The Season of Thanksgiving: Choosing to Trust
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
November 15, 2009
Mark 13: 1-8
This has been a challenging couple of weeks for us. A few weeks ago our grandson, Ben, had a cold. He was put on antibiotics and immediately broke out in a rash which spread rapidly. Eventually he was diagnosed as having Steven Johnson Syndrome. It scared Betty and me to death because a few years ago, you may recall, that’s what she had. She went from the emergency room at Palm Drive to the Burn Unit at St. Francis Hospital in San Francisco. We learned all kinds of scary things about this disease, including that it can be fatal. Now Ben had the same thing. Well, we went through about 40 hours or so of total panic. The pediatrician said it was a mild case and to just let it run its course. Well, Grandma and Grandpa weren’t fond of that diagnosis, and we went through some anxious hours. Well, thankfully the pediatrician was right. It ran its course and before we knew it, it was receding and Ben didn’t have to have any treatments.
We had barely recovered from that when the phone rang on Monday, Suzanne White was on the phone. David had collapsed and they were taking him to the emergency room at Palm Drive and you know the rest. He was transferred to San Francisco. Every day the news just seemed to be worse. The damage was profound, a double stroke. Finally I went down Wednesday night, his sisters were there, Suzanne was there and about 6 o’clock the respirator was removed and David died, very peacefully, in 5 or 10 minutes. I can hardly believe I’m saying this. A faithful church member, a good friend and he was about my age. So it’s just been difficult.
And there have been those moments the last couple of weeks when I have felt rather lost. This pastor wondering where the pastor is going to turn. And perhaps the Holy Spirit did intervene. Because working on today’s rather strange text actually proved helpful to me. It actually gave me some hope – maybe renewed my hope.
Jesus and the Temple in Jerusalem. From Mark 11 through today’s text in Mark 13, Jesus has, on three successive days, three encounters – more like confrontations – in and around the Temple. He drives out the money-changers, he criticizes the chief priests and scribes, he praises the widow for her gift of two copper coins, even as he again bitterly criticizes the Temple establishment, and then, in today’s text, he actually talks about the Temple’s destruction. And he does all of this during Passover week, when the Temple and the city are absolutely crowded with the faithful, not to mention Roman soldiers. Little wonder that the political and religious leaders begin looking for some way to get rid of this guy.
Today’s text is the last of these confrontations. The disciples – all country boys – were quite impressed by the beauty and majesty of the Temple in Jerusalem. As was just about everyone. Herod the Great was a great builder and the Temple was the greatest of all his projects. It actually had been torn down twice since King Solomon first built it, so the work begun by Herod, begun before Jesus’ birth, was the second rebuilding of the Temple. It was a staggeringly large and opulent edifice. It had a perimeter circumference of over two-thirds of a mile, with walls 150 feet high. The platform surrounding the central Temple building was the size of 240 football fields. The stones forming the walls weighed several tons a piece. The outside of the building was decorated with 40-foot-high white marble columns and there were ten gates by which to enter the outer courts of the temple, each covered in gold or silver plate. I could say more, but you get the idea. The gleaming white marble and stunning metal work made the temple flash in the Middle Eastern sun and dominate the cityscape. It was the religious and architectural center of Jewish religious life in Jerusalem, indeed of all of Israel. Many considered the Temple Mount to be the center of the universe. It was built to look big, heavy, majestic, immovable, eternal, and clearly the disciples were filled with wonder as they gazed at it.
But Jesus? Not so impressed. “Do you see these great buildings?” Not one will be left; all will be thrown down.” Well that is just what the Temple Board of Trustees wanted to hear, right? This building you have invested so much time, energy and money in…all coming down. And he goes on to speak of famines, earthquakes, conflict, wars and rumors of wars. Then he concludes, “This is just the beginning of the birth pangs.” What the heck is he talking about? And where in all this can I find hope?
What can this possibly have to do with Good News? Well, if we had some time and didn’t have anywhere to go today, we could talk about history, about the fact that the Temple was destroyed by Rome, along with much of Jerusalem in the final Roman-Jewish war, in the years 66-74. We could talk about the fact that Mark was written after the Temple’s destruction. So could our text, in fact, be Mark’s commentary on the tragic events which were already known by everyone who read his Gospel – history remembered? Instead of predictions of the future, the talk of war and rumors of war, could in fact be references to very real events. Certainly something to think about in a Bible study.
But, I wonder, what if Jesus in this text might also be talking about us, about life and faith? What if when he refers to stones falling and sound foundations shaking, he is not really talking about buildings? What if his words are directed, to our lives, right now?
I don’t know about you, but I find it very easy to slip into the illusion that I am pretty much in control of my life. Life moves along pretty well, there are a few bumps in the road, but nothing I can’t handle. I have my goals, I have my dreams, I know where I’m going, and pretty much by my own effort and determination, I’m going to get there. I am the master of this ship. It becomes very easy for me to view my life rather like the disciples viewed that Temple – unshakeable, immovable, orderly, controlled and focused. I suppose that at times I can be a little bit like Lucy of Peanuts fame. “Sometimes I get so discouraged,” she says to Charlie Brown as she stares down at the ground. He replies, “Well, Lucy, life does have its ups and downs, you know.”
At this point she stands up and says, “But why? Why should it? Why can’t my life be all UPS? If I want all ups, why can’t I have them? Why can’t I just move from one up to another up? Why can’t I just go from an up to an UPPER-UP?” Now she is on a roll. “I don’t want any more downs! I just want ups and ups and ups!”
At this point, Charlie Brown just walks away, muttering to himself, “I just can’t stand it. I just can’t stand it…”
Well, why not? Why not all ups? I want all ups. I’m a good guy, darn it, I work hard. Why not ups? That settles it. I’m laying the firm foundations for nothing but ups in my life.
And then the phone rings or you open an unexpected letter or that persistent pain you have been trying to ignore comes back, and before you know it, those sturdy, immovable foundations of your life over which you thought you had so much control, begin to shake and the immovable walls start tumbling down. And then what? Where do you put your hope when all the familiar sources of hope begin to crumble around you? I think that’s the hard question Jesus leaves hanging in the air. When the foundations shake, as they inevitably will, when something we thought was lasting comes to an end, as it inevitably will; where do we turn? Where do we find hope? Where do we find a new beginning?
I am reminded of the words of a tightrope walker who once spoke of how it was he could walk so confidently suspended in space. He said,”I do not so much look down, as I look ahead and up.” I think that’s how Jesus lived and how he invites us to live.
I find it interesting that after he speaks words of destruction and shaking foundation, Jesus concludes by referring to birth. Just when you think it’s all over, all destroyed, nothing to count on, no where to go, whispered on the wind is the promise of new beginnings, new birth, new life.
As I said, the foundations have been very shaky in recent days. But, you know, as sad as I have been about David’s death, I have also taken hope from his life. Those who have been here for a while remember when his daughter, Meghan, Suzanne’s step-daughter, was tragically and suddenly killed in a horrific car accident a few years ago. Killed by a young drunken driver. It was a horrible time. They were broken. So sad, so angry. And we walked with them through that horrible loss. But, out of the ashes of their grief, the crumbling of every foundation, there were the birth pangs of new life. David and Suzanne took that, all of that bad stuff, and redirected it. They became for us, the heart and soul of the church mission trips. Nicaragua, Louisiana, they were there leading us, I’m not so sure what we are going to do without them. And there was more – putting up a Christmas tree, lecturing us about Nicaragua coffee, helping with the mitten tree, helping deliver the shoe boxes. They became such an important part of the outreach of this church. Even in grief, new focus, new meaning – who knows how many lives David touched, as instead of looking down, he dared to look ahead and up.
And that is why I insist that this admittedly strange text still speaks a word of hope, still speaks the good news. I don’t want to downplay how devastating it is when the foundations shake, when nothing seems certain anymore. I know. I’ve been there more often than I dare to talk about – we’ve all been here. Christ himself has been here.
Michael Lindvall, a Presbyterian minister, shares this story: “Some years ago, I was moving furniture with a good friend, a junior high teacher named John. The furniture was coming out of the apartment of a widow named Helen, a mutual friend, who had just made a wrenching decision to move into a nursing home. She had given her bedroom set to my daughter. The rest was going to the Salvation Army. It was an unhappy moving day, emptying rooms full of memories into John’s truck. Each trip from apartment to curb seemed to set the two of us thinking about deeper things.
“We were about to carry out the headboard of an old mahogany bedstead when John suddenly stopped, and with a few carefully chosen words, spoke about the death of his infant child many years ago. I knew about it, but we had never spoken about it. He was silent for a moment. Then he set his end down, looked at me, nodded toward the heavens and said, ‘He’s been there, that’s all there is to say. God has been there.’” And God is there still.
And I believe that is the final word of this text. Even when the foundations shake, we remain people of promise and possibility, a people able to imagine possibilities beyond a world that seems immune to and incapable of such imagining. We dare to see a new beginning in every ending. We dare to be witnesses against despair in our time, for always God is still here, loving us, caring for us, and bringing to birth within us something hopeful and new. So, you see, my friends, even as our hearts are filled with fear, as they so often are, our ears are ringing with the whisper, “Fear not. Dare to let go, for I am with you always.”