Mark 13:1-8
November 15, 2009
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
The talk of the nation has been national health care reform. While the House barely passed legislation, it’s now up to the Senate to integrate the House bill with theirs into one major bill for the President to sign. Basically along political party lines, one group of legislators favor reform while the other group does not. Regardless of what politicians think and believe, we who buy medical insurance know that our costs are going up.
After the House passed their bill, some of us might have said, “Our nation is at last back on course!” But at the same time, others of you might be saying, “Considering what happened, I really fear for the future of our country.”
It’s amazing the difference in the way we hear the news. While we all may agree that the cost of health insurance and medical procedures is skyrocketing, we seem to disagree on how to fix it. From where we might be sitting, as subscribers and members in a health insurance policy to HMO/PPO insurance providers to medical professionals, health care reform can be good news or bad news.
Temple Destroyed
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples the shocking news that the beloved temple will be destroyed. Amid wars and rumors of wars, nation rising against nation, there will be great cataclysm. That is bad news. And yet, Jesus ends today’s Gospel saying these events will be the beginning of new birth.
The temple was the center of national life in Israel. The Jews had lost so much in the Roman imperial occupation, but they still have the temple. By building such a grand temple, the Romans thought they could pacify Judea and keep the rebellious Jews happy. The Temple Mount was considered to be the center of the earth.
When Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” For visitors to the Holy City, the sight of the temple was always breathtaking.
Designed to impress, the temple was renovated by King Herod in 19 BC as the crowning glory of Herod’s ambitious architectural program. This also included the city of Caesarea Martima and its artificial harbor, and the enormous fortress palaces at Masada and at Herodion. These were the imposing structures by which Herod wanted as his lasting legacy, for he surely did not want to be remembered for the legendary brutality of ordering the slaughter of the innocent children in and around Bethlehem two years of age and younger to eliminate any opposition to his rule from a newborn king of the Jews named Jesus.
The temple was built to look big, heavy, and eternal. We still do that with our religious buildings. When we peeled away the sheetrock to retrofit our building 10 years ago, the thickness of our bricks at its foundation was 3 feet wide! We have 4 steel beams that are deeply planted in concrete from underneath our sanctuary and going all the way up to the rooftop so that it will be sturdy and firm. We bolted down the pews and made everything look heavy and substantial. There are times when some of us might have thought that this is the very center of the earth.
In Flux
Perhaps we do this to our churches because there is so much in life that is unsubstantial and in flux. We don’t know who is really telling the truth about national health care reform except that everything is costing us more. So much in your life gets disrupted, confused, and dislodged. Isn’t it nice to know that this church will always be here, just as it is, eternal and forever?
But Jesus told his disciples that the temple would not always be there, that it was going to be utterly destroyed. For some people, that’s bad news. But perhaps for others, it’s good news.
Our lesson this morning is known as “apocalyptic writings.” “Apocalyptic” doesn’t only mean destruction, ending, or strange events. Apocalyptic also means “unveiling,” “revealing.” People on top, people in power, people whose children are well-fed, well-housed, and well futured do not care for apocalyptic writings that speak of seeing something new when things are looking still pretty good. After all, the present order has been very good to people like us. For some, to hear that national health care reform will change the way we secure health services is bad news. To hear that God plans to allow the destruction of all our eternal-looking achievements is bad news indeed.
It seems to me that from today’s Gospel that when Jesus dramatically announces the utter destruction of the temple, he says that present arrangements are not necessarily what God intends for the world. We tend to think of God working to create the world, to set things in motion, then God retires. But what if God keeps creating? What if God intends to get the world that God wanted in the first place? What if not everything that happens in this world happens because God wants it to be that way, but that God means to take everything that happens, even the bad things, and turn them toward God’s intended good?
What if the church is not where we come to get everything tied down, eternal-looking and fixed, but where we come to keep looking for God’s intended new heaven and new earth? Perhaps church at its best fosters a sort of holy discontent for us and not when we try to settle in and settle down and content ourselves with, “Well, this is the best of all possible worlds, don’t look for anything better; this is it.”
There’s this human tendency to imbue human institutions and humanly created situations with divine permanence, as if God created everything that now is. Passages like Mark 13 remind us that God isn’t done with us or for that matter, the world just yet.
Dying to Live
Sometimes things can’t be made new until the old is destroyed. Sometimes there can’t be birth until there is death.
