A sermon for the 26th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 28
November 17, 2024, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR
Readings: Mark 13:1-8
I am sure you remember the day; I know I do. It was March 31, 2023. A tornado hit Little Rock and continued east. By the time it got to the delta town of Wynne, it was an EF-3. On the ground for 73 miles, it was as wide as 13 football fields with winds as high as 150 mph. The town was devastated. Four people died; 26 injured. The little Episcopal church in the town, Grace Church, which had been closed for a few years, took a direct hit. The brick edifice was leveled, turned into rubble. Not long thereafter, I joined a team of clergy and lay folks from East Arkansas who went to sift through the rubble and sort those bricks that had been so violently thrown down by the storm.
Our gospel reading takes us to rubble. Jesus has just left the Temple after last week’s reading. Remember: He saw the widow put in her two pennies, compared to those who gave in abundance. He and his disciples walk out, and immediately his disciples point out the grandeur of the Temple. They say, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” I wonder why? Perhaps it is their way of saying, sure, the widow’s mite is great, but it can’t keep such a big and beautiful place afloat. Jesus is feeling a little contrarian, though. He replies, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” Rubble is coming. There’s no getting around it. The Temple, Jesus says, will be thrown down deliberately, stone by stone, just as the church in Wynne was thrown down by the tornado.
This part of Mark’s gospel is called the Little Apocalypse. Jesus is foretelling the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. Rome would come in and throw down those large, grand stones the disciples are talking about. And with the destruction of the Temple would come the destruction of a way of life, the end of the sacrificial religious system, and the scattering of the Jews across the Empire. The event can only be described as an apocalypse. It is a watershed moment in Judaism and Christianity alike. From 70 AD, Christianity will become increasingly distanced from Judaism, and what began as a Jewish sect will end as a distinct and mostly Gentile religion.
Such apocalypses, watershed moments, repeat in every time. Little apocalypses pop up. False messiahs with all the answers come. Wars and rumors of war swirl. Earthquakes, both physical and metaphorical, devastate. Famines scourge, and hunger, for bread and for peace, goes unsatisfied. What was true in 70 AD is true today, just as it was true in the Patristic era, the Medieval era, the Reformation era, the modern era. Those who preach that today’s violence and upheaval are somehow worse than in previous times have not read much history. From a global perspective, apocalypse is not the exception, but the rule.
If that pushes your anxiety up, you’re not alone. Peter, James, John, and Andrew go to Jesus after they’ve left the Temple. In their anxiety, they want to know what will happen and when to expect it. Jesus tells them what we’ve just said: Wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines. Jesus says many will come claiming to be our Messiah, our hope, our salvation. Don’t believe them, he says. Don’t be led astray. But the operative words–what we need to hold on to–is what Jesus says last: “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”
It’s what we need to hear, especially when we feel lost in the fog of apocalypse, amidst things we cannot control or understand. Birth pangs mean that something else is coming, something is being born in the world. Like a physical birth, there is suffering and pain, anxiety and uneasiness. But such things are not the end of the story: a baby will be born.
People of God, hear the good news: Something new and good is coming into the world. Though the world shakes, though the sky falls, though rubble is all around, Jesus is on the move. The wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and famines–sin and death–are not the end of the story. For Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, has promised to make all things new. And the very rubble at our feet becomes the building blocks for the new creation. The suffering in our lives and in the world is redeemed to reveal the glory of God within us and around us. The purposes of God–which are healing and justice, goodness and peace, grace and love–are worked out, and no war or calamity can stop what God will do.
That day in Wynne, a verse from Psalm 102 echoed in my head. It’s a lament psalm, composed after the destruction of the first Temple in the year 586 BC. The psalmist writes: “For your servants love her very rubble, and are moved to pity even for her dust.” And we did love the rubble of that old church. We collected bricks, chipped the mortar from them, and stacked them as neatly as we could onto pallets. They were picked up later and taken to Trinity Cathedral in Little Rock, where they will be used to build a columbarium, a place for the faithful departed to rest in expectation of the day of resurrection. Not only that, though. Unlike the first two temples, the church in Wynne had an insurance policy. The proceeds from that insurance policy were invested in another community (at one point the fastest growing community in the state): Pea Ridge, Arkansas. A small group of faithful Episcopalians had been worshiping there for years, led by a lay person. The insurance proceeds helped them buy a closing Assembly of God church and outfit it for Episcopal worship. Today, it’s growing. The very rubble of Grace Church, Wynne, made it possible for the gospel to be proclaimed anew and afresh.
Jesus is on the move making all things new, even today, even in our lives, even in our world. There are wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and famine. It has always been so. There may be rubble all around, the stones of our lives thrown down. But do not despair; these are but the beginning of the birth pangs. For while mysterious, God works through our suffering and the suffering of the world to bring about something new. And the rubble at our feet, the rubble in our lives, the stones that have been thrown down–it is all redeemed in the end, and becomes the building blocks for the kingdom of God.
Storied Grace 