Proper 28 | Ordinary Time 33
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle B
Revised Common
1 Samuel 1:4-20 or Daniel 12:1-3
Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25
Mark 13:1-8
ÊÊÊÊ
Roman Catholic
Daniel 12:1-3
Hebrews 10:11-14, 18
Mark 13:24-32
Episcopal
Daniel 12:1-4a (5-13)
Hebrews 10:31-39
Mark 13:14-23
Theme For The Day
When other, seemingly solid foundations of our lives are shaken, the foundation of faith remains strong.
Old Testament Lesson
1 Samuel 1:4-20
Hannah Is Granted A Son, Samuel
It's the dearest wish of Hannah, one of Elkanah's two wives, that she be able to have children. Yet, as year succeeds year, only Elkanah's other wife, Penninah, is able to produce offspring -- and Penninah regularly torments Hannah with her maternal superiority. Elkanah loves Hannah deeply, but still she feels incomplete. Hannah presents herself at the temple, and offers a solemn vow to the Lord, that if she will only be able to bear a son, she will dedicate him as a nazirite to the Lord -- that he will abstain from alcohol, and that "no razor will touch his head" (v. 11). Nazirites, those who practiced ascetic disciplines, were seen as particularly holy before the Lord. Hannah's prayer is so long, and her demeanor so silently intense, that Eli, the high priest, thinks she is drunk. Hannah corrects his misapprehension, and Eli ultimately blesses her, wishing for her a positive answer to her prayer. When Hannah bears a son, she names him Samuel, saying, "I have asked him of the Lord" (v. 20). The chief focus of the book of 1 Samuel is the ascension of David to the kingship, but first the Lord must set the stage with the birth of Samuel -- who, as the last of the Judges, is the transitional figure who will make Israel's kingship possible. Samuel is the kingmaker -- and it all begins with the humble prayer of a faithful woman, Hannah. Hannah can be seen as a symbol of Israel itself, who cries out to the Lord over many years of waiting, before being surprised by God's graceful response. Hannah's song of joy, 1 Samuel 2:1-10, is an alternate psalm for today. Like Mary's Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), a song raised under similar circumstances, it is a marvelous poem celebrating God's power of reversal: "He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor" (2:8).
Alternate Old Testament Lesson
Daniel 12:1-3
The Dead Raised
With Daniel, we enter into the realm of apocalyptic. In the passages that precede this one, the author has been directing his prophetic fury against the corrupt and blasphemous king, Antiochus Epiphanes, who has set up an idolatrous image, "the abomination that makes desolate," in the temple (11:31). Beginning with 11:40, the prophet shifts his attention to the future. The remainder of chapter 11 describes how the king will soon meet an ignominious end in battle, but with chapter 12 -- the book's final chapter -- Daniel's prophecy takes on a cosmic dimension. He predicts that the archangel Michael shall appear, and those who are faithful "shall be delivered" (v. 1). Then, "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky ..." (vv. 2-3a). In the final chapter of this book, which has probably the latest date of composition of any in the Old Testament, we see the full emergence of a belief in the resurrection of the dead.
New Testament Lesson
Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25
Approach God With Confidence
The lengthy treatment of Jesus as the great high priest moves toward its climactic conclusion. Christ has made a one-time sacrifice of himself for the sins of humanity: "by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified" (v. 14). Christ has opened forever the curtain that once separated God's people from the holy of holies, where the high priest's sacrifices were once made (v. 20). Because of what he has done, we can approach the throne of God in full confidence, knowing that "our hearts [have been] sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water" (v. 22). While we are waiting for all to be fulfilled, the author encourages us to "provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another ..." (vv. 23-24).
The Gospel
Mark 13:1-8
Not One Stone Will Be Left Upon Another
As Jesus leaves the temple, after presenting his teaching about the widow's mite (see last week's resource), one of his disciples -- acting rather like a country rube visiting the city for the first time (which may, in fact, have been the case) -- marvels, "what large stones and what large buildings!" The stones of the temple were in fact, almost unbelievably large. Jesus, unimpressed, replies, "Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down" (v. 2). A little while later, he is sitting with a few disciples on the Mount of Olives, with the temple in view. These disciples, who have been pondering the meaning of this dark saying, ask Jesus when these things will take place. Jesus urges caution, warning that deceivers "will come in my name and say, 'I am he!' " (v. 6). There will be "wars and rumors of wars" before the end will come, and also natural disasters like earthquakes and famines. These signs, Jesus warns, "are but the beginnings of the birth pangs" (v. 8). Even then, the end is not yet. This passage (along with its parallels in Matthew 24 and Luke 21) is known as the "Little Apocalypse."
