From Stonework To Stone-Hard

"From Stonework To Stone-Hard"
Luke 21:5-19

Jesus was in the temple.  He had just watched as a poor widow put her two pennies into the offering urn.  Jesus told those around him that she had put in more than the rich, because she “gave extravagantly what she couldn’t afford—she gave her all.”  The others, Jesus said, were just giving their leftovers.

Those who listened to that statement were clearly uncomfortable with it.  We know that because those gathered around Jesus came back at him with a deflecting statement:  “…remarking how beautiful the Temple was, the splendor of its stonework and memorial gifts.”  In other words, they didn’t get what Jesus just said.  Because basically they were saying, if it wasn’t for those “leftovers” from the wealthy, the temple wouldn’t exist at all.

Then Jesus basically slapped them up the side of the head (and I’m sure he had a lot of fun in doing so) when he said, “…the time is coming when every stone in that building will end up in a heap of rubble.”  Which would have been something to see, since some of the stones in the temple were 37 feet long, 12 feet high, and 18 feet wide.  That’s quite a throw down.  I would have paid to see that.  And evidently a lot of people who were listening to Jesus would have also, since their first question was, “When is this going to happen?”  They wanted front row seats.

But Jesus, as Jesus often does, didn’t answer their question.  Instead he began talking about how everything is going to change.  Starting with the temple shake down.  And then doomsday deceivers claiming to be the Christ.  Wars and uprisings.  Famine.  Pestilence.  Falling skies.  And awful betrayals by family members and loved ones.

Jesus closed out his little talk with an amazing statement that you should all underline in your Bibles.  It’s verse 19.  The Message Bible says it this way:  "Staying with it—that’s what is required.  Stay with it to the end.  You won’t be sorry; you’ll be saved.”

Jesus started out reacting to the people’s statement about the stone-hard firmness and beauty of the temple, by making his statement that even those stones can be shaken down.  Jesus ended up by making his great statement that what really matters is an unshakable endurance.  He’s making a contrast between stonework that doesn’t, in the end, matter, and stone-hard “sticking-to-it kind of faith” that does.

So, for Jesus, the question isn’t about signs of the end, or when it will all happen, or what will happen when the world collapses.  The question for Jesus is “How will you get through it?”  What is the quality needed to get you through a shattered world—especially, when it’s your own personal world that is being shaken to pieces?  That one quality is endurance or “staying with it.”

What’s interesting about this word is that the motivation for this kind of endurance isn’t for glory.  The person who lives this kind of endurance isn’t doing it so people will sing songs about her or him.  People who endure this way aren’t looking for acclaim, or are hoping for some reward.  Their one motivation is inward—that is, they are enduring, holding fast, standing firm, out of love.

The word that Jesus used for endurance has a lot of great meanings.  It’s a word that is used to describe the person who stays behind, against huge odds, to protect others.

During World War II, 1st Lieutenant John Robert Fox was directing artillery fire in the Italian town of Sommocolonia to stall an advance. While Fox was directing fire, a large enemy force moved in on his position. Realizing that this force was a huge threat to his small company of men, that they were completely outnumbered, Fox ordered his men to retreat while he stayed behind to single-handedly man one of the machine guns, protecting his men's retreat.  As the enemy troops surrounded him and launched a final assault on his position, Fox called a final artillery strike—on himself.

When his men eventually retook the position, Fox’s body was found surrounded by 100’s of dead enemy troops.  John Robert Fox was given the Medal of Honor for heroically staying behind, against huge odds to protect his men.  That’s one part of the meaning of the word that Jesus used.

The word can also mean standing firm with courage.  Clarence Jordan was a man of unusual abilities and commitment. He had two Ph.D.s, one in agriculture and one in Greek and Hebrew. He did a translation of the New Testament called The Cottonpatch Version, which was a best seller at the time.  So gifted was he, he could have chosen to do anything he wanted. He chose to serve the poor.

In the 1940’s, he founded a farm in Americus, Georgia, and called it Koinonia Farm. It was a community for poor whites and poor blacks. As you might guess, such an idea did not go over well in the Deep South of the ’40’s. Ironically, much of the resistance came from good church people who followed the laws of segregation as much as the other folks in town. The town people tried everything to stop Clarence. They tried boycotting him.  They slashed worker’s tires when they came to town. Over and over, for fourteen years, they tried to stop him.

