November 18, 2012
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
On our calendars, it’s Thanksgiving. We have turkey upstairs today. While Thanksgiving is not a liturgical holiday, we take a moment to thank God for the blessings that we have received. But our calendars are also rapidly approaching in two weeks the beginning of Advent. Before we get too excited about pumpkin pie, or the day after Thanksgiving sales, we need to spend some time tearing down some temples.
The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. is the world’s tallest all-stone structure, constructed of a mix of more than 36,000 marble and granite blocks. Towering over 555 feet, this obelisk stands guard over the capital city, not only in honor of its namesake, George Washington, but as a testimony to the engineering of humankind. It symbolizes the strength of the nation bold enough to design and build it.
As people who are familiar with earthquakes, in the summer of 2011, following an earthquake centered in nearby Virginia, the towering symbol of strength began showing signs of weakness. A large crack was discovered near the top. A stone block was dislodged, allowing light to creep in. Mortar and stone were strewn around its base forming a field of debris. Upon this discovery, a team of engineers and architects were brought in to assess the damage, and public access was indefinitely shut down over concerns about safety.
As a church, we know about earthquakes first hand. Our ancestors found their church building burn down to rubbles in 1906. After 1989, we were conflicted and challenged to decide whether we will spend over one million dollars or not to retrofit this building so that we can stay here. If you remember, it took us 8 years before work began to strengthen this building against the next earthquake.
Even with the retrofit, there’s no guarantee that we won’t see large cracks or clinker bricks coming loose or mortar and glass strewn about when the next earthquake comes. The truth is that every human-made thing will ultimately crack and crumble. Even the best of what we “build” in this life—be it a monument to a president, the house of our dreams, a sterling reputation or a portfolio filled with cash—all of these things are ultimately, temporary.
Destruction of the Temple
In Mark, we see the disciples and Jesus coming out of the temple. The temple was the second rebuilding of Solomon’s temple. Whenever it had been destroyed previously in history, the Jews hadn’t fared so well. Being carted off to exile was not something they wanted to do again. But this temple, which was still being finished when Jesus and his disciples would have walked through the gates, was supposed to be the last. It was huge, with a circumference of nearly a mile. It had gold and silver on the walls, so it glowed when the light struck it. Josephus, the Jewish historian notes, “For, being covered on all sides with massive plates of gold, the sun was no sooner up than it radiated so fiery a flash that persons straining to look at it were compelled to avert their eyes, as from the solar rays.” They didn’t have sunglasses those days.
“Look teacher,” his disciples said. “What large stones and what large buildings!”
But the Romans occupied Palestine. By the time Mark’s gospel was being written, the Romans were ransacking Jerusalem, massacring many of its citizens, selling others into slavery, looting and then burning the temple, leaving a people once again without a home, sending them, once again, into exile.
“Do you see these great buildings? Jesus replied to his disciples. “Not one will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
Jesus makes it clear to his disciples that there would come a day when even this awe-inspiring work of Herod’s hands, and all it represented, would be toppled. Toppled not by earthquakes, or occupying Romans but ultimately by God. Therefore as God’s people, we must not anchor our lives on the work or treasures or monumental works of our hands. When those works crumble, as they tend to do, our hope would not topple along with them.
What We Build
The challenge before us is that we like to build. As kids, we had erector sets and tinker toys. Kids today have Legos. We have to build, construct, earn a living, aspire to greatness, put a roof over our heads, build roads, schools, hospitals and churches.
Jesus is not belittling any of this. God is not mocking our efforts. It is in the very nature of being human beings, a being created in the imago dei, to work and be pleased with the work of our hands. But the question before us is: are we being great in our being as well as being great in our doing. Are we only marveling over our own accomplishments without being in touch with the truth that the work that we have done is an effort to have God’s righteousness in our hearts?
Here are three points about our efforts to build in our relationship with God. First, we tend to become enamored of our creation and forget the Creator. When we put our trust in the work of our hands, we set ourselves up for trouble. While we are incredible builders, but if, in the end, rather than simply enjoying the work of our hands and the “blessings” in our lives we make such things the center of our lives, we become dangerously distracted—forgetting our God and anchoring our hope in temporary things that will fall and fail.
Yesterday, many of us came to clean up our church home before the holidays making it sparkling clean and ready to welcome visitors and new friends. Don’t we wish that after we have expended such energy and time that the church would remain clean and sparkling forever? We know that is only a wish. We all love our church home and some have gone to extraordinary efforts to maintain it’s usefulness and beauty, but in the end, it will crumble. The stones will fall down.
In Psalm 20, David said that his hope is moored to that which is unseen and undestroyed. He writes, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we must trust in the name of the Lord our God. They collapse and fall, but we rise and stand upright” (Psalm 20:7).
Secondly, once we’ve admitted that we’re prone to distractions when confronted with the works of our hands, it’s time to develop a habit that does something about it. We need to redirect our praise.
