Homily: Yr B Proper 33, Nov 18
2012, St. Albans
Readings: 1 Sam 1.4-20, 1 Sam
2:1-10; Hebrews 10:11-25; Mark 13:1-8
To those of you who are visiting with us here today as we
celebrate the completion of our renovations, may I say thank you.
And to those of us who have been here throughout the
construction of the last year, I think that most of us simply want to say, at
last! At last we’re done with the
dust. At last, we’re ready to open up
our church building seven days a week.
At last, we’re ready to welcome Centre 454 as they move in downstairs
this week.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find it ironic that on the
day that we’re celebrating the renovation of this building of St. Albans, we get
a gospel reading where Jesus predicts the destruction of the Temple. That on a day when I’m encouraging you to
appreciate the beauty and architecture of this building, we read about Jesus’
disciples marveling at the beauty and architecture of the Temple buildings in
Jerusalem – and then Jesus responds that not one stone of those great buildings
will be left standing.
People love big stones.
I did a quick search this week for the world’s top tourist sites, and
the lists that Google came up with were dominated by big stone monuments. The Pyramids in Egypt. The Great Wall of China. The Taj Mahal. The Roman Colisseum. The Acropolis. Machu Picchu. There’s something about looking at these massive
monuments, monuments to human ingenuity and achievement that appeals to
us. It fills us with awe, and perhaps
with a sense of reflected glory.
In today’s gospel, it appears that the disciples of Jesus are
having just that sort of experience.
Remember that they are young folk, from the distant rural area of
Galilee. Here they are in Jerusalem, the
capital city, for the first time, and they’re looking at the great Temple built
by King Herod. The stones used for the
temple walls were massive, eleven metres by five metres by four metres, and
they were precisely shaped to fit together.
And the disciples look at them in amazement and they turn to Jesus and
say, “Look, what large stones and what large buildings!” And Jesus responds, “Do you see these great
buildings? Not one stone will be left,
all will be thrown down.”
Now, the disciples immediately ask when? When will this happen? And that makes sense. For those present on that day, the timing mattered,
in fact it was a matter of life and death.
But our question isn’t “when?” We
know the answer to that question. The
Temple was destroyed by the Roman army in 70AD, just as Jesus had predicted, the
final destructive act of a Jewish – Roman war.
No, our question this morning isn’t when, but rather why? Why was it that Jesus told his disciples that
the temple would be destroyed. It’s a
question that has many answers, or perhaps it would be better to say an answer
with many different layers.
Perhaps it’s simply that Jesus was able to see the hatred
with which his own people regarded the Roman enemy, and he could foresee the
inevitable consequences for a people who would choose the way of violent
rebellion rather than the way of peace.
Or maybe Jesus is intending to make a statement about human
achievement, to put it in context.
Despite the Temple’s appearance of permanence and solidity that so
impressed the disciples, it was indeed destroyed within a generation as Jesus
predicted. The Temple construction began
in 20 BC. It was completed in 63AD. It was destroyed seven years later. Perhaps there is a lesson here for us about
the fragility of human accomplishment and about the monuments we build in our
own lives.
But the Temple was not just any monument or great
building. In the Jewish understanding,
it was much, much more. It was the place
of God’s presence. It was the centre of
the world, the place where heaven and earth meet. It was where God and his people came together, the
place where forgiveness, atonement and reconciliation happen. And, as we heard in last week’s readings from
the prophet Micah, the Temple was to be the place where all the nations of the
earth would stream to receive instruction from the Lord and to learn the ways
of peace.
In our Old Testament reading from Samuel this morning we get
a glimpse of how the Temple was intended to function. We hear the story of Hannah, a young woman
who is unable to bear children. In her
world that meant insecurity. It meant vulnerability. It meant shame. Hannah is depressed, anxious. She weeps, she goes to the Temple. There, she encounters God and pours out her
soul to God in prayer. She is blessed
and she leaves Temple at peace. The
Temple, as a place and as a means of facilitating that transformative encounter
between Hannah and God, was a good thing.
But by the day of Jesus, the Temple was a good thing which
had gone bad. Instead of serving as a
means of reconciliation and a symbol of the relationship between God and the
people, it had become a symbol of political power, a symbol of a hierarchical
class system of insiders and outsiders, and a means of enriching the elite at
the expense of the poor. It was no
longer envisioned as the mountain of peace to which all the nations would
stream, but rather had become a symbol of violent national resistance. Those great stones which Herod had used to
build the Temple were intended to be a sign of Herod’s power, not of a restored
relationship between God and his people.
And so Jesus prophesies its destruction, not simply as a prediction of
future events but as a pronouncement of God’s judgement. The temple has gone bad, it no longer serves
as a means of reconciling God and humanity and so it must be destroyed and
replaced by something new. Again, there
is perhaps a lesson for us here about our religious practices and our
structures, about how they are constantly in need of renewal to bring them back
to their intended purpose of helping to bring us into relationship with God and
with each other.
Jesus however wasn’t talking about a program of reform. The Temple will not be rebuilt – to this day
it still hasn’t. With the destruction of
the Temple, the old world was coming to an end and a new world was being
born. In this new world, God and
humanity meet not at the place of the Temple, but in the person of Jesus. Or we might say, as we read in the gospel of
John, the word which was God became flesh and dwelt among us.
Our relationship with God, our encounters with the divine are
not restricted to any particular places or buildings.
Does that mean we should be tearing down our buildings?
Well, sometimes, yes!
If our church buildings become places of exclusion and oppression, if
they become symbols of political power or violence, well then yes, maybe it
would be best if they were torn down!
But the Hannah’s of this world need a safe place where they
can go. A sanctuary where they can come
in as they are, in anxiety and despair, to be welcomed, to encounter God, to pour
out their souls, to be blessed and then to go in peace. That’s the sort of thing that has been
happening within these walls for 145 years.
Not just on Sundays, but throughout the week. Upstairs and downstairs.
It’s true that we can meet God anywhere. But we do need a place to meet each other. The author of the epistle to the Hebrews,
reflecting on the new and living way of encountering God that has been provided
in Jesus, still has the following advice for us: Don’t forget to meet together! And when you meet together, encourage one
another and provoke one another to love and good deeds. Since 1867, people have not only come to this
place to meet God, but also to meet together, to encourage one another and to
provoke one another to love and good deeds.
Not just on Sundays, but throughout the week. Upstairs and downstairs.
So would you do something for me.
I’d like you to turn to the people beside you, perhaps to
people you don’t know, and to meet them.
And as you meet, perhaps you can encourage one another and provoke,
inspire, encourage, one another to love and good deeds.
(a time to meet)
We’ll have time for more of this later on. But for now, thank you for getting our newly
renovated building off to a good start.
Amen.
