Preaching While the Roof Falls In

Mark 13:1-13

November 18, 2018

William G. Carter

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 birth pangs.

“As for yourselves, beware; for they will hand you over to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them. And the good news must first be proclaimed to all nations. When they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

Of all the tough things Jesus said to his disciples, that had to be the worst: the Temple would be tossed down. It was inconceivable. Those upcountry fishermen probably didn’t get down to Jerusalem more than once a year. It was a straight thirty-five hour walk each way, probably done over at least three days. There were certainly no buildings that large back in Capernaum. The main section of the temple was over a hundred feet high. Who would ever think it would be coming down?

The Jews of that day meant it literally when they spoke of the Temple as God’s House. God rules from the heavens, but the Temple was where God touched down on earth. The scriptures speak of it as the Lord’s footstool (1 Chronicles 28:2). So what did it mean to declare that no one stone would be left standing on another? Did that mean God had left the building? Or worse, that God was powerless to stop the destruction? I’m sure the disciples were shaken by what Jesus said.

It was hard to imagine the central shrine of Jewish faith to be torn down and destroyed, even though that had happened about six hundred years before. In 587 BC Nebuchadnezzar began a siege on the city that lasted for over a year. His Babylonian army smashed through the city walls, captured all the city leaders to make them slaves, and pulled down the great Temple of Solomon.

This was the crisis that inspired about a third of the Old Testament. The prophets tried to interpret how this could happen to God’s House, among God’s people. Were the people being punished for doing something wrong? Had God decided to let it happen? Was God unable to stop it from happening? Or is this the shape of what it’s like to worship God in a world like this? All good questions, without any conclusive answers. A good share of the scriptures tries to make sense of this terrible disruption.

Now Jesus says the Temple will be torn down again. It was hard to imagine that, too. This was the second temple, a long-term rebuilding project going on about five hundred years, with a lot of stops and starts. In the day of Jesus, it was still the sanctuary when God was worshiped, the only altar where sacrifices were made, and the center of an entire nation’s faith and hope. Within forty years of Jesus’ prediction, again the walls came tumbling down, this time at the hand of the Roman Empire.

To this day, all that remains is a section of one wall, now called the Wailing Wall. The pilgrims go there to pray. They wash their hands in purity, cover their heads, and write down their prayers on slips of paper that they leave in the cracks of the wall. I was there eighteen years ago and wrote down the names of my kids.

What do you do when the central place in your life is no more? Maybe that’s a question you’ve had to face.

Someone was telling me about returning to the town of her childhood. She saw the familiar street sign, took a left, went down to the stop sign, and proceeded into the next block. She slowed down as she came around the bend, leaned forward to look, and nothing was there. The old house was gone. The maple tree out front had met a chainsaw cut down. Everything she remembered, or told herself she remembered, had disappeared. “It was profoundly disturbing,” she said, “and left me in a fog. When I tried to recall how it looked, that was gone too.”

Do you know how she feels?

Progress is progress, I suppose, but progress is overrated. A couple of years ago, I drove down Emmons Drive, the New Jersey street where my seminary apartment was located. 312 Emmons Drive was leveled to the ground. It wasn’t a big loss; the place was a dump. The heating system was always goofed up and our cat had been infested with fleas. Good to see the place go!

But don’t say that to the elderly couple who no longer go to church. Once upon a time, they went every week. They met in the Sunday School, fell in love in the youth group, walked down the aisle to get married, had three children baptized in that sanctuary. Then the neighborhood changed, people they knew moved away or passed on, and there weren’t enough hands in the church to keep the lights on. So the church closed down. They tried to connect to other churches, but it just wasn’t the same. The couple stopped going anywhere.

What do you do when the sanctuary no longer exists?

Jesus offers an ominous warning. Perhaps it is true that no building is permanent, that no institution is secure, that no configuration of familiar people is everlasting. I’m not sure I want to hear that, even if it’s true. I love you people, I love this place. I can’t imagine if this building were ever to go away, or if our faith community would have to shut down someday.

I suppose it’s one of the hard realities of being human, of being mortal. Everything we love has an expiration date. After fifty-eight trips around the sun, I know that well. So I begin to think that abundant life may consist of claiming the opportunities we have here and now, of savoring the moment and enjoying the gifts.

It’s like the book of Ecclesiastes, which is a wisdom manual in the Bible written by somebody in the middle of a mid-life crisis. “I tried chasing after pleasure,” says the writer, “and I tried making a lot of money. I tried working hard and flying straight. I tried just about everything, and it was like reaching for a puff of smoke.”

