Opposite the Temple
Mark 13:1-8
Thirty-third
Sunday in Ordinary Time
November
18, 2012
When Mark wrote that,
following his foray to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Jesus sat “opposite the
Temple” on the mount of Olives, he was describing not only what was – and is – literally
true. The Mount of Olives was, and still is, opposite the Temple mount, the one is across a small valley, the
Kidron valley, from the other. They are two hillsides facing one another, the
Mount of Olives standing actually somewhat higher. In a way it is similar to
the fact that, for years, the Presbyterian church I once served in Salem stood
where the Labor and Industries building stands today in the same sort of
relationship to the capitol building: “the Presbyterian church opposite the capitol,” though we might
not have phrased it that way. Mark wrote these words as a similar description
of a location, but also more than that.
Mark
was describing what, in a few years, would also have been theologically true.
The Temple was destroyed in the first century, never to be rebuilt. The
mountain from which Jesus ascended, the Mount of Olives, stood opposite,
representing a new truth about the way God could be worshipped. For
generations, the people had worshiped God on the holiest site they knew, on the
mount where a Temple had stood for generations, three different Temples, as a
matter of fact:
·
First the much
heralded Temple of Solomon which was
destroyed by the Babylonians;
·
Then the
Temple built in the time after Israel’s exile in Babylon, the Temple of Zerubbabel;
·
Finally, in
Jesus’ generation, it was a new Temple, which was begun under Herod, 20 years
before Jesus’ birth and was not finished until after his crucifixion, made of
massive stone blocks, huge stones, some the size of semitrailer trucks. Some of
the hewn stones from that Temple form the foundations of the temple mount on
which today the Mosque of Omar – the Dome of the Rock – stands, part of those foundations are commonly called the “Wailing
Wall.”
The
sight of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives was and remains one of the most
spectacular views of the city, visited by virtually every tourist who travels
there, and in Jesus’ day, it offered an unparalleled view of the magnificence
of the Temple building, a building which, as Jesus spoke of it with his
disciples, was a brand new structure. When they were visiting the city, Jesus
had told them that the Temple, built of the massive stones that they could see
before them, would be “thrown down.” Later on, they asked, understandably, from
the elevated perspective of the Mount of Olives, “when will this be?” I’m sure
they also wondered how this could be;
anyone looking at those massive stones, that immense structure, might have
wondered at Jesus’ words.
The
Temple was enormous and opulent, a walk around its perimeter would have been
about 2/3 of a mile. Its marble-clad walls were 150 feet high, and each block
weighed many tons. Outside there were columns of 40 foot high marble. The outer
courts were entered by ten different gates, each of which was covered in silver
or gold plate. Records show that two of the doors stood 45 feet high, and the
one famously called “Beautiful Gate” in Acts[1]
was cast of bronze brought from Corinth in Greece. The eastern face of the
Temple and parts of the side walls were plated in gold, which along with the
white marble, caused the Temple to glow as if on fire in the rising sun of
morning, much as the golden Dome of the Rock does today. But the Temple, unlike
today’s much smaller mosque, completely dominated the mount visually, as well
as the city around it.
Today
we know that it was about 70 AD, some 40 years after Jesus’ crucifixion, when
the unimaginable happened and the Roman legions came into an increasingly
restive and rebellious Jerusalem to do just what Jesus had said they would do,
tearing the Temple down to the extent that what remained amounted to little
more than a pile of rocks. Then all Jews were barred from from Israel, from
Jerusalem, and from the Temple grounds for about 19 centuries. These things he
wanted them to understand as he sat on the little mountain “opposite the
temple,” the Mount of Olives so well-known by Christians as a location where
there was once a garden in which Jesus was betrayed, where nearby in Bethany
there once had been the house of Mary and Martha, the location of some of Jesus’
most profound teaching, and where also there was a hilltop from which the
disciples watched the resurrected Christ rise into the heavens. It became, in
many ways, a new mount for believers, the old one with its Temple having been
cast down without one stone remaining on another for about 2000 years now. The
new place, the new mount was ultimately where faces looked toward heaven,
opposite the lower hillside where downcast eyes revealed only the ruins of the
old Temple.
The
Temple had certainly been made of solid earthly stuff, as solid and expensive
as could be found, but the deeper foundation which Jesus sought, as with the
foundations of our own lives, was the foundation of deep faith. That is why
anyone who heard Jesus’previous comment on a poor widow’s two half pennies
placed in the Temple offering box being a gift greater than anyone else’s[2]
would have caused building committee folks to scratch their heads in wonder.
