Sermon 25 June Ordinary Time

Read Mark 13:1-8
Inspired by Ted Jennings’ “Insurrection of the Crucified”
Some illustrations from eSermons

This picture has circulated for many years and demonstrates how difficult it is to predict the future. Can you spot Bill Gates? Who would have guessed what Microsoft would become when this picture was taken?

Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, in 1943 said, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

Popular Mechanics magazine in 1949 made this prediction: "Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons."

There was an inventor by the name of Lee DeForest. He claimed that "While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility."

The Decca Recording Co. made a big mistake when they made this prediction: "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." That was their prediction in 1962 concerning a few lads form Liverpool. Their band was called the Beatles.

As Jesus and his friends walk out of the Temple in Jerusalem, Jesus makes a startling prediction: that the Temple will be destroyed.

As we watch the World Cup being played in huge stadiums let’s remember the impressiveness of Herod’s Temple. The smallest stones in the structure weighed 2 to 3 tons. Many of them weighed 50 tons. The largest existing stone is 12 meters in length and 3 meters high (that’s about as big as this church!), and it weighed hundreds of tons! The stones were so immense that neither mortar nor any other binding material was used between the stones. Their stability was attained by the great weight of the stones. The walls towered over Jerusalem, over 120 metres in one area. Inside the four walls was 45 acres of bedrock-mountain shaved flat and during Jesus' day a quarter of a million people could fit comfortably within the structure. No sports structure in that I know of today comes close.

Is it any wonder his friends were startled by Jesus’ prediction? Actually, yes. Such predictions had been made by others already – it wasn’t news. Jeremiah made the prediction a long time before Jesus and many other pretenders to the title Messiah were making similar predictions at the time of Jesus, so it is strange that the disciples are surprised by this news.

Unless, of course, we have misinterpreted the text. Let’s look at the context. In the conversation between Jesus and his friends that continues up on the Mount of Olives, his friends ask him about the signs of the future apocalypse. Jesus responds by warning them about false prophets who make these kind of predictions about “The End”, of which the Temple’s destruction is one.

Far from making predictions about the future Jesus is commenting on the present. He uses a pat phrase mumbled by doomsday prophets to illicit a conversation about their theology and he shows up the dependency his friends have developed for such apocalyptic nonsense. One can almost sense how they hang on his every word hoping he will fuel their curiosity, provide some glimpse of a secret future where only they will be victorious. Jesus friends would have been the first to read Dan Brown’s sensational “ The Da Vinci Code” or Hal Lindsay’s “Late Great Planet Earth”. The disciples are not surprised by the news of the Temple's destruction; they are surprised and even curious that Jesus would agree with the messianic pretenders. Now they want the insider information.

Draw back a little further and the context becomes even more illuminating. Jesus and his friends have come all the way from Galilee to Jerusalem for the show down with the authorities. For these country bumpkins a visit to the Temple must have been like my first visit to the Empire State Building. But maybe even more important: remember the Temple was the bedrock of their faith; the hub of their culture; the residence of God.
When they arrive in Jerusalem, they go straight to the Temple. Jesus guides them to the Temple treasury of all places. There they witness an interesting thing. Wealthy people are bringing their donations to the Temple with great fanfare and acclaim. Kind of like the handover of those ridiculously large corporate cheques made out to worthy causes you seen in the papers every now and then.

But then along comes a bent and battered woman, unnoticed were it not for Jesus. She carries her last resource and offers it willingly and without any acknowledgment.

Then the band of rural homeboys wanders outside and the disciples look up at the towering Temple: “Look at those stones! Look at the magnificent architecture!” How cold those words feel in the face of her suffering. Not only are the disciples hungry for sensationalist futurology but they have completely lost the point of devotion to God.

I used to think that the story of the Widows Mite was there to encourage Christians to give sacrificially. I now understand that Jesus was touched by this woman because of the sadness of her situation, having been bled dry by the Temple bureaucracy because of a misplaced faith in the institution which completely ignores her. The story is there to warn us against the blasphemy of thinking that the Temples we build on the backs of the poor have anything to do with God. They are devil’s work – all the more sinister because of a theological façade.

In the Hobbit by JRR Tolkein, Bilbo Baggins has met Gollum for the first time. Bilbo is lost and needs to find his way out of Gollum's cave. Gollum will show him the way out if he can answer a riddle.

This thing all things devours,
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stone to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.

Bilbo is stumped. He doesn't know the answer to the riddle and after being pressured by Gollum says, "Give me time." Gollum hears the word "time" and mistakenly takes it as Bilbos answer, which of course is right.

When Jesus predicted the destruction of the Temple, he was not predicting the particular event which eventually happened in 70 CE when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and flattened the Temple. In fact he was warning people that all things come to an end, even the supposedly timeless institutions we create for ourselves. I guess that Jesus was in fact rejoicing that this terrible affront to God’s compassion would one day be destroyed.

But if we are impressed with the stature of the Temple and its destruction, there is a far more impressive institution that exists today. There is an institution today, which boasts an income and supports a staff thousands of times bigger than the Temple. It owns more land in the world than any other single institution. It is by far the wealthiest, it affects the lives of more people and is owned by not one single person. I am talking about the Church – the global church.

Such a mammoth enterprise requires considerable financial support. In order to support our buildings and our ministers we must guarantee a solid financial income. While we say that everyone has the same worth, practically speaking those who are wealthy are worth more, because they support the church to a greater extent – or at least, that’s what we think. In fact it is the combined mass of donations given by the poor, like the widow, that creates the church. This giving far outweighs the contributions of the wealthy.

The wealthy are duped into believing that their 1% of gross income is significant while the poor are duped into believing that their tiny mite is enough to please a forgiving God. To have poor, you must have rich and so the Church has historically supported the structuring of society that makes for poor people.

It is this foundation, built on the backs of the poor that is the Church’s final and most terrifying sin. And who is the Church? All of us… When we use our wealth to justify a structure that breaks the back of the poor we are complicit in their suffering. When we know what is happening but do not speak up, we are complicit in their suffering.

Jesus’ words are clear: “It will be destroyed.” Time will consume even the Church.

I am not suggesting that to give to the Church is bad. But I am suggesting that devotion for the Church is misplaced. Devotion to Jesus is all that makes sense. When we give our money we must give it to places and people that need it. When we give our money our hands must follow, for it is our compassion that matters more. Our money should be but a sign that we are prepared to give our lives with singular devotion to the cause of Christ.

Anything less, and we’re just building temples…