“So,” says the sage, “all I got is this: eat and drink, find enjoyment in your toil, follow the commandments, and fear God.”[1] To put it in other words, love God and keep your head down. That is a time-honored way of getting through things.

But I do have to say the wisdom of Jesus is much more intentional. In the text today, he basically says three things: discern what’s going on, stay patient, and keep preaching. Let me say a few words about each.

First, and to quote Marvin Gaye, what’s going on? If we trace the long history of temples being torn down, we discover all over again that we are in the thick of an endless skirmish between good and evil. It’s not merely the people out there who oppose us that we must to worry about; it’s also what we are capable to doing to ourselves. The threats are both external and internal. The Roman Empire was the greatest and most luxurious empire of its time. Yet it built its affluence by brutality. It would eventually implode from moral rot. We can learn your lessons from that.

Similarly, I know a lot of churches that grew big in the 1950’s after returning soldiers had a lot of babies. The churches grew. They were tempted to indulge themselves, rather than give themselves. As the affluence in the society grew, the churches plateaued. As the cities wrestled with racial tension, the churches and their people moved out to the suburbs. As everybody in the culture became nominally Christian, there were a lot of nominal Christians and precious few followers of Jesus. When the communities changed, the churches weren’t nimble enough or self-sacrificing enough to change with them.

And so, “what’s going on?” Jesus said, “Don’t be led astray.” In our day, don’t be led astray by a false sense of comfort. We must read what is really happening. That’s the discernment.  

Second, add to that some patience, what my friend Ched Myers calls “revolutionary patience.” Ched says that, especially in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is telling us to hang in for the long haul. Don’t chase after the latest fad. Don’t worry about the crisis du jour. Dig in and stay faithful to God. If the world beats you up or puts you on trial, this is to be expected, because it happened to Christ first. We are part of that grand narrative of good versus evil. It’s been going on for a long time, and by all accounts we should expect it to continue.

Maybe you heard people ask the rabbi at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, “What are you going to do, after a gunman invaded your sanctuary?” He said, “We will keep worshiping the holy God and keeping God’s commandments.” What happened was a terrible thing, but faithfulness to God is expressed in perseverance. We keep going, knowing the world will do what it’s going to do, but we are going to do what God calls us to do. That’s the revolutionary patience. It’s more than “being patient.” It is staying patient, taking a long view, persisting in an eternal view.

And finally, he says to keep preaching. That is the command of Jesus. If the roof falls in, keep preaching. Or more specifically, keep proclaiming. That’s the word: proclaim. It refers to speaking, but it’s more than speaking. It is courageously proclaiming that our message is more important than we are. The Gospel is God’s announcement that sin is cancelled by grace, that hatred is washed clean by love, that death is defeated by resurrection. It’s the word that grace, love, and resurrection are finally going to win.

Frederick Buechner wrote a novel where a lot of terrible things happen. The main character is a Protestant minister who lost his wife in a car accident. He is raising two small girls with the help of a Jewish housekeeper. In a turn of events, he travels to a wayward church member and bring her home to her husband. The local newspaper makes more of this than he should and creates some rumors in his town gossip column. None of it is true, but some damage is done.

Shortly after he brings her back to reunite with her husband, a teenage prank goes terribly wrong. Nicolet’s housekeeper dies after her house catches fire. So at the end of the book, the whole town gathers around her grave. Nicolet read the familiar words from the end of the Bible: "And God shall wipe away all tears, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things have passed away" (Revelation 21:4).

He spoke for a few minutes, then concluded with a benediction. The people shuffled away in the rain. One turned back. It was the sleazy newspaper editor who caused the turmoil while Nicolet was out of town. "Good show," he said to the preacher. Then he pointed to the grave and sneered, "This supper of the great God . . . no more death, no more pain. Ask her."

Nicolet stood silent, his two daughters by his side. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know what to do. Suddenly his daughters did an unexpected thing.

They grabbed up some of the flowers that they had brought and started pelting him with them - orange hawkweed, daisies, clover - and stooping over like a great, pale bear in his baggy seersucker suit, he kept on lunging at them with his finger. Nicolet threw back his head and laughed as Poteat went lumbering off with the little girls after him. When he got as far as Nicolet's car, he turned around for a moment, and it was only then that they could see that he was more or less laughing himself.[2]

What do you do when the roof falls in? "You proclaim the kingdom of God," says Jesus our Lord. Even if life should turn deadly, we proclaim the power of God that is stronger than death. And preach and proclaim we shall, until the day when there are no more tears, when death has no more power, when grief is swallowed up in laughter.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

---

[1] Ecclesiastes 5:18, 12:13

[2] Frederick Buechner, The Final Beast (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1965) 276.