These words would have taken on special meaning for the first-century communities for which these gospels were written, who would have recently witnessed the fulfillment of at least some of the predicted events -- notably, the destruction of the temple by the Romans in the year 70. The word of Jesus the apostles remembered and recorded, with the needs of the Christians of their own day in mind, is that even when the very stones of the temple have been cast down, the time of the end is not yet. Troubles will abound, but the task of the faithful community is to wait in hope. Later in this chapter, Jesus will warn, "not even the Son knows the day and hour of his coming, but only the Father" (v. 32).
Preaching Possibilities
The date is September 10, 2001. A family of tourists from the midwest steps out of a yellow cab in lower Manhattan. They walk a short distance, until their eyes are pulled upward by the amazing sight before them. It's a massive skyscraper, larger than any they've ever seen: one of the two towers of the World Trade Center. Its twin stands nearby, equally commanding their attention. They are so much bigger than they had imagined, those towers: broad across the base, soaring majestically in height.
Just then the tourist family from the midwest hears a strident voice. "Repent!" cries the voice. "The end is near. One day soon, not one stone of these towers will be left standing upon another!"
"Just some religious fanatic," explains the husband, laughing nervously, before leading his wife and children over to ask for directions to the observation deck.
Had such a scene actually occurred on September 10, 2001, it would hardly have seemed remarkable. Street preachers are part of the life of any major city. Yet who would have taken that man seriously? Who could have known -- except, perhaps, for a small group of terrorists, putting the finishing touches on their dreadful conspiracy -- that the very next day, the words of that street-corner preacher would prove to be absolutely correct?
Who could have known, either, that Jesus' prediction about the future of the temple is absolutely correct? "Do you see these great buildings?" he asks his disciples -- especially the one who'd been walking around like a country bumpkin, gawking at the urban landscape. "Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." To Jesus' listeners, that prediction seems incredible: for what could be more permanent, more stubbornly enduring, than the temple?
The first temple had been constructed by Solomon, richest and most powerful of all Israel's kings. Even in his day, the design of the temple was ancient. Solomon had modeled its floor plan after the tabernacle: the portable, tent-like worship structure the people had carried with them on their wilderness wanderings. Solomon's temple stood proud until the Babylonian invasion, when the soldiers of King Nebuchadrezzar destroyed it. A century later, after the exiles returned from captivity in Babylon, the great reformer Ezra rebuilt it, to Solomon's original specifications. From that day onward, it continued as the center of Israel's worship -- though not without times of difficulty. The worst of these times was in 168 B.C., when the Seleucid Greek ruler, Antiochus Epiphanes, briefly tried to eradicate the Jewish faith. He set up a statue of Zeus in the temple, and tried to convince the people to worship there in the Greek fashion. That act of desecration set off the Maccabean revolt, through which the temple was recaptured and cleansed.
Not long after that the Romans took over, and their puppet king, Herod, decided the best way to consolidate his power was to rebuild and refurbish the temple. This he did in grand style, vastly expanding the size of the temple mount and adding great rows of marble columns, after the Roman pattern. The stones Herod used for his new construction were huge -- far larger than anything that had been used to date. When Jesus' disciple exclaims, "Look, teacher, what large stones!" he's certainly referring to these huge, rectangular stones of Herod's. The smallest of them weighed two to three tons. Many weighed as much as fifty tons. The largest stone the archaeologists have been able to find is twelve meters long and three meters high; it weighed hundreds of tons. These stones were so immense that no mortar was required; the very weight of the stones themselves held them in place. Who could imagine the destruction of the temple, when stones this massive had been used in its construction?
Well, the Romans would find a way. Four decades after Jesus' death, in the year 70 A.D., these new rulers of Judea had grown thoroughly tired of Jewish resistance. The Emperor Titus ordered that the temple be razed to the ground. For the first time since the return of the exiles from Babylon many centuries earlier, Jewish worship on that spot ceased.
For the Jewish people of that era, this was a catastrophe. It was nothing short of a spiritual holocaust. The elaborate sacrifices, according to the ancient rituals prescribed in the book of Exodus, would take place no longer. No longer was there a holy of holies at the heart of the temple, into which the high priest would venture each year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, to free the people from their sins. The religious action would shift, more and more, to the synagogues. Synagogues were houses of study, located throughout the Greek and Roman world, where learned rabbis taught the scriptures. There the traditions of the faith were kept alive. While the people might yearn for a rebuilt temple, no Jew would ever see such a building again.