Tiny donations do not build immense, magnificent buildings. But they can reveal
a deeper foundation than the foundations of buildings, a foundation of deep
faith. Humility, service, commitment to the message Jesus brought will outlast
columns of marble and doors plated with gold.
There
must have been despair in the disciples’ hearts at the thought of a wrecked
Temple, but there was to be a future hope on its way as well.
Bruce
Larson once wrote that the neighborhood bar is possibly the best counterfeit
there is to the fellowship Christ wants to see in his church. It is an
imitation, but a good one, dispensing spirits instead of the spirit, escape
instead of what is really real, but one thing is true of such places as we used
to see on the old 1980s TV series Cheers:
it is a place with a fellowship that is permissive, accepting, and inclusive,
where “everybody knows your name.” It is unshockable, democratic, and even
confessional, a place where people often tell things to each other that they
would never say anywhere else. Such places flourish not because people are
alcoholics, though some are, but because we are created by God with a desire to
make ourselves known, and to know others, to love and be loved. Probably Christ
wants his church to be unshockable, democratic, a place where people can come
in where “everybody knows their name” and say, “I’m sunk!” “I’m beat!” “I’ve
had it!” Groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and AlAnon have this desperately
desired quality. Churches too often miss it.[3]
The
qualities Christ seeks in us are not that we be builders of great temples or
great fortunes or great reputations, but that we be builders of great
fellowships where the lost the least and the last can come and find in one
another the presence of Christ, opposite the Temple, standing with those who
cannot stand alone.
Of
course our reading begins with the words about the Temple, but continues with
words about the last things, the final things, what scholars call “eschatology.”
One of my friends once said that the word eschatology
sounds like a medical term.[4]
“How is your eschatology today?” But it’s not something measured on an blood
test or electrocardiogram. Eschatology is talk about ultimate things, final
judgment, and it is a topic that always appears in Gospel readings as we begin
to approach the season of Advent. The four disciples who approached Jesus after
his lesson at the Temple stood looking with him at the glittering, brand new
Temple from the perspective of a hillside a half mile away, and were inspired
to ask a question about last things, ultimate things.
Jesus
responded with two points.
First,
that there would be a multitude of religious pretenders coming their way who
will claim to know not only the purpose of the world, but the finer points of God’s
timing. That was and still is the
case. Jesus said to them and to us, “Many will come in my name ... and they
will lead many astray.”
Second,
religious pretenders notwithstanding, remember that no matter how solid it
appears to be, neither this Temple, nor the good old earth itself is going to
last forever. As one preacher put it, Jesus seems to be saying, “You never
know, so live alertly, live expectantly, live now.”[5]
We all know what it means to live in other ways so that we only see what our
lives would have meant had we been paying attention:
·
Real life is
not living at home and going to high school, real life comes when I get out of
high school and go to college or get a job;
·
Real life isn’t
this starting-level job, real life is when I get that promotion;
·
Real life isn’t
being single, real life is when I find the right someone and get married;
·
Real life is
going to start when we have some kids and are a family;
·
Real life will
be when our two year-old is finally out of diapers and in school;
·
Real life is
when our kids finally get off to college;
·
Real life is
when the last tuition payment is made;
·
Real life is
when I finally get my retirement;
·
Real life will
be after I get that bypass surgery I need...
Author
Annie Dillard put this point in the most concise and telling way I have ever
heard. “How we spend our days,” she wrote, “is of course how we spend our
lives.”
The “holiday
season” – as our culture persists in referring to the coming 4 or 5 weeks from
Thanksgiving through Advent, Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Years – comes at many
of us like a freight train on amphetimines. So much to do, shopping, greeting
cards to send, parties to organize or attend. There is nothing wrong with all
this, it’s just important to remember to stop and realize, as if Jesus stood
beside us to say it, that one day none of these things we are attending to so
frantically will remain. Not one will remain standing. Don’t go through the
motions of these coming days, but live in them. Perhaps, as a friend of mine once
said, this is the holiday when you may think about living enough in the
precious moment God has provided to “tap your spoon on the water glass and look
at one dear face or all the dear faces across the cranberry relish and say: ‘I’ve
been meaning to say this for so long; I love you, and I thank God for you.’”[6]
I
encourage you to do such things in the midst of this passing world you love,
that is populated by people and places you love, in this church that we all
love so much. And I do this myself as I say now to each of you, I love you, and
I thank God for you.
In the
name of the Triune God who loves us with such unfettered abandon. Amen.
Copyright ©
2012 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved
