Mark 13:1-2
Let me show you some pictures.
Here is the Colosseum in Rome. The Loomis’ were just there this past summer.
As you can see, it’s in a bit of disrepair. The stadium floor is gone. As is some of the arch work around the top. Seats eroding. It was once a great and terrible place. Now it is collapsing in on itself.
The next picture is the Temple of Aphrodite in what was Ephesus.
It was once considered one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. You see the columns. There used to be 121 of those all around and inside the temple. A magnificent structure that was built and then rebuilt. People came from all over the world to see it. This is all that’s left of it.
Our next picture is a model of Jerusalem.
This is what it would have looked like in the time of the Roman occupation. The temple complex is there to the left. The deck upon which the temple was built was all buttressed up by huge stones and filled in.
This picture is all that’s left of the temple mount—the western, or Wailing Wall.
Herod the Great had the temple rebuilt. The construction started around 1 B.C. and took nearly 46 years to finish. The Roman emperor Titius destroyed it in 70 A.D. So it would have been in the process of being built when Jesus was alive. Hence the disciples statement—“Teacher, look at these beautiful stones and wonderful buildings!”
An average stone used in building the temple was 3 ft. by 4 ft by 15 ft. Each stone weighed around 28 tons. The largest stone they found used in the building was 44 ft. by 11 ft. by 17 ft. and weighs approximately 600 tons. So, yes: “Look at these beautiful stones…”
Beautiful stones, not just in the Jewish Temple, but the Colosseum, the Temple to Aphrodite, and so many like them. Once magnificent buildings. Now rubble. ISIS is now going around blowing up even the rubble, with human beings strapped to the stones.
A little over two years ago we were talking about what the mission of this congregation is. We were taking a serious look at our building, wondering if it fit with what we wanted the mission of the church to be. Does this building serve us in doing the ministry into the future? If not, what are our options? Some of you were angry and dumbfounded that we were even entertaining the idea of tearing this building down, or abandoning it, so we could create a different kind of space and a different kind of ministry.
This is just a congregation. One church among many Christian churches. Jesus was talking about the central building of a whole religion--the Temple--being torn down. It became one of the main charges against him at his trial, this statement spoken to the disciples about the destruction of the Temple.
Think of what the Temple represented. It was the seat of the whole Jewish religion. At all the religious festival days, it was to Jerusalem and the Temple that people would come by the thousands. Many of the Psalms are marching Psalms that the people used, reciting, chanting and singing them as they processed up the hill to the Temple.
The Temple was the ultimate symbol of the tradition and history and worship of the Jewish religion. The building of the first Temple was traced back to King David and his son Solomon. So the history of a people and their greatest King was imbued in the temple.
The Temple housed the High Priests and Sanhedrin--the ruling Jewish council. Therefore the Temple was the seat of all rule and authority of the institutional side of the Jewish religion.
But most importantly, the Temple was the closest point of contact between God and the Jewish people. It was in the Temple, in the inner most part, called the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was housed. The Ark itself housed the stone tablets of the 10 Commandments given by God to Moses. It was upon the Ark that God sat when God spoke to the High Priests. Only the High Priests were allowed in. Ropes were tied around their waists, in case they died inside the Holy of Holies so they could then be dragged out without another High Priest having to go in and retrieve the body. The Temple was believed to be God's house upon the earth.
So, it wasn't just the building. It was all of this that was represented by the building. The Temple was the heart and soul of the entirety of the Jewish religion. Without the Temple, the Jewish people assumed they could have no religion and their existence as a unique people would be gone. Try to wrap your minds around this, because we have nothing like it in the Christian religion.
Jesus makes one deliberate comment in reply to one of the disciples statement. We don't know which disciple it was. Jesus tersely replied, "Do you see these huge buildings? They will certainly be thrown down. Not one stone will be left in place."
Thrown down. Destroyed. Put down. The word Jesus used infers intention. The Temple will intentionally be thrown down. It won't be like an old abandoned farm house out in the middle of no where, the roof caved in, trees growing out of shattered windows, cows using it for shelter in the Winter. No, not like that. Intentionally thrown down.
If you're with me here, or ahead of me, you're asking the question, "By whose intention will the Temple be thrown down?" What kind of force would be needed to make it so, "Not one stone will be left in place"?
What is the answer to our questions? Whose intention is it to "throw down" the Temple? Remember, Jesus was the one who made the statement. (God.) Now, even more questions: "Why would God intend to destroy this connection between himself and the people?" And, "If it is God's intention, how does a person survive that intention?"
In a dystopian novel I finished reading a month ago, one of the characters said to another, "There are only two things in life: survival or death." I would add, "And eventually there is only death."
That seems to be the way the universe is designed. So many challenges along the way testing our survivability. Think of the great empires of history, Babylonian, Assyrian, Roman, Ottoman, Genghis and Kubla Kahn. All gone. Cultures of all kinds, gone. Historical figures, some amazing, some amazingly despotic--it doesn't matter, they are all gone.
Ring around the rosie
Pocket full of posies
Ashes, Ashes,
We all fall down.
That children's rhyme may have been about the bubonic plague, but it is nonetheless true about everything else in life. Nothing is permanent. We all fall down.
It doesn't matter if you're a human being, a 600 ton stone, an institution, an empire, or even a religion. Jesus said it will all be thrown down.
We would like to think that there has to be something permanent in this world. Take Jesus' statement a step further. Think of a mountain. A beautiful, majestic mountain. Snow capped. Inspiring. Solid. Immovable. Like Mt. St. Helens. Or Krakatoa. Symbols of solidity, in a moment blown sky high as the volcanoes they are. Isn't the very earth we stand on foundational and firm and stable? Until an earthquake or mudslide lets you know otherwise.
There must be something permanent. Something that will always be. Like a vow--that sacred promise made between a man and a woman. A vow with supposedly that added strength of love behind it. Right? Until you read the statistics: 50% divorce rate. And even if the vow is not broken by divorce, it can be undermined fiercely by affairs, or bad communication, or scores of other things.
There must be something permanent, like our values and beliefs. What's more foundational to a person's life than their core beliefs? You establish those unshakable beliefs in your life and use those to keep you standing throughout your life. But there is this conspiracy inherent in life that these situations keep getting thrown at us that shake the stones of our values loose. Down they come.
The people were angry with Jesus because he dared to say that the very things we hold on to in life in order to gain a sense of permanence will ultimately fail us. Even the Temple and the whole religious institution and experiences that it symbolizes. Jesus could have just as easily said, "Look around at all the solidity you think is represented by Christianity. Christianity will be thrown down." We would be aghast. And we would crucify him for even hinting at dismantling our religion.
"We all fall down."
How would you live life if you realized there is nothing permanent? That all the sturdy stones you think you are building your life with will all be thrown down?
The Christian monk, Thomas Merton, once equated our push for building permanence with the word "noise." In No Man Is An Island, Merton wrote:
Those who love their own noise are impatient of everything else...The urgency of their swift movement seems to ignore the tranquility of nature by pretending to have purpose...The silence of the sky remains when the plane is gone...It is the silence of the world that is real. Our noise, our business, our purposes, and all our fatuous statements about our purposes, our business, and our noise: these are the illusion.
Being in the silence as the only thing that is true and permanent is an important concept for Merton. I think the silence is represented by at least three qualities. The first is love. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13 that "Love never ends." There is that about love that found in the silence, that has nothing to do with stonework or the trivial things we grab a hold of that we define as bringing permanence to life. Love is one of the three qualities of what Merton means by the silence.
The second quality is God's presence. Hebrews 13:5 states, (and this is God talking) "I will never leave you nor forsake you." And at the very end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus told his disciples, "I will be with you always, even to the end of the world." God's presence is that quality of being in the silence that has nothing to do with religion, religious institutions, or all the stonework that we can construct.
The third quality of the silence is God's rule. Hebrews 1:8 states, "Your rule, O God, is forever and ever." Again, God's rule has nothing to do with denominations or religions or temples or stonework. God's rule has nothing to do with boundaries or human authorities. It is God's rule. By God. Through God. It is God in the silence, not in all the noise we create, especially by all those who are incessantly filling our ears with all the talk that they know exactly what God wants, thinks and wills.
Is that what Jesus is telling the disciples? Get away from the noise. The noise these stones are creating. The noise the religion going on within these stones is creating. The noise of all the permanence building people are doing that is ultimately flimsy and worthless. Leave it all behind. It's all going to fall down anyway. Come into the powerful silence of love, and God's presence, and God's rule.
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