Finally, in 1954, the Ku Klux Klan had had enough of Clarence Jordan, so they decided to get rid of him once and for all. They came one night with guns and torches and set fire to every building on Koinonia farm, except Clarence’s house, which they riddled with bullets.

They chased off all the families except one black family, which refused to leave.  Clarence recognized the voices of many of the Klansmen, and, as you might guess, some of them were church people. Another was the local newspaper’s reporter.

The next day that reporter came out to see what remained of the farm. The rubble still smoldered and the land was scorched, but he found Clarence in the field, hoeing and planting.  "I heard the awful news," he called to Clarence, "and I came out to do a story on the tragedy of your farm closing." Clarence just kept hoeing and planting.

The reporter kept prodding, kept poking, trying to get a rise from this quietly determined man who seemed to be planting instead of packing his bags. So, finally, the reporter said in a haughty voice, "Well, Dr. Jordan, you got two of them Ph.D.s and you’ve put fourteen years into this farm, and there’s nothing left of it at all. Just how successful do you think you’ve been?”

Clarence stopped hoeing, turning toward the reporter with his penetrating blue eyes, and said quietly but firmly, "About as successful as the Cross.  Sir, I don’t think you understand us. What we’re about is not success, but faithfulness. We’re staying. Good day."

Beginning that day, Clarence and his companions rebuilt Koinonia and the farm is still going strong today.  (Tim Hansel, Holy Sweat, pp. 188-189.)  That’s the kind of courage Jesus is talking about when using this word.

It’s a word that describes the person who doesn’t just stand fast, but stands fast with high expectations.

A teacher asked a second grade boy, “Why are you walking around sticking your stomach out?”

“The principal told me to,” the boy replied.  “This morning I told him I had a stomach ache.  He told me to stick it out until noon and then I could go home.”

This little guy has high expectations.

It’s been said that people don’t fail; they just give up trying.  And one of the main reasons they give up trying is their expectations give out.  If your expectations give out, it means you’ve lost sight of the end.  You don’t have the end in mind anymore.  That’s what Jesus is saying here—keep the end in mind, and never give up your expectations that you’ll reach the end.  You give up those expectations of making it through and you’ll fall by the wayside.

One gold miner out in Colorado bought the deed to a gold mine that had proved to be a total bust.  He went down into one of the shafts of the mine, to look over his new acquisition.  At the end of the shaft was a rusty, old pickax.  It was stuck in the wall of the totally unproductive mine.  One of the previous miners had left the pickax stuck there as a symbol of failure and expectations given up on.

The miner, who was the new owner, pulled the old thing out of the wall, and just for the heck of it took a swing at the wall where the pickax had been stuck, and broke through into what is now known as the Comstock Lode—one of the largest gold finds in the history of all gold mines.  Just one swing more was all it took, if only that miner from the past had stuck with it a little while longer.

Jesus was saying the same thing.  Stay with it.  Don’t give up, even though it looks hopeless, and there is no reason to expect anything more than failure.  If you can stick with your faith in Christ you will find the “gold”—that is, “you’ll be saved.” 

And finally, the word that Jesus used is a word that describes a person who puts up an energetic and successful resistance.  Some years ago, a man named Guillemet was in an airplane which crashed in the French Alps.  Although seriously injured, he was able to find shelter under the wreckage of the airplane.  The other passengers who weren’t killed in the crash gave up and died.

A blizzard howled around him for hours.  When it subsided he crawled for 16 hours down the mountain slope.  He was finally discovered by a rescue party.  Some days later, as he recovered, someone asked him how he managed to survive.  He replied, “I was trying to get back to my wife.  She was my goal.”

What makes resistance successful against the odds the world throws at us, against our faith in Christ, is that we have that goal.  We resist because we know where we’re going.  We resist because we know what we’re aiming at.  We resist because we have a clear vision of where we want to be and what we want to attain.  For Jesus, that goal is our salvation.  We keep that goal in mind, and we resist against all the crazy stuff going on in the world, that’s trying to keep us from reaching the salvation we have in Christ.

This is a great word Jesus used about the quality that gets us through hard times, even times that seem insurmountably bad.  He gave this word to the disciples, to the believers, and to all Christians down through history who through atrocity, “Stay with it…stay with it to the end.  You won’t be sorry; you’ll be saved.”