If you’ve ever been to Jerusalem, you know that Jesus’ prediction came true. The magnificent temple that the disciples so admired no longer stands. It was destroyed just a few decades after Jesus spoke these words. All that is left today is its western wall, and Jewish people come from all around the world to stand before that crumbling stone structure, wailing out prayers for the restoration of Jerusalem. That’s why they call it “the wailing wall.”
There is always some wailing and great human grief when our temples come tumbling down.
Jesus and the disciples are at the end of their journey to Jerusalem, and the time has come for the followers of Jesus to learn what I think might be described as one of those ultimate lessons of faith. It’s a crucial lesson for all of us to learn. We have come to the place where we must take a leap of faith away from our human-made temples and into a new living relationship with Christ.
And it’s a pretty scary thing.
You see, we all have our own cherished temples. In fact, the Bible describes each of us as a temple! And within the temple of our lives, we can’t help but practice the religion that we have acquired over the years. It has come to us by way of our parents, our pastors, our friends, our teachers, our culture, our own experiences. And this religion drives the way we live and think and see the world
“God helps those who help themselves!”
“If I’m good enough, I’ll get to heaven.”
“If I follow all the rules, I’ll be immunized against disaster and tragedy.”
“The two things you never talk about at a party are politics and…religion!”
We whisper these ideas within our own little temples as our personal statements of faith.
“What sin did I commit that caused my child to be born with a birth defect?”
“Your wife died because God needed her more than you did!”
“Success is a sign of God’s blessing!”
“Poverty and failure are signs of some sin.”
“Making the sign of the cross in a basketball game will make you a better free-throw shooter.”
We all have our own little personalized Apostles’ Creeds that express what we truly believe..
Some of us grew up in homes where rational intellect was taken very seriously and scientific objectivity was highly valued. Today, as adults, we find it necessary to see before we can believe, to prove before we can accept. And it’s hard to get our arms around anything that has to do with mystery. You engineers know who I’m talking about! That’s our religion!
Others of us grew up with a faith ready to believe almost anything. Why we can see an apparition of Christ in the bottom of a frying pan full of scrambled eggs if we look at it long enough and in just the right light. And we can sell tickets to see this miracle to others like us who believe almost anything that comes down the pike! You over-believers know who I’m talking about, too! That’s our religion!
Yes, we believe many things – we believe in loving our neighbors, to a point – in helping the poor, to a point – in trusting God, to a point – in forgiving others, to a point. We even believe Jesus – to a point. Remember how he said, “It will be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”?
Nah! Surely, Jesus didn’t really MEAN that! After all, affluence is a sign of God’s blessing! I heard it with my own ears from a televangelist the other night!
Do you understand what I’m saying? Each of us here today belongs to more than just Tellico Village Community Church or the church where you have your membership. Oh, our strongest religious ties are really to Our Lady of St. Marty, or to Pastor Puckett’s Priory, or to St. Steve’s of Syracuse. And there’s a church with your name on it, too! There’s Ann’s Basilica, and Charlie’s Chapel, and Tom’s Terrific Temple!
But listen to Jesus.
“Not one stone will be left standing on another.”
All human temples will come tumbling down.
I know that mine started to crumble the first time I prayed for someone’s healing…and God didn’t give me what I wanted.
I know it happened to one of our church families when they learned their daughter was gay and had to figure out how to love her for who she is.
I know it happened to a church member when she got Parkinson’s disease and suddenly lost control of her life and of her future.
I know it happened in a different way to a man in our church when he discovered that sharing his own faith made a huge difference in the life of one of his children. He’d always thought before that faith was too personal and private to share.
I know it happened to one of our deceased church members who once told me that her Jewish son-in-law was the most Christian man she ever knew!
The walls of our sacred temples are tumbling down!
I was writing to another minister the other day and found myself saying that I am a long, long ways away from the faith I left seminary with. Too many complex people and complicated lives have made all my easy ivory tower answers crumble into dust. Too many experiences with God’s amazing grace in my own and others’ lives have broken apart the little boxes I want so desperately to put God in.
And I’m guessing that you’re a long ways off, too, from the faith you learned as a child – where Abraham and Sara had a miracle baby, and Noah was saved from a flood, and Jesus fed the multitudes with a few fishes and loaves, and the simple stories of faith were filled with happy endings. But then you grew up and realized those stories aren’t as simple as you thought. And you started to wonder how a parent could ever be willing to sacrifice their child to God, why innocent children died in the flood while Noah’s kids survived, and why we can’t have the power to miraculously feed hungry people today. And suddenly, your religion had more questions than answers!
Oh, the temple has been falling for me. How about for you? There just don’t seem to be that many easy answers anymore! And in addition to all of that, we live in a day when our institutional temples are falling too – prayer has been taken out of school, the Ten Commandments out of courthouses, and some want to remove the words “One nation under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance!
You see, Jesus said that not one stone would be left upon another. The religious foundations upon which we have built our lives will be broken.
And Jesus was right. The temple of Mark 12 did come tumbling down. And the temples of our day are falling too.
But, if you listen to Jesus in this text, you’ll discover that we shouldn’t be afraid of all the temple tumbling going on all around us! In fact, Jesus says it’s a good thing when these temples begin to fall! Do you know why? Here’s what Jesus says in verse 8:
“These are all just birth pains!”
You see, what’s really going on when you find yourself struggling with the old ideas, and asking new questions, and seeing life from different angles, and being forced to stretch yourself in faith to contend with new realities, new ideas and new people – what’s really going on in all this tumbling turmoil is that something is being born in your life!
“These are just birth pains!” Jesus says.
I have some friends whose son is imprisoned to alcoholism. They’ve prayed for him. Brought him to church. Gone with him to AA. Paid for detox. Followed all the rules. Done everything they can.
Like me, I’m sure they wish there was some magical religious formula that could change all that and give their son back to them – and to himself. But nothing has worked so far. No prayer, no scripture verse, no touch of the Holy Spirit has helped. Sometimes, you know, that’s the way it is in life.
But I’ll tell you something about this boy’s parents. Even while religion has failed them, they have more and more centered their lives in Christ. And I see in them the birth of something very beautiful – there is a spirit of grace in them – a love for their son that endures even in failure and that still hopes against all odds that God will win the day for their boy. In the dying of their religion, there is the birth of something that looks an awful lot like…Jesus! And it shines through them to all who meet them!
I see in them the birth of Christ!
You see, when our self-constructed temples fall, and our personal religions fail, what we are left with is God, and God alone. What remains is a God who loves us and the world, and who invites us in love to come to a whole new way of living – not through the artificial filter of human-made doctrines, rituals, rules, and easy answers that don’t really work – but through the birth of the living Christ within our own lives.
So even as temples fall today – in our lives and in our world – I invite you to take with you this morning a simple prayer for those whose temples are tumbling.
Will you repeat it after me?
May Christ live with me…… May Christ live in me…… May Christ live through me every day!
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