At the time Mark is writing his gospel, the memory of the Roman destruction is a very recent one. The Jews are struggling to make sense of this catastrophe. It's no wonder, then, that Mark would include in his gospel this prophecy of Jesus' about the destruction of the temple. It wasn't literally true that "not one stone would remain upon another," but the Roman devastation was so thorough that further temple worship was impossible. To this day, only the Western wall of Herod's temple complex -- the famous "Wailing Wall" -- remains.
What are the "stones" on which we depend? What are the building blocks of our lives, which we could hardly bear to see cast down? For some, it's the stone of wealth. For others, the most essential stone is the stone of professional accomplishment. For still others, it's good health, and for others, family stability. Over the course of our lives, all of us construct certain temples, certain structures we judge to be stable or secure. Yet it's surprising how quickly things can change -- how rapidly we can descend from certainty into doubt, from consistency into chaos, from comfort into pain.
When temples tumble, let us remind ourselves that no matter how troubled or chaotic life may become, there is one who has known in his life an even fuller measure of pain and heartache. That one is God's own son Jesus Christ, our Lord. That one is close at hand, to comfort and console. He doesn't promise any one of us a life free of trouble. What he does promise, to all who trust in him, are rich resources of faith. That faith allows us not only to persevere through hard times, but to triumph over them: until the day when we achieve final victory in him.
Prayer For The Day
When the temples of our lives tumble, O Lord -- when certainties dissolve into confusion, and we wonder where to turn -- ground us in the resources of our faith. Help us to know that we are equipped not only to survive, but to prosper: bearing witness to your presence and power in a world where you often seem difficult to behold. Send us signs of your loving presence and bless us with evidence of your grace. Most of all, send us the gift of your Holy Spirit -- the advocate, the comforter -- that we may be restored to confidence and hope. Amen.
To Illustrate
Here is the story of a man who endured unspeakable suffering in his life, but triumphed in the end. The man was a politician, a member of the New York State Assembly. One day a telegram arrived in his office in Albany. It contained a single three-word sentence: "Come home now!" Not long before, his wife had given birth to a baby girl; he had gone back to work thinking all was well, but it was not.
The young man took the next train back to his home in New York City, and as he walked through the door of his house, his brother greeted him with a strange lament: "There's a curse on this house." Rushing up to the bedroom, he found that his wife, Alice, lay dying, from unforeseen complications of childbirth. He sat and held her, and could be heard pleading: "Let her live, let her live."
Sometime during the night, a family member intruded on their solitude, whispering into his ear, "If you want to see your mother before she dies, come downstairs now." The man left his wife and walked down a flight of stairs into his mother's room, where he held her until she died at 3 a.m.
He returned immediately to his wife's bedside, where he kept vigil until she also died, at two that afternoon. As heavy grief descended on that household, occasionally there could be heard the cry of his infant daughter, who was now without a mother. The man opened his daily diary and slashed a huge "X" across that day's page. There he scribbled: "The light has gone out of my life." The date was February 14, 1884: ironically, it was Valentine's Day.
Two days later, as identical rosewood caskets were brought into New York's Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, friends observed that this doubly bereaved man was "in a dazed, stunned state." They wondered if he would ever recover.
He did, though. As difficult and painful as that Valentine's Day was for him, he did recover. Over time, he would find healing. He would marry again. Professionally, he would serve as assistant secretary of the Navy, governor of New York, and president of the United States. His name was Theodore Roosevelt. In his later life, he would triumph not only over personal tragedy, but also over political and professional defeat. (Adapted from a story told by Victor Parachin, "Tending a Wounded Heart," in Plus magazine, December, 2002, pp. 25-27.)
Here is what Teddy Roosevelt wrote, after some of these experiences -- wise advice, for all who must live for a season through the tumbling of temple stones:
It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man tumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust, sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. (From a speech, "Citzenship in a Republic," delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris, April 23, 1910)
***
In Corrie ten Boom's book, The Hiding Place, Corrie tells of her first encounter with death. As a girl, she and her mother visited the family of an infant who had died. The idea of losing a loved one overwhelmed Corrie. Sobbing, she told her father that he couldn't die, because she just couldn't handle it. Her father reminded her of their trips to Amsterdam, and how he always gave her ticket to her just before they boarded the train. Her father told her that God does the same for us when a loved one dies: giving us the strength we need, just in time.
***
Without your wounds where would your power be? The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken in the wheels of living. In love's service, only the wounded soldiers can serve.
-- Thornton Wilder, The Angel That Troubled the Waters (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1928)
***
Merely accepted, suffering does nothing for our souls except, perhaps, to harden them. Endurance alone is no consecration. True asceticism is not a mere cult of fortitude. We can deny ourselves rigorously for the wrong reason and end up by pleasing ourselves mightily with our self-denial.
