When Temples Fall
Malachi 3:19-20a; 2 Thessalonians 3:7-12; Luke 21:5-19
As you probably know, the word gospel comes from the Old English word godspell, which means "good news." Stones thrown down . . . votive offerings overturned . . . nation rising up against nation . . . earthquakes . . . famine . . . plagues? "THE GOSPEL OF THE LORD!" Well what's so good about the "good news" this morning? What's so good about wars and insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues and personal persecution, maybe even death? This is the Gospel of the Lord, the "good news" that we're presented with today, just a week after nature wreaked havoc on the Philippines and brought such horrific destruction and death in its path? Are you trying to tell us something, God? . . . Yes, or God is always trying to tell us something. But perhaps something different than what appears on the surface.
Today’s gospel begins with the disciples marveling at the glory of the Temple in Jerusalem. It must have been something to see. The Temple they looked at was one of the wonders of the world. It was brand, spanking new. The original Temple, the Temple that Solomon built, was destroyed by the Babylonians at the beginning of the captivity in 588 BC. When the Israelites returned to Jerusalem around 528, the people had all to do to build shelters for themselves. So, it took about fifteen years for them to begin to build a new Temple. This was a modest undertaking, merely adequate, but the best the people at the time could do. As the centuries progressed, this temple was enlarged and refurbished, but it never approached the magnificence of the Temple that Solomon built. In the year 26 B.C. Herod decided to restore the Temple to the glory of Solomon’s day. It was made of carved blocks of greenish white marble, some of them sixty feet long. The eastern front of the temple and part of the side walls, were covered with gold plate, flashing in the sun, and the inside of the Temple was filled with beautiful ornaments. It took Herod's workmen fifty years to build it, and in fact, was only completed in Jesus’ lifetime.
So we can understand the disciples awe as they pointed out its wonders. And we can understand their shock and horror when Jesus said that all of this magnificence would come to ruin. And, in fact, within forty years, the Romans would put down the Jewish Barsabbus revolt, and to break the spirit of the zealot rebels, would completely destroy the temple leaving nothing but part of the retaining wall (what we now call the Wailing Wall) still standing.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that Jesus prophesied that the Temple would fall, he then goes on to say that the whole world will be destroyed. He says that natural disasters, earthquakes, hurricanes, and political turmoil demonstrate that the world is coming to an end. Jesus says that there will be many claiming that the end is at hand, and in fact, in our own time, every few years someone pops up with proof that the world is going to end on a specific date, like last year when the Mayan calendar expired. But remember what Jesus said: "Ignore them." In the same way we should ignore the Jim Joneses, Charles Mansons, Reverend Sun Myung Moons, and other assorted wackos who have the audacity to claim to be Jesus, incarnate again.
Jesus is adamant that we Christians are not to get flustered, distraught, or full of anxiety. These feelings are reserved for those who refuse to commit their lives to the Kingdom of God. What we need to do is to give witness to Christ, particularly in the face of persecution. Jesus wasn't just addressing the early Christians when he said that you will be delivered up to those who will murder you for being faithful. He was also talking to Archbishop Oscar Romero, Jane Donovan and the Maryknoll sisters and the six Jesuits who were all murdered in El Salvador for demanding that the poor be treated with respect. He was talking to Maximilian Kolbe and all those put to death by the Nazis, Communists and Fascists during the blood stained 20th century. He was talking to all those throughout the ages who were persecuted for living their faith. And he was talking to every one of us who is mocked for hanging on to what the media presents as a dated morality. He was talking to all of us who fight for traditional family values and who fight against the forces that deify self-gratification. All of these people, from the martyrs of the past to those living in your house, may be put to death, or at least commit social suicide for their Christian witness, but patient endurance will save their lives.
Today's gospel is indeed frightening. But it isn't frightening for the reason some fundamentalists would give: the fear of the end. It's frightening because Jesus demands that we give witness - in a sense, become martyrs - if we want to be saved.
It's frightening because Jesus demands that we stand up for him, his kingdom, his values, his call to love, to turn the other cheek, to live the Christian way of life in a materialistic, self-centered world.
It's frightening because it demands that we accept ridicule and rejection from those who mock us.
It’s frightening because it proclaims that only by patient endurance can we be saved.
And so, what do you do when your temple falls? What do you do when the security and stability of your world are gone? What do you do when everything nailed down comes loose, and the institutions, and the laws, and the people you once put your trust in all fail you? What do you do? . . . You find your strength and your security in the one thing that is rock solid, permanent, and indestructible - the Mighty Fortress that is our God.
Life can be bad. Evil is very real. But God's promise is also just as real: "Not a hair on your head will perish . . . you will gain your lives." Jesus wraps us up in a promise of safety in the only way that really matters. God holds you. He will never let go of you. That doesn’t mean that you won't go through bad times. It doesn’t mean that bad things won't happen to good people. But it does mean that God's kingdom will come nonetheless, and his will shall be done - both here and now, on earth, as well as finally, in heaven. He holds us in a grasp that will never let us go, that will never allow evil to have the final say over us.
And so, in a week and a half, when you sit with your family around the Thanksgiving dinner table, say a little silent prayer of thanks that God has allowed you the stability you need to keep on going. And give thanks for God's steadiness and dependability, that when everything else is gone, when your personal temples have fallen, God is still beside you.
And give thanks that God is a God of change, and new beginnings, and new options, and new possibilities, and new challenges, and new opportunities, and new life.
And give thanks that the day will come when we will no longer need to hide inside our temples, but can leave them behind, and walk forward, hand in hand with our Lord - head erect, eyes searching for new horizons, brave and confident - into God's glorious future!
