Jesus and the disciples leave the Temple and one of the disciples effectively says: “My, what big stones these are!” To which Jesus answers: “You mean these large buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another – all will be thrown down!” (Mark 13:1-11. Twenty sixth Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 28 [O 33]) It is hard to hear these words and not see Jesus standing in front of the wailing wall, or other great buildings of the holy lands and seeing how much has been thrown down. It is hard not to hear and see Jesus standing in front of the White House or grand buildings of government most anywhere in the world. Or not to hear and see Jesus as the voiceover on aerial footage of damaged landscapes that have been scarred by drought, fire and flood and hear judgment of our inaction over climate change.
You may wish to read what I wrote three years ago in response to this text.
It is hard not to hear this as the proclaiming of the doomsday we have all been warned of and have not done enough to avoid. And indeed we may now be very near a tipping point we cannot come back from. But is this time, our time and generation, really what Jesus was talking about two thousand years ago? Most every generation since the time of Jesus there have been some people some where who have read words such as these and felt the relevance to their situation. And while the world is worthy of being judged it has not, so far, been a final judgment, an end time. So what might Jesus have meant and what might that mean for us at this particular point in time?
In the time of Jesus, the Temple, the second temple, was the place where God lived on earth and where the Messiah was expected to make an appearance. The Temple was also the centre of religious authority. It was a place of hope and power and of compromise under Rome. The traditions and hopes and fears of the people of God centred around this building. And Jesus had just had a number of confrontations with Temple authorities and judged that it was not functioning as a house of prayer as it should. And about the time the gospel of Mark was being committed to writing the Temple had been razed to the ground by the Roman empire as the first Judean revolt was being put down (around 70 CE). And shortly afterward the people of God in Jerusalem were being dispersed. These words spoken at a time of oppression and esculating conflict and were recorded at a time of great destruction and devastation.
No wonder that in our time we hear those words reverberating with our sense of distress and turbulence. But are these words only about physical and political destruction? Is this not also a description of what needs to happen spiritually and psychologically for the new regime, the reign of God upon earth, to come? It is good to remember where we are in the church cycle. The church year is drawing to a conclusion when we will celebrate the reign of Christ and remember our desire that we join the dream of God for this world. We will then enter the season of Advent which always begins with images of the earth being shaken, the brush set on fire, the end of things as we know it so that the Christ might come.
Might Jesus have been saying that the great edifice of the Temple, of religion as it was (and is) being practiced, needed to be thrown down in order for worship in truth and spirit to emerge? Might Jesus have been pointing to the need for the old sacrificial system of appeasing an apparently distant and angry God that operated in the Temple was in need of a final and once for all sacrifice? And might Jesus have been reassuring his disciples and us that even when the sturdiest structures fail a new way of being God’s people on earth will emerge?
Certainly, we know that spiritually and psychologically this seems to be the way we develop. We need for old ways of being to crumble and fall to make way for the fragile wonderous emergence of more loving, more wise, ways of being to emerge. Personally, I wish there were a smoother, more incremental, less disturbing way to grow as individuals, as communities, and as a world. But personal, human and geological history suggests that there are times of great upheaval and disturbance in between the eons of quiet intentional development. Not one or the other but both forces working upon us and through us.
Does this mean there is a way of seeing and responding to the terror and disturbance of our time, a Christ informed way, that helps us identify what large stones need to be thrown down and of how and if we are to rebuild the Temple of our time or if we are called to build something more humble and life enhancing? If crisis is opportunity, if a pattern of order, disorder then re-order is the pattern running through individuals, communities and the earth itself, then while we may not welcome the time of disturbance maybe we can recognise the opportunity to rebuild – not what was there before but something new.
Richard Rohr says it this way: “It seems quite clear that we grow spiritually by passing beyond some perfect Order, through an often painful and seemingly unnecessary Disorder to an enlightened Reorder or “resurrection.” This is the “pattern that connects” and solidifies our relationship with everything around us … [and now] is the Disorder stage, or what we call from the Adam and Eve story the “fall.” Some people try to return to the original Order and do not accept reality, which prevents them from further growth. Others, especially today, seem to have given up and decided that “there is no universal order,” or at least no order to which they will submit. That’s the postmodern stance, which distrusts all grand narratives, including often any notions of reason, a common human nature, social progress, universal human norms, absolute truth, and objective reality. Permanent residence in this stage tends to make people rather negative and cynical, usually angry, and quite opinionated and dogmatic as they search for some solid ground.”
Can we, with Jesus and his disciples, see the collapse of what we are familiar with as opportunity, as invitation to the re-ordering of our life – inner and shared with others? And can we bear the chaos and uncertainty of this stage of disorder in order to be birthers and builders of God’s dream on earth? Let us take courage and hold to the desire and trust in the dream of God for the world that God loves beyond measure. And let us hasten to build the new as the chaos is not symbolic only but very real suffering is being experienced by the powerless and the dispossessed.
Even so, come Lord Jesus the Christ, come lead us through what is ruined to what can be.
You may like to read ahead to Advent (only two week away now!) to support your journey as a person of faith and as a leader.
This is my work informed by all I have heard, read and experienced. I am indebted to the wisdom of others. This week I am especially grateful to:
Richard Rohr “Order, Disorder, Reorder” https://www.cac.org/daily-meditations/order-8-25-2024/
John T. Squires writes an excellent background to this text in “Faithfulness in the turmoil of the time: the historical context of Mark 13” https://www.johntsquires.com/2021/11/10/faithfulness-in-the-turmoil-of-the-time-the-historical-context-of-mark-13-pentecost-25b/
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