No Stones Unturned

Introduction

Foretelling the destruction of the temple isn’t exactly the text you want during commitment season, or really any season at all. It’s not comforting, no body leaves the first section of Mark 13 feeling great. There’s all this foretelling: destruction, persecution, desolation.

What’s the context? What is Jesus talking about?

It’s apparent that the disciples are really impressed by the temple itself. I can only imagine its grandeur. Huge stones towering to the sky, big and glorious enough to impress the human imagination. But, Jesus doesn’t seem too impressed, does he?

In Mark’s gospel the foretelling of the destruction of the temple comes in the chapter right before Jesus’ arrest. I think it’s fair to assume that Jesus already knew, or was beginning to understand what was going to happen to him. In the face of death, the temple just isn’t very impressive.

The destruction of the building is much less concerning than the destruction of his earthly life

And even in spite of this Jesus says that these things must happen. Jesus says “these” things, not “this thing”, and the disciples ask him too about these things, and when they will be accomplished. We’re getting the idea that it’s more than just the temple, but maybe the temple, in this instance, is representative of the physical temple but also much more. The idea that God’s Kingdom and redemption are not exclusive to the secular, but include both the secular and the sacred.

On Friday i played a very Holy game with some of the guys from our men’s breakfast group, golf. We played out at beautiful stone mountain golf club with the beautiful changing trees and the sun shining on stone mountain in the background. I told them that I would find a way to work them into my sermon for Sunday, but all I could come up with was the analogy of the destruction of the temple with the destruction of our egos after we added up our golf scores.

Hay Bales being stacked and falling off the truck

Content

What does any of this have to do with Trinity?

What does any of this have to do with us, with me?

Trinity is made up of stones and brick. It’s a temple of sorts, but we like to think that it’s more than just a building, right?, it’s the people of God that worship and often exist in this building.

We don’t have a false prophet speaking out in our church, maybe we have some in the public sphere. There are always rumors of wars, nations continue to battle with nations, earthquakes are just a normal occurence, and food scarcity persists.

So with all of the falling stones and temple talks again, what does this have to do with us?

It has to do with our understanding of our role in God’s Kingdom.

As a kid I often wondered if the church building burned down what we would do. In fact I asked my dad once, thinking he’d say well, son, we’d have to go to another church. But he didn’t, he said we’d go right back and worship in the parking lot next to the rubble.

Our role is not and never has been to preserve temples, in fact, Jesus doesn’t seem to upset that they get torn down, and at this time there was only one temple!

And if we have a temple, brick and mortar where we come to worship God, that temple must serve the purpose of God’s kingdom or it must be torn down.

Oh, but there’s more, not only are there brick and mortar temples, but 1st Corinthians tells us that our bodies are temples of the holy spirit. Where will the temple analogies stop?

Tearing down of buildings and selves once again seems quite odd, but it’s not if we can get to the core of what Jesus is referring to.

Yes, there was a second destruction of the temple in 70 CE, and Jesus is talking about this, but it’s more. We have built temples of worship, physical ones, and we have been , our bodies, our selves, temples of worship, not for God, but for ourselves.

Whether we like it or not there is rot under these stones, there is rot under our stones, there is rot because we’ve been to afraid to let the temple be torn down.

And where there is rot there will be injustice, where there is rot there will be racism, where there is rot there will be inequality, where there is rot there will be ism after ism and we have been party to it, and will continue to be party to it unless we can do what’s so so difficult - take a look at what’s lying beneath the stones of our institutions, our communities, and the stones of our own minds.

Reference to Rob Bell’s talk

Reference to the actual temple the place where the God of the shema is praised. Where people come together because of their intuitive or God given feeling that we are all connected, and that God is the one who connects us (Calvin here). And when the temple becomes about the structure and not about the connection it must be torn down. There are stones that must be overturned in ourselves because they are keeping us from this connection with God and one another.

Black mold in need of remediation

The black mold found behind your temple walls is never a poison in isolation from all other things and all other people because we are connected. You are the keeper of your brothers and sisters, your siblings, their stones and your stones cannot escape one another.

The temple is conceived to help us conceive of God within this realm, to signify a distinction between that which is sacred and secular. But what happens when the temple stays up is that God becomes confined to the box; the divine is in the supposed hands of the temporal human, rather than the imminent divine. So, the temple must be torn down, even Jesus tells us this in our text.

But, God is not in the business of destruction for the sake of destruction, but in the business or remodeling, of reconciliation, of redemption,

If we were always in the business of building temples and tearing them down, of setting stones and turning them over, if this was our posture the rot and mold we find wouldn’t have the opportunity to deteriorate us and others.

Orientation, disorientation, reorientation

It took all the hay bales falling to realize that there was only one row where the hay bales were stacked wrongly, and that one row took down the entire trailer load. Where there is one stone with rot, one stone we are unwilling to turn over in our lives and our societies, it will always be enough to bring the whole thing down. We’re only human, sometimes our temples must fall for us to see, but our temples can be a place for life and not rot, if we join in God’s business of building and rebuilding over and over and over again. May we leave no stones unturned, and may we be open to joining God in foretelling the destruction of temples so that we may always be reminded of our utter reliance upon God whose workmanship can bring remediation beyond our greatest imagination.