? Most often our impulses are honourable, our focus is on God. Still, it's an important question, especially now, as members of our own tradition are busy building temples devoted to theological and social positions. We're labouring hard to underpin them with our unmoveable convictions and to gild them with our finest rhetoric. Just recently the Diocese of San Joaquin, in California, voted to separate their temple from the rest of the Episcopal Church temple, and both temples are digging in for a battle of wills. But who is being glorified by these temples? Whom do we serve with our hardening battle lines? As a friend of mine says, "My heart misgives me." The more lines we draw between us and them, the smaller and more exclusive we make our temples, the more likely they will fall. And what happens if they do? What happens if our temples, our institutions and associations and political positions, what happens if they come crashing down as the Jerusalem Temple did? Can we find God, can we serve God, without them? I certainly hope so. I believe so. But it won't always be easy. Our Lord warns us that trouble is coming. Mark wrote about his own time, about the dissolving of his own world, but his gospel speaks to us as well. If history tells us anything it's that there will always be wars and earthquakes and famine. There is always a new cataclysm around the corner and when it strikes it can be so easy to despair, to give in to the overwhelming fear that "this is the end", that our world is coming to an end. And, as Our Lord also warns us, there will always be people who, as the ground starts to shake beneath us, declare that the end is nigh. Many will come in Jesus' name and say, "I am he!" And when things are starting to look desperate it's awfully tempting to run to the person who looks like he has all the answers. Jesus tells us not to be led astray, not to be shaken by the tumult. He assures us that, as bad as things can seem, the world is not crashing down. Our temples may fall, but it's not the end. The chaos and turmoil, he tells us, are just the beginning of the birth pangs. As painful as it may be, something beautiful is being born. And here we find the essential Christian message, especially as told by Mark's gospel - that pain and loss are required for the coming kingdom, and that it is that very pain and loss that open the way for a new life. Mark's gospel ends, not with the resurrection, but with the empty tomb. There are some verses that have been added, long after the gospel was finished, but those are just a later editor trying to make the story end better. We never get to see the risen Christ in Mark's gospel. We're shown an empty tomb and told that Christ has risen. And then we're told that, to find him, we have to go to Galilee. Galilee, where the story began. Galilee, where Jesus' ministry started. And so it is for us, when our temples fall down and our world seems to be at an end. We are told that to find Jesus, we have to go back to the beginning, back to Galilee, back to the ministry. Back to teaching and healing and feeding. And there we'll find something wonderful. We'll find that our old temples are no longer needed, because God is present within us and in one another. Christ lives within us and in the community gathered for ministry. God is present in the teaching and healing and feeding. We are, in fact, the true temple of God. The end times? The kingdom? The final ushering in of peace and the Reign of Christ? Has it come? Is it yet to come? That's God's job to worry about. Our job is to go back to Galilee, into the true temple of God. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. |
