The following sermon was given on 18 November 2018, with the biblical text of Mark 13:1-8 as inspiration:
'1 As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" 2 Then Jesus asked him, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." 3 When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, 4 "Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?" 5 Then Jesus began to say to them, "Beware that no one leads you astray. 6 Many will come in my name and say, "I am he!' and they will lead many astray. 7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs."'
2008 was an interesting year for me for two reasons. For one, I started grad school, which I ended up loving and having a ton of fun in. But also, 2008 was the year that several of my family members and friends were laid off from their jobs. I suspect I’m not unique in this second experience, that many of you experienced something similar during what we now call the Great Recession.
And as average middle- and lower-class families struggled to find decent income, there were golden parachutes and bailouts galore, with many of the execs of the banks and companies that had created the crisis being given hundreds of millions of dollars by the federal government. I couldn’t help thinking that this was money that could have gone towards helping people like you and me rather than CEOs and corporation presidents and board members.
The reason that was done? As much as a few people in the government hated giving so much to these crooked institutions, too many economists had said that to not bail them out would lead to some kind of economic collapse. Economists thought that the banks were too big to fail, that corporations were too big to let die. This, in spite of the injustices and abuses that so many of these companies had been a part of over the years.
Like the corporations and banks, the Temple in Jerusalem had become an institution that abused and acted irresponsibly towards the people that it was supposed to serve, including the poor widow in the Gospel passage from last week. The priests and scribes in charge of it were tasked with the spiritual wellbeing of the Jewish people, tasked with making sure that the sacrifices of the priests and people were orderly.
Instead of faithfully offering God’s forgiveness, though, they had turned the Temple into a thriving business, setting up all sorts of ways to rip off average people. As Jesus says in the Gospels, God had intended the Temple to be a house of prayer, but its crooked stewards had turned it into a den of thieves. All those taxes and donations that were given to the Temple had become about growing a grand institution that seemed too big to fail.
So, what Jesus’ disciples notice when they look at the Temple are the huge stones and grand buildings of the Temple. They probably imagined that their wonderful center of religious life would remain forever. All that Jesus can see, though, is the abuse of power that stood behind the operations of the Temple. And unlike his disciples, he could see the writing on the wall, could see that the time would soon come when not one huge stone would be left upon another.
That destruction would come in 70 AD, when the Roman military invaded Jerusalem after a few years of war against the Holy Land. And one of the very few silver linings was that the abusive power of those Temple leaders came to an official end. Those leaders, seeing Jesus as a threat to their power and to the status quo, had organized to have him arrested and killed by the Romans.
After he died, Jesus’ own followers sought to imitate his opposition to systems that oppress the poor and vulnerable. They knew that even though the Temple was done for, God had already provided them with a new source of forgiveness and mercy in Jesus Christ. They trusted that if the stones of the Temple were toppled over, the Lord would continue to use them to do God’s work with their hands.
So they formed communities based on prayer, forgiveness, and care for each other, the very things that the Temple leadership was supposed to facilitate for people. They met not in giant cathedrals or temples but in their homes, and instead of making sure their leaders could get richer and more powerful, their priorities were taking care of widows and the oppressed by pooling their resources together.
This new way to be community, to be disciples of Christ, is outlined toward the beginning of the book of Acts, which we don’t have in our readings today, but which happened to be the main Bible passage for the Bishop’s Convocation that took place a few days ago. The Convocation is a time every year when the bishop brings together the clergy in the synod for a time of fellowship, worship, and discussion on something she and the planning team find relevant for our synod. This year, the theme was “Being Beloved Community,” being a community like that of Acts 2. It was about building spiritual communities that care for those both in and outside of themselves, and that can critique and oppose the systems of the world that have been entranced by money and worldly power.
‘Cause the truth is that Christian religious institutions have, in different times and places, been more like the Temple in Jerusalem than like the beloved community of the book of Acts. At times, Christian leaders have been more like the scribes and priests in the Gospels than like Jesus. There was the Roman Empire after Constantine, which decided to make Christianity its state religion and thus transformed Christianity from a religion of the poor and disadvantaged to a religion of violence and empire. There were the Crusades; there were the Church abuses of Martin Luther’s time; and in this past century there have been the sex scandals in the Catholic Church and the greed of mega-pastors and televangelists. In these ways Christian institutions have been more like the thief-led Temple than like the Body of Christ.
And, lest we only critique Christians of other brands, we can also see the corruptions of the Temple in mainline Protestantism, of which we Lutherans have played a part. For those who have never heard the term “mainline Protestant” before, it’s an umbrella term for non-evangelical-leaning denominations like the ELCA, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the Episcopal Church. The term is used throughout the world, but it actually probably originated right here around Philly. It was named after the Main Line suburbs, where in the 19th century dozens and dozens of incredibly wealthy Protestant churches sprang up.
In the 19th and early 20th century in America, the Protestant churches were possibly the greatest force in society. And yet, at times, we have historically taken that power for granted. At times, we abused the people that God set us to be stewards over: turning women away from ministry, telling LGBTQ folk that they were aberrations of God, refusing to worship or fellowship with people of other races, allying ourselves with oppressive political and social movements or at least turning a blind eye to them.
For around a century and a half, Mainline Protestantism seemed like it would never lose its prominent position in society. And yet, it seems to have done just that. Mainline Protestant institutions and churches are seeing less worshipers, less money, less influence on our culture. And that can scare us and make us feel insecure.
We wonder if these trends will continue at an even faster rate; we wonder about the future of Protestant Christianity in America; we wonder whether we will be able to sustain our own ministries and work here at St. Matthew. We get nostalgic, longing for the days when our churches had tons of worshipers and money and seemed like they could never diminish, just like the Temple.
Now, we can view what’s going on around us with fear and trepidation and with longing for the past. Or, like the early Christian communities, we can look not to the past, to the time when they could gaze upon the grandness of the Temple, but to the future. We can know that the Church’s one foundation is not our worldly power or wealth, but Jesus Christ our Lord. We can trust that the Church is in God’s hands, and that an end to the Mainline Protestant churches being strong and powerful does not mean an end to us as Christians.
We can try to see the state of the Church today as a God-given opportunity to become even more obedient to the divine will, to be more in line with the humility and commitment to serving others that marked Jesus’ original disciples. Like Jesus, we can critique the systems and powers of this world that oppress the weak. It may be more difficult to fill pews and church treasuries, but I encourage you to know, and to trust, that our Lord will continue to give us chances to do God’s work with our hands. And that is something to get excited about, to rejoice over, to find a new sense of purpose in. Thanks be to God. Amen.
