Mark 13:1-8
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 will
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
birthpangs.
This is the Word of the Lord.
For weary pilgrims, who travelled the mercilessly hot,
dusty roads with little to eat, scarce water to drink, and the constant danger
of attacks from bandits or even wild animals, one thought kept them putting one
foot in front of another – one vision in their mind’s eye, one dream: the sight
of Jerusalem as they topped that last hill, laid out before them like an opened
flower, and there, on a hill overlooking the city, its white walls and golden
decorations so bright in the sunlight that it hurt your eyes to look for long,
was the Temple. That sight made the journey worth it.
Never mind that the Temple was a work in progress. No one
alive could remember it any other way. And although Herod had begun the Temple
expansion and renovation only in the last sixty or seventy years, the priests
had been sacrificing, Psalms had been sung, and God had been worshipped in that
holy place, nearly nonstop, since 516 BC, following the return of the exiles
from Babylon.
And what a renovation it was! The Temple walls and its buildings
soared into the air, constructed bit by bit from huge stones, some as large as
forty-four feet long, which had been quarried nearby and set painstakingly in
place. The result was breathtaking, to say the least. It stood boldly as the
epicenter of Jewish worship, the place where humankind came closest to touching
the Almighty. It seemed eternal, indestructible. No wonder even the disciples
were dazzled by its beauty.
We aren’t told in our reading this morning which of the
disciples commented. It may have been one of the Twelve, or it could have been
a relative newcomer perhaps someone so young that they had never been to
Jerusalem before.
“Wow, look, Teacher, ain’t it awesome?” Words to that
effect, anyway. I imagine the comment made Jesus stop, and turn to look at the
walls and buildings and gold trim, all aglow in the afternoon sun. After a long
moment, her responds, almost too softly to hear. “Yeah, it’s big. It’s pretty.
But it’s temporary. Every last stone is going to fall.”
To the people within earshot, it may have sounded
ludicrous. If the Temple leaders had heard it, they’d have considered it
tantamount to blasphemy.
Yet many of the ones who may have heard Jesus’ words that
day would still be alive when, in 66 AD, Jewish Zealots began a revolt against
their Roman occupiers.
This first of three revolts, sometimes called the Great
Revolt, started out well for the Jewish rebels. Roman sympathizers were driven
out, a Roman garrison was overrun, and the rebels even succeeded in ambushing
and defeating a Roman legion. It didn’t hurt their chances that, in the middle
of their rebellion, Rome itself was in turmoil, enduring its own harsh civil
war and four Emperors in a single year.
But the Zealots were far from a united front themselves,
and infighting and power struggles weakened the rebels. The year 70 AD saw the
Roman General Titus laying siege to Jerusalem with four legions, and that was
the beginning of the end for this Great Rebellion.
Titus is said to have wanted the Temple to remain intact,
so that he could make it into a temple to the Roman Emperor (his father, Vespasian),
and the Roman pantheon of gods. Yet when Titus breached Jerusalem’s walls and
street fighting ensued, the Temple caught fire and burned to the ground,
utterly destroyed. Not a single shattered, blackened stone was left on another.
The gold and valuables were looted and carried back to Rome in triumph.
As beautiful as it was, as indestructible as it seemed, and
though it had stood in that spot, in one form or another, for five hundred
eighty-six years, it was, in the end, temporary.
And what could be said of a force strong enough, an Empire
powerful enough, to topple the very House of God? Surely such an entity would
itself be everlasting, indestructible.
Well Rome certainly thought so. But counting from the
moment Julius Caesar became sole ruler of Rome in 46 BC, the part of the empire
that Rome controlled after the third century, the western half, fell in 476 AD.
In the East, the part of the Empire ruled by Constantinople lasted another millennium,
until 1453 AD… but it, too, eventually fell.
In the end, even the mighty Roman Empire was temporary.
With the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, the system of priestly
sacrifices, so integral, so foundational to the daily worship of Jewish men and
women, ended as well. It was as temporary as the Temple itself.
Yet these daily sacrifices were necessary, according to the
Law of Moses. The shedding of blood was vital, for without it there was no hope
of covering the stain of sin from a holy God. If these were temporary, what
hope could there be that humanity could ever, in any way, approach the Creator
and at last be reconciled to God?
In answering this question, we see a glimpse of the enormity
of the sacrifice that Jesus made, for each of us and for the world. Knowing
full well what was at stake, completely aware of all he would have to suffer on
behalf of a creation which would scarcely notice and in large part not care, Jesus
Christ, the Lamb of God, sacrificed himself on the cross.
Hear the Word of the Lord from our lectionary, the Book of
Hebrews, Chapter 10, verses eleven through twenty five:
“And every priest stands day after day at his service,
offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But
when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, "he sat
down at the right hand of God," and since then has been waiting
"until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet." For by a
single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the
Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, "This is the covenant
that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws
in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds," he also adds,
"I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more." Where
there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
“Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter
the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened
for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a
great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full
assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and
our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our
hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider
how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet
together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the
more as you see the Day approaching.”
The temple sacrifices were vital, but they were temporary.
The flash of the knife and the stench of burning flesh was effective but for a
moment; the sacrifice had to be repeated day in and day out.
In Christ, the temporary has been replaced by the Eternal.
When he cried out from the cross, “It is finished,” it was! In that one
selfless act, God giving God’s own life to reconcile humankind to God,
everything that could be done to wipe away the sins of the world was done.
In Jesus Christ, we have an answer to Empire as well. No
earthly kingdom or empire or nation has ever lasted, not really. Every one
which has risen has eventually fallen, and the citizens of the fallen one are enslaved
by or integrated into the conquering one, or are else destroyed, and the
pattern repeats itself again months or years or decades or centuries later.
Kingdoms, empires, they’re all temporary.
Yet we who are in Christ, who have responded to the grace
of God, are citizens of an eternal Kingdom, the now-and-coming Kingdom of God
which shall have no end. Christ sits at the right hand of God because there is
no more that needs to be done.
Not that there are no more Caesars or Herods – as long as
there are countries suffering under the bootheel of a dictatorship, or power-hungry
politicians saying what the people want to hear rather than what they need to
hear, while the more crooked politicians simply buy the votes they need, there
will be Caesars and Herods.
But the dictators will fall, and the politicians will be
voted out. Power for the sake of power is, after all, ultimately
self-destructive. Our eternal Kingdom of God is predicated not upon power, but
upon service, upon what the writer of Hebrews calls, “provok[ing] one another
to love and good deeds,” and upon the love and grace of God in Jesus Christ,
who – even while we were still sinners – died for us.
As we enter in to this Thanksgiving week, let us each day reflect
on the sacrifice of love God has made in Jesus Christ, for each of us and for
the world, and let us be mindful of each opportunity to share that wild,
boundless, extravagant love with all of those around us, near and far, next
door neighbor or across town neighbor or neighbor in another state or country
or culture or belief system.
And on Thursday, when we pile our plates high and gather
around the table and break bread in the Thanksgiving meal, let us remember 3ith
joy and true thankfulness the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for us all, and
for every one of those neighbors I just mentioned. Once, for all, perfect and
complete and eternal.
And may Christ be made known in the breaking of bread.
(Words of the Institution)
