Proper 28 :: Daniel 12:1 – 3 / Psalm 16 / Mark 13:1 – 8
This is the homily
given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, November
14, 2021.
“DURABILITY”
(Homily
text: Mark 13:1 - 8)
Let’s consider the idea of durability this morning. That is to say, let’s talk about what things will endure, will stand the test of time and the challenges that time and change present, and those things that are destined to fail that test and fall away.
In that vein then, hear the words of
one of the Lord’s disciples, who, upon leaving the Temple in Jerusalem, says,
“Look, Rabbi, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!”. Whereupon
Jesus makes the prediction that the time will come when not one of the stones
just referred to will stand one upon another.
To the disciples, and to the majority
of God’s people in that day, time and place, the Temple must’ve seemed like an
indestructible, permanent place, a durable place destined to stand for eons of
time. But the truth is that that Temple was destroyed by the Roman army during
the Jewish-Roman War, which lasted from 66 – 70 AD. By the end of that war, not
one stone of the Temple buildings that sat upon the top of the Temple Mount,
stood one on top of another. All were thrown down, taken down.[1]
Following His prediction about the fate
of the Temple, Jesus engages in what is, most likely, traditional language
which depicts God’s judgment: Words like
“earthquakes”, “famines” and “wars” appear in His comments about the signs by
which God’s judgment will unfold.
It turns out that the Temple wasn’t at
all durable. Neither were the conceptions and ideas about God’s nature and the
ways in which God relates to people all that durable for God’s people, and for
the Lord’s disciples, all that durable, either.
The understandings that God’s people
harbored about God’s nature and God’s relationships with human beings were
shaped by their understanding of God’s Law, known as the Torah. Their
understandings were carried in the mold that was shaped by the priestly caste,
by the Pharisees, and the scribes. That mold maintained that God favored those
who scrupulously held to the tenets of Torah, blessing them with wealth, with
health, and with good fortune. Conversely, God punished with illness, disease,
or poverty, those who did the opposite.
Our Lord came and completely destroyed
these seemingly durable notions and ideas, hanging out with tax collectors and
sinners. He drove back the indestructibility of disease and illness, and broke
down the walls of indifference, intolerance and disdain that was directed toward
the sick, the lame, the blind, and the notorious sinner. It turns out that
these unhelpful attitudes weren’t all that durable, either, in the face of
God’s revelation, made known in the sending of Jesus Christ to live among us.
In truth, the temples we create for
ourselves, by which we wall off from God those places in our lives that we
claim are “off limits” to God’s gaze and God’s judgment, aren’t likely to
withstand God’s judgment when the time for judgment comes. For God will destroy
all that is unbefitting in those who claim God’s name and God’s mantle. When
judgment comes, it will seem, quite likely, to be an earthquake.
We can take a lesson from the process
of construction of just about anything human beings decide to make: The process usually begins with destruction,
either of previously-held ideas and notions, to the uprooting of the soil to
prepare the way for the foundation of a building or temple. Remember that the
Temple in Jerusalem that one of Jesus’ disciples admired so greatly began its construction
with the destruction of much of what remained of Solomon’s Temple, which
preceded the construction of Herod’s Second Temple.
So it is with us: God will dig deep
into the soil of our hearts and into the recesses of our minds and spirits to
root out that which is unholy, in order to create within us a durable and holy
temple for the Spirit of God to dwell in. Such a process may seem more like
destruction than construction, until the fruits of the process work themselves
out in time.
There is no other way to godliness and
holiness.
AMEN.
[1] All that remains of the Temple complex is the Temple Mount itself, which is a large rectangular platform, about 33 acres in size. It’s wall on the west side is known as the Western Wall today, a sacred site for Jews to come and pray. Some of the stones in the wall are enormous, weighing about 20 tons.
