Mark 13
James R. Gorman
November 19, 2000
"Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down."
If you travel to the Holy Land and walk to the Temple Mount and the famous"wailing wall" on the west side of the old Temple grounds, and if you are in the company of a guide, which you most often are, as you make your way toward the wall he or she will point out that the large, regularly-shaped rectangular stones at the bottom of the wall are from the time of Jesus, when Herod rebuilt the Jerusalem Temple. The portion above that is a rough mixture of stones from later periods, but the stones at the bottom level, at which the visitor stands, are the stones from the time of Jesus and Herod the Great.
Those Herodian blocks of stone would have been there during the Temple's last hurrah before the Roman troops came in 70 A.D. They destroyed the Temple with a fire, and it would never be rebuilt again. Those stones, the ones that Jesus said would not be left standing one upon another, are about the size of small trucks, weighing in at several tons each. To say that they would all be thrown down is not meant to suggest some evening of casual Roman vandalism against the Temple, but rather an immense engineering effort to remove the stones, systematically destroying the Temple and its grounds.
Though fire did much of the destruction of the ancient Jewish Temple, there was a good deal of stone moving done as well. All that is left today is that one western retaining wall, the one often referred to as the "wailing wall." It is now a place of wailing because of all that was lost in a grand history and tradition; it is a place of remembrance of and lamentation over the violent loss of all that was precious.
Imagine living in a place that you loved and called home, and then, before you and your family are rounded up and deported, you are forced to watch the systematic destruction of all of it. Not in a violent rage, but with precision, with careful engineering and planning, with no goal other than to wipe out whatever remained of a people and its culture for all time.
No wonder that when Jesus said, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down," his disciples were mesmerized by his words. What power on earth could do such a thing? They could not imagine it. Such immense destruction was surely impossible! Unlike us, they did not know of explosive devices and artillery shells. They didn't know anything about big blue cranes.
To lose the Temple would have been, to many in Israel, to lose the connection between God and God's people, the one place where God could be approached by priests on behalf of people willing to present sacrifices to him. Without a Temple to accomplish such sacrifices for atonement, what would become of the people and their sins? It was then, and in some ways still is, unimaginable.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once spoke of our faith in Jesus Christ as the only real, permanent thing in our world. All else is impermanent and untrustworthy. He knew, more than most of us, the lack of permanence of treasured things. He knew, more than most of us, of the violent displacement of things that make for security. He suggested that our faith will find for us a place in the chaos that we can treasure and trust.
Dr. King said, "With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair the stone of hope."
Nothing permanent is permanent until we learn to trust the tradition and faith that has been handed to us through the ages. Those of you who have lost loved ones or have come close to losing even your own lives know better than most of the rest of us that the things we think are the most treasured things, our houses and the plot of land upon which those houses sit, our jobs, our savings, even what we call the "American Dream," all of these things come to nothing in the final analysis and are untrustworthy. Even stones the size of SUVs will tumble like a pinochle deck which has been stacked too high by a child.
Jesus uses a shocking image to get those he loves to reckon with that which is truly permanent and valuable in life. He suggests that the great Temple itself, built by Herod the Great for a great people, even this Temple sitting on this land will come to nothing in the final analysis. And we will have to scramble to discover anew real security and hope.
We have to discover over and over again the meaning of a faith that is able to "hew out of the mountain of despair the stone of hope." Or to find in the midst of the loss of all that we value and love, that which is truly valuable and lovely. And faith is the key to that discovery.
The true heroes of the faith are those who teach us how to live faithfully in times of enormous insecurity. For African Americans, the racism that surrounded them could and did lead to insecurity. For Dr. King, the challenge was to find in those insecure times the real source of security and hope. And thus, faith is the ability to "hew out of the mountain of despair the stone of hope."
It is no accident that in the African American Church there is a strongly developed tradition of stewardship and tithing. Of giving proportionately and sacrificially. For in traditions threatened daily with economic insecurity, giving money away is an act of true freedom, a declaration of independence and a stubborn intuition about where ultimate security comes from.
In a few minutes we will be asked to bring forward our annual statements about what we shall give away. Think of this as a declaration of independence that allows you to discern, in the midst of all that we have, that which is most important and good.
And in so doing, I can guarantee that you will be able to live rightly with all that you have.
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