Insurance
Notes
Transcript
The temple in Jerusalem, known as Herod’s temple, was the pride of the Jews. It had taken years to rebuild. The Jewish people had heavily given to it, and Herod had spared no expense. You can look up renderings of it online- massive marble facing 60 feet high with gold details across the top and gold-plated doors. Fine silk fabric hung to create the veil. The temple for Jerusalem was a symbol of their hope and pride. It was a wonder of their world. It was like the Sistine Chapel in Italy, St. Patrick’s in New York, or the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Savannah, GA. You get the picture right? It was a big deal.
And when we visit these places, they are wonders to behold. We feel tiny looming in their giant shadow. And their is a sense that they will always be there, outliving time itself.
I have had the chance to visit a few of these places, and Jim says I’m the worst kind of tourist. I have the outfit on. I’ve got the map. I have my camera out, always at the ready. My eyes are wide, my mouth wide-open. And there are lots of ooooohs and aaaaahs.
I imagine this is how the disciples were when they were in the temple with Jesus. He is nearing his death, trying to teach, and they are all googly-eyed at the marble walls and golden doors. And then he says something that makes a crash in their ears saying, “ As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon one another; all will be thrown down.” Not one stone.
Wait, what? Now the disciples had been around Jesus long enough at this point to know what he was capable of and that what he said would usually come to pass. But that only makes them more afraid. How could this huge temple with marble walls come crumbling down?
Whenever I travel, one of the questions I am always asked is “do you want insurance?” You know, in case of impending doom, sudden death, flood, fire, illness, a storm cell, the zombie apocalypse, you know.....better get some insurance....just in case.
And so maybe the disciples were thinking, “I hope Herod has some really good insurance.” State Farm. All State. Gotta be in good hands.
And so the disciples don’t ask how is this going to happen. They ask when? What will be the signs? And Jesus says a lot of stuff is going to happen. People are going to say this is the end times. People are going to claim to be me. People are going to tell you they have all the answers. But don’t be fooled. Don’t listen to them.
Then he says that things are going to get much worse before they get better. There will be wars. Nation will rise against nation. Natural disasters will break the land. Famine and sickness will break out. It’s going to get bad, really bad. And if that’s not enough, you will be persecuted, imprisoned, and possibly even put to death. People you know and love will betray you. Things just escalated really quickly. It’s personal now.
Similar to travel insurance that warns of all the possible things that could happen, “in the event of,” Jesus here is saying this stuff will happen.
This text is interesting in that it holds both a present and a future lens. Luke here is writing well after all of this has occured and seeing the words of Jesus as having unfolded in the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans and the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. What Jesus said would happen, happened. And there is also an eschatological sense of our waiting for the return of Christ. The Isaiah text this week holds in it all that God will bring about, a vision of our future in God, when lion will lie down with the lamb and no violence will exist.
Although Jesus describes all that is going to happen, he doesn’t do so from a place of fear. How often are we trembling when God is steady? How often are we taking our eyes off of Jesus, distracted, while he never loses sight of us? Amid impending calamity, chaos, sickness, and persecution, God tells the disciples that they need not be terrified. They need not fear. It’s like someone telling you it’s going to be OK when everything feels like it’s on fire.
What does Jesus say instead? He says that when everything falls apart, when it is worse before it’s better....this will give you an opportunity to testify. Maybe you’re thinking, “I’d like to take a pass on that opportunity thanks.” But still we hear those words, “this will give you an opportunity to testify.”
But I admit that’s the last thing perhaps we feel like doing when the world is crumbling around us. When a loved one is dying. When we can’t afford healthcare. When our best friend is in recovery. When our brother is in jail. When we are faced with an impossible decision. When the things we hold as sacred and safe come crumbling down around us.
No one could have told you that the ceiling of this beautiful sanctuary would fall. No one could have told the members of two local churches that they would have caught fire. No one could have told me that an hour after I left St. Luke in April of 2014 that an F3 tornado would rip it apart.
Many of you know what it feels like to stand among the ruins. I know what it feels like to stand among the ruins. I’ll never forget driving around the wreckage to what was still standing the next morning and holding members and just crying. So many homes flattened. Our place of worship, uninhabitable.
And our gym became our place of worship. It was the place that agencies came to organize neighborhood repair. It became a place to receive food and supplies, showers and support. And slowly, everyone began to say “we are the church.” Not the stained glass that was shattered. Not the roof that was folded in. We are the church. This became our witness, that we, the people of God, were the real body of Christ. Similarly for those of you who kept meeting, who kept gathering, who kept the faith… by your endurance, you will gain your souls. Our witness in the ruins speaks to the everlasting God.
Jesus told the disciples and all in the temple that stone upon stone wouldn’t be left. Only a couple of days before as he descended into the city in 19:44 he once again gave an ominous prediction and wept over Jerusalem. In John 2:19 Jesus says “destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
See the temple was beautiful, but it had become a den of thieves instead of a house of prayer. Thick walls and rules kept out the Gentiles from worship. The poor were taxed to the point of death, and the outsiders had no room.
Jesus in his ministry of proclaiming sight to the blind, freedom of the oppressed, healing for the sick, and dining with sinners, was doing the work that the temple had begun to neglect. And so it was the very presence of Christ, and the resurrected Lord, that became the temple. The walls that divided God’s people were broken down, and a new people of God emerged.
I am not speaking against human structures or the beauty of the work of human hands or the nature of sacred spaces. The sanctuary is a place where we are invited to meet and worship God, but it is NOT a space in which we contain God. Anytime our faith is more attached to the frame, we risk placing our hope in human hands instead of a holy God. It is as the words of our final hymn says, “ I dare not trust the sweetest frame. But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.” Our eternal hope, the pride our salvation, doesn’t rest on anything we do or create, but rest in the body and blood of Christ. It is in His presence that we find the temple, our place of worship.
In the Old Testament, it was the presence of God that moved with the people in the pillar of fire. In Revelation 21:22, John declares the vision of how again the very presence of God serves as the temple. He says “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.”
The witness of the Church is nothing without its people. The most beautiful temple says nothing without the witness of the people of faith who endure. The light of Christ is never meant to stay here but is always carried forward within you. You carry the presence of God in all of your going about each week. You hold it in your home, in the hospital, on vacation, in the school, in the eye clinic, in the art room, in the grocery, on the ballfield. You are the church living and breathing in this community. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:16 that “Do you not know that you are God’s temple, and that God’s spirit dwells within you?” By the witness of your life, you endure.
We endure in the midst of shifting sand on the solid hope of Christ who holds all things together. We endure through our witness in the midst of the ruins. We endure in the love of God that we are told in 1 Corinthians 13:7 “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things.” We rest on the insurance of God, and find that when even stone upon stone is gone, Christ remains. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.