As I look back at my ministry at this church, one of the most significant developments that happened while I have been here is the group of new members who started coming to our church from the South Bay. There have been a few persons who have moved down to San Jose and remained members of this church. But when those who were once members of the South Bay Asian American Presbyterian New Church Development realized that their new church plant will need to die and close its doors, these faithful and dedicated Christians started to visit and become involved in our church. We have been renewed and re-energized because it took great pain to end their church. Something old must die in order for something new to be born. When the South Bay group were not so enamored with their “temple,” that they had, they became renewed themselves and in the end, renewed our whole church!
Before all of this happened, many of us wouldn’t even consider driving down to San Jose for dinner or for a Saturday fellowship meeting. But now, our entire worldview has changed. No longer is San Jose too far to travel or visit. Our old paradigm of being a church only in San Francisco has died and our new focus encompasses and includes the whole Bay Area.
Has anyone here had to die in order to live? Does someone here know what it’s like to have your “temple” destroyed, only to be replaced by something much better? Has your very bad news ever become good news?
A member shared with me: “When my husband died, my life was over. I told God, ‘I’ve got nothing to live for now. My world is destroyed.’ But wonder of wonders, I didn’t die. I went on, not with the same life, but with a new life. I wouldn’t have chosen for my marriage to end, to be alone, yet that was the life I got and I must say, it’s turned out for the best.” That’s someone who knew the move from bad news to good news.
It’s only human to cling tightly to what we know, what we have. Maybe it’s divine to give birth, sometimes, painful birth, to a future that is new. Perhaps we come to church to learn how to look for God’s hand, even in the news that seems bad, to expect God to work, to continue to create good news.
As Pastor Lauren Ng’s ministry at our church is coming to an end next month, some of us would like to cling tightly to what we know. But regardless of how painful this may be to bid farewell to Pastor Lauren’s ministry with us, we know that the future will be new. What appears to be bad news for the time being will be seen as good news because we expect God to work, to continue to create good news.
Good News
William Willimon tells of a time when he was on a mission trip to Honduras with a group of students, doctors and nurses to work in a poor village. Honduras is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. This may be similar to what our Thailand Mission Team is experiencing right now.
One evening, after working all day in the clinic, Willimon and his team gathered with some of the villages, built a fire, and sat in a circle around the fire singing. Someone had the idea that they all take turns and tell their favorite scripture verse.
“Which verse from the Bible do you find comforting? Which verse do you turn to in times of trouble?” People took turns remembering their most comforting scripture. Someone mentioned John 3:16, “For God so loved the world.” Someone else mentioned the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. Then they got to a small Honduran woman who said, through a translator, “I love the words, toward the end of Mark’s Gospel, where Jesus tells his people that the temple will be destroyed, the stones of the temple will be thrown down, the moon will turn bloody, there will be wars and revolutions, and everything will be burned.”
That’s a comfort? Willimon thought that perhaps something had been lost in translation. Then the nurse sitting next to Willimon whispered, “I talked to that woman today at the clinic. She has had four children. Three of them died before reaching age five due to hunger.”
Sometimes, the only difference between good news and bad news is where you happened to be when you get the news. We have always assumed that Mark 13, foretelling the destruction of the temple, was bad news. But to the person who has lost three children from hunger in this world, the news that this world shall be thrown down is good news. For God to say, “This world is not as I intended. This world is not your ultimate home. I am still working, and will work, to make this world, my world in all of its goodness and fullness,” this is good news, the beginning of really good news.
New Beginning
All of us would love to know what the future may bring. I hope our nation will have national health care reform so that everyone can afford it and have access to medical care when they need it. I pray that our church as our “temple” will never think of itself as eternal and permanent but rather that we keep looking for God’s intended new heaven and new earth. I pray that we are not afraid to see some things come to an end, that at the moment, it feels like bad news, but that in the end, things can’t be made new until the old is destroyed.
It’s like driving at night down a country road that has no streetlights. As you climb a hill you can see the headlights of the car coming toward you. This is the already. But actually meeting the car is still in the future. This is the not yet. Driving in the already-not yet, one dims the highlights and moves a little to the right. In other words, in the present we live toward the future. In our present salvation, we live toward our future salvation.
Our world is always at a new beginning because the things that we most like to cling to and keep permanent give way and come to an end in order for the beginning of something new. This is indeed, good news!
Let us pray.
Lord, there are many things we don’t understand in this world. We want security and stability but the world seems to be going out of control. Lead us to trust in you always believing that your world is becoming what you intend it to be. Encourage us to participate in that unveiling of your plan for us. And comfort us when we see things come to an end that it is just the beginning of something new. We pray in the name of Jesus the Christ who promised us new life in a new day. Amen.