What if every time you see something that is awesome made by human hands. You redirect your thinking, grabbed hold of the opportunity, as a chance to give praise to God? After all, our ability to create—be it the Washington Monument or AT&T Park or the proposed new Warriors Arena, or even a project in our backyard—is simply an expression of our having been made in the image of God as the ultimate builder and Creator. Therefore, every time we get impressed with ourselves, it’s also an opportunity to praise God for the creative abilities God has given us.
So, what if rather than saying to ourselves, “Wow, you are awesome cleaning that grill so sparkling,” we use this opportunity to say silently to ourselves, “God, you are good. Look at what you have made possible!” What if rather than saying to ourselves, “Wow, you have given so much to making this church home beautiful,” we use this opportunity to say prayerfully to ourselves and to God, “God, you are the one with all the resources, not us. Look at what you have made possible through us!”
What if we redeemed every moment of awe as a chance to redirect our hearts to the one who has our hope and who will not crumble?
And lastly, if we want to refocus our hearts from thinking that we deserve the credit for the works of our hands, then we must, at some point, begin aligning our treasure, our stuff with the things of God. The purpose of the things that we have is not only to be used for our own enjoyment and satisfaction. We have invested so much of our lives in the works of our own hands that we can’t see beyond their purposes but for ourselves.
But Jesus said, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth or rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:19-21).
Jesus’ point is how you handle your stuff depends largely on where you think your hope is. We can spend great amount of resources in our houses and in this church building but these are only our temporary homes and a temporary place to worship. When we invest in our permanent home with God, we’d invest in hope.
As followers of Jesus Christ, we have the benefit of knowing how this whole story ends. We know that one day, the way this world works will come to an end, and an eternity will be established where blessings abound and all needs are met. We know that what we pile up here won’t matter there, which means it’s pointless to overly invest in stuff that will crumble, stones falling down. A wise person would invest in things with God, things that matter with God.
Jesus says that when you manage created things according to the hope you have in him, you’re stockpiling for eternity—anchoring your heart in what truly matters most and what God tells us will endure.
God’s Temple
Herod’s temple did eventually come crumbling down. In 70 AD, the Roman army toppled the temple and most of the city as it struck down a Jewish rebellion. The glorious, man-made structure, that stood some 15 stories high, and which was laden with gold and served as a symbol of power, strength and a chosen status for so many people of that day, came crashing down to the ground. This is what often happens to the works of our hands. Temples topple. Titanic sinks. Monuments crack. Our church however historic or retrofitted it is, will in time, come down. Our own creations crumble. Even the best of what we “build” in this life is susceptible to the elements and, in time, prove to be temporary.
If we are focusing more on the awe-inspiring, but fleeting accomplishments and monuments of men and women, it’s time to confess the fact that we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. It’s time to redeem our moments of awe as opportunities to praise. Let’s be wise and anchor our hearts and hope more deeply to lasting things by investing our time and treasures in eternal, God things.
Things of God’s include the truth that it’s more important to keep our church family in unity than to end up making some feel unappreciated.
Notice that the passage we read today is a promise of a future. Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the temple is a look into the future. While Jesus’ foretelling is a destructive time of suffering and loss, it also speaks in part of God’s providential care for creation. We don’t always know what the future holds. It’s a safe bet that the future will include both joy and sadness. However, in Jesus Christ, whatever the future holds, we know who holds the future. God is with us not only today but tomorrow as well.
There’s an old slave song, “My Lord! What a Morning!” It goes like this:
My Lord! What a morning,
My Lord! What a morning,
Oh, my Lord! What a morning,
When the stars begin to fall.
The view from the slave quarters was not a hopeful one—at least, not concerning the things of this earth. Unless those slaves could find a way to escape to the North—a risky and often deadly proposition—their lives would be marked only by backbreaking labor, abuse and forced breakup of families. The only white people they knew—their oppressors—regarded them as subhuman.
Those slaves did find some measure of hope in singing, “My Lord! What a morning, when the stars begin to fall.” They believed that only when the stars did fall—or when they themselves died, whichever came first—would they and their people be free from suffering.
If we sing, “My Lord! What a morning, when the stars begin to fall,” from the perspective of affluent citizens of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful nation, it hardly makes sense. But when we see these words through the lives of people who could see nothing but endless captivity for the rest of their days, they take on a new and liberating meaning. These slaves had no stone houses to live in that they can call their own. But they had hope in God’s future.
When we are focused on our doing and not on our being; when we think so much of our own accomplishments becoming dangerously distracted and forgetting that it’s God who made creation; and until we redirect our praise to God and repurpose our things for God, we will be disappointed because stones will fall. Let us tear down our human temples so that we can give thanks and have hope in God.
Like the slave song says, “My Lord, what a morning when the stars begin to fall,” let us anchor our lives in Christ because we know that cracks emerge, buildings crumble, and stones fall.
Let us pray.
Dear Lord, we confess our sins against you when we place our trust in the works of our hands and forget that you are the One who make all things possible. Thank you for giving us such incredible gifts and created us with intricate minds and bodies that we have been able to build great monuments. May we use these wonderful talents and resources to remember to give you praise and glory. In your holy name, we pray. Amen.