Suffering is consecrated to God by faith -- not by faith in suffering, but by faith in God. Some of us believe in the power and the value of suffering. But such a belief is an illusion. Suffering has no power and no value of its own....
To believe in suffering is pride: but to suffer, believing in God, is humility. For pride may tell us that we are strong enough to suffer, that suffering is good for us because we are good. Humility tells us that suffering is an evil which we must always expect to find in our lives because of the evil that is in ourselves. But faith also knows that the mercy of God is given to those who seek him in suffering, and that by his grace we can overcome evil with good.
-- Thomas Merton, "To Know the Cross," from No Man Is an Island (New York: Harcourt, 1978)
1 Samuel 1:4-20 or Daniel 12:1-3
Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25
Mark 13:1-8
ÊÊÊÊ
Roman Catholic
Daniel 12:1-3
Hebrews 10:11-14, 18
Mark 13:24-32
Episcopal
Daniel 12:1-4a (5-13)
Hebrews 10:31-39
Mark 13:14-23
Theme For The Day
When other, seemingly solid foundations of our lives are shaken, the foundation of faith remains strong.
Old Testament Lesson
1 Samuel 1:4-20
Hannah Is Granted A Son, Samuel
It's the dearest wish of Hannah, one of Elkanah's two wives, that she be able to have children. Yet, as year succeeds year, only Elkanah's other wife, Penninah, is able to produce offspring -- and Penninah regularly torments Hannah with her maternal superiority. Elkanah loves Hannah deeply, but still she feels incomplete. Hannah presents herself at the temple, and offers a solemn vow to the Lord, that if she will only be able to bear a son, she will dedicate him as a nazirite to the Lord -- that he will abstain from alcohol, and that "no razor will touch his head" (v. 11). Nazirites, those who practiced ascetic disciplines, were seen as particularly holy before the Lord. Hannah's prayer is so long, and her demeanor so silently intense, that Eli, the high priest, thinks she is drunk. Hannah corrects his misapprehension, and Eli ultimately blesses her, wishing for her a positive answer to her prayer. When Hannah bears a son, she names him Samuel, saying, "I have asked him of the Lord" (v. 20). The chief focus of the book of 1 Samuel is the ascension of David to the kingship, but first the Lord must set the stage with the birth of Samuel -- who, as the last of the Judges, is the transitional figure who will make Israel's kingship possible. Samuel is the kingmaker -- and it all begins with the humble prayer of a faithful woman, Hannah. Hannah can be seen as a symbol of Israel itself, who cries out to the Lord over many years of waiting, before being surprised by God's graceful response. Hannah's song of joy, 1 Samuel 2:1-10, is an alternate psalm for today. Like Mary's Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), a song raised under similar circumstances, it is a marvelous poem celebrating God's power of reversal: "He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor" (2:8).
Alternate Old Testament Lesson
Daniel 12:1-3
The Dead Raised
With Daniel, we enter into the realm of apocalyptic. In the passages that precede this one, the author has been directing his prophetic fury against the corrupt and blasphemous king, Antiochus Epiphanes, who has set up an idolatrous image, "the abomination that makes desolate," in the temple (11:31). Beginning with 11:40, the prophet shifts his attention to the future. The remainder of chapter 11 describes how the king will soon meet an ignominious end in battle, but with chapter 12 -- the book's final chapter -- Daniel's prophecy takes on a cosmic dimension. He predicts that the archangel Michael shall appear, and those who are faithful "shall be delivered" (v. 1). Then, "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky ..." (vv. 2-3a). In the final chapter of this book, which has probably the latest date of composition of any in the Old Testament, we see the full emergence of a belief in the resurrection of the dead.
New Testament Lesson
Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25
Approach God With Confidence
The lengthy treatment of Jesus as the great high priest moves toward its climactic conclusion. Christ has made a one-time sacrifice of himself for the sins of humanity: "by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified" (v. 14). Christ has opened forever the curtain that once separated God's people from the holy of holies, where the high priest's sacrifices were once made (v. 20). Because of what he has done, we can approach the throne of God in full confidence, knowing that "our hearts [have been] sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water" (v. 22). While we are waiting for all to be fulfilled, the author encourages us to "provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another ..." (vv. 23-24).
