Falling Stones

Mark 13:1-2

Spending any time at all with a Google search on the temple in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus will leave you with a deep understanding of why the disciples were so awed by attending worship there. It was the real and actual heart of the nation of Israel. It was the meeting place with God. Accordingly, it was an amazing building. You entered into a great and massive hall supported by six huge columns, each representing a day of creation―the temple was all the cosmos in microcosm. In the center sat the massive altar―tall as a building itself―always aflame with the offerings of the people―bulls, rams, sheep, birds, grain―all the time throughout the year. No wonder the disciples leave moved.

Then Jesus dismisses their wonder in a sentence―Not one stone will remain; not one scrap of this edifice will endure―he was only slightly off―the Wailing Wall is all that is left.

We might hear this sentence as utterly hopeless. But instead, I believe Jesus is offering us four invitations into freedom, liberation, and release from all that ails us.

The first invitation harkens back to an earlier moment during the time of David. The newly seated king sits in his palace, horrified that he lives in splendor while God is still housed in the threadbare, stinky, moldy old tent that Moses drug around in the desert. He determines to build God a house befitting the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But God interrupts, declaring that God needs no house. God is wherever the people are. God cannot and will not be confined or boxed. The temple no more holds God than we can hold wind in our hands. Now, most of us are well beyond believing that God lives in our churches, but we still confine God. Almost all of us live with compartmentalized lives. We have a box for each activity. We have our commute from seven to eight in the morning. We have our work, or school, or vocation for several hours each day. We have our family time, our TV time, and our sleep time. All is organized in their boxes on the schedule. That includes God―the hour or so we spend at church―that is our God time. Except that God will not be so boxed. God is free. God is with us in each moment. God is wherever we are. God is in each breath. We freed from confining God, from limiting our trust in God’s presence. God is here. Now.

Another invitation to freedom comes with this acknowledgement of God’s freedom of presence. As Walter Brueggeman noted, no one should join a church expecting it to remain forever. We worship the living God, therefore, we should expect change to come. The world shifts and changes constantly. The church in its current form cannot endure. It is simply becoming more and more a fossil from a previous age. To meet our current time and place, we need to change the way we are. The surest sign of accepting this reality is a willingness to let go. But that is never easy. It requires a shift in the culture of the community. That sort of shift is scary because we really have no idea where we are going, how we will get there, or what we will find on the other side. It is uncertain. It means making a firm foundation unstable. It means reaching for people we have no experience of or with. But...God is good and grace abounds! God will be with us, reshaping, rebuilding, and reforming our community. We need to keep close to God to make it so―pray, ponder, pray some more, and then act. We are free to adapt, adjust, and accept as the world shifts, knowing all can be well.

Third, there is the the invitation to freedom of working with the old thought that the church is not its facility, but its people. In a sense, this path ties together the previous two. Our assurance in the face of a chaotic world is the knowledge that we do not face it alone, but rather in the communion of friends and family. Our assurance in the face of the tribulation brought by knowing we need to change to remain intelligible and welcoming to the world as it is, is knowing we are doing so as a community, not simply as a collection of individuals facing an overwhelmingly daunting task. We can encourage one another. We can assist one another. We can reassure one another. We can listen to one another. We can walk with one another. Together, we can face the trial of change and transformation. The old temple may vanish, but the true temple of the congregation will endure. 

Finally, there is the invitation to freedom by letting go of a fixed space. The disciples are awe-struck by the edifice of the temple, the history it represents, and the order it sustains within the faith of Israel. But Jesus shatters the illusion. The temple, like all human constructs, will fade. It will fade because really it is a hollow house, and all it purports to be is as hollow as the building that houses it. The true order of God is outside the temple, and the true house of God is in the world where the people are. It is people meeting one another in the compassion that is God that transforms and transcends the world and its brokenness. Jesus never worked within the temple constructs. He was there, but always as an outsider. Jesus was never really part of a synagogue. He was in the street, along the roads, and in the homes of the people he served. This final direction calls us to use the gift we have of our community. We are to go into the highways and byways. We are to meet the neighbors. We are to be in the world. That is where the true church resides. The church truly becomes the church when it enters the neighborhood with the simple question, “What do you need?,” and then responds with compassion and care to meet those needs. 

So, these invitations may be apocalyptic in that they spell the end of business as usual. But they also carry tremendous hope in that our assurance and confidence come not from an institution, but already exist in the people with whom we share our lives and our ministry because God is present where we are, working with whom we work, and bringing the kingdom of God to full fruition.