The Gospel
Mark 13:1-8
Not One Stone Will Be Left Upon Another
As Jesus leaves the temple, after presenting his teaching about the widow's mite (see last week's resource), one of his disciples -- acting rather like a country rube visiting the city for the first time (which may, in fact, have been the case) -- marvels, "what large stones and what large buildings!" The stones of the temple were in fact, almost unbelievably large. Jesus, unimpressed, replies, "Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down" (v. 2). A little while later, he is sitting with a few disciples on the Mount of Olives, with the temple in view. These disciples, who have been pondering the meaning of this dark saying, ask Jesus when these things will take place. Jesus urges caution, warning that deceivers "will come in my name and say, 'I am he!' " (v. 6). There will be "wars and rumors of wars" before the end will come, and also natural disasters like earthquakes and famines. These signs, Jesus warns, "are but the beginnings of the birth pangs" (v. 8). Even then, the end is not yet. This passage (along with its parallels in Matthew 24 and Luke 21) is known as the "Little Apocalypse."
These words would have taken on special meaning for the first-century communities for which these gospels were written, who would have recently witnessed the fulfillment of at least some of the predicted events -- notably, the destruction of the temple by the Romans in the year 70. The word of Jesus the apostles remembered and recorded, with the needs of the Christians of their own day in mind, is that even when the very stones of the temple have been cast down, the time of the end is not yet. Troubles will abound, but the task of the faithful community is to wait in hope. Later in this chapter, Jesus will warn, "not even the Son knows the day and hour of his coming, but only the Father" (v. 32).
Preaching Possibilities
The date is September 10, 2001. A family of tourists from the midwest steps out of a yellow cab in lower Manhattan. They walk a short distance, until their eyes are pulled upward by the amazing sight before them. It's a massive skyscraper, larger than any they've ever seen: one of the two towers of the World Trade Center. Its twin stands nearby, equally commanding their attention. They are so much bigger than they had imagined, those towers: broad across the base, soaring majestically in height.
Just then the tourist family from the midwest hears a strident voice. "Repent!" cries the voice. "The end is near. One day soon, not one stone of these towers will be left standing upon another!"
"Just some religious fanatic," explains the husband, laughing nervously, before leading his wife and children over to ask for directions to the observation deck.
Had such a scene actually occurred on September 10, 2001, it would hardly have seemed remarkable. Street preachers are part of the life of any major city. Yet who would have taken that man seriously? Who could have known -- except, perhaps, for a small group of terrorists, putting the finishing touches on their dreadful conspiracy -- that the very next day, the words of that street-corner preacher would prove to be absolutely correct?
Who could have known, either, that Jesus' prediction about the future of the temple is absolutely correct? "Do you see these great buildings?" he asks his disciples -- especially the one who'd been walking around like a country bumpkin, gawking at the urban landscape. "Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." To Jesus' listeners, that prediction seems incredible: for what could be more permanent, more stubbornly enduring, than the temple?
The first temple had been constructed by Solomon, richest and most powerful of all Israel's kings. Even in his day, the design of the temple was ancient. Solomon had modeled its floor plan after the tabernacle: the portable, tent-like worship structure the people had carried with them on their wilderness wanderings. Solomon's temple stood proud until the Babylonian invasion, when the soldiers of King Nebuchadrezzar destroyed it. A century later, after the exiles returned from captivity in Babylon, the great reformer Ezra rebuilt it, to Solomon's original specifications. From that day onward, it continued as the center of Israel's worship -- though not without times of difficulty. The worst of these times was in 168 B.C., when the Seleucid Greek ruler, Antiochus Epiphanes, briefly tried to eradicate the Jewish faith. He set up a statue of Zeus in the temple, and tried to convince the people to worship there in the Greek fashion. That act of desecration set off the Maccabean revolt, through which the temple was recaptured and cleansed.
Not long after that the Romans took over, and their puppet king, Herod, decided the best way to consolidate his power was to rebuild and refurbish the temple. This he did in grand style, vastly expanding the size of the temple mount and adding great rows of marble columns, after the Roman pattern. The stones Herod used for his new construction were huge -- far larger than anything that had been used to date. When Jesus' disciple exclaims, "Look, teacher, what large stones!" he's certainly referring to these huge, rectangular stones of Herod's. The smallest of them weighed two to three tons. Many weighed as much as fifty tons. The largest stone the archaeologists have been able to find is twelve meters long and three meters high; it weighed hundreds of tons. These stones were so immense that no mortar was required; the very weight of the stones themselves held them in place. Who could imagine the destruction of the temple, when stones this massive had been used in its construction?
Well, the Romans would find a way. Four decades after Jesus' death, in the year 70 A.D., these new rulers of Judea had grown thoroughly tired of Jewish resistance. The Emperor Titus ordered that the temple be razed to the ground. For the first time since the return of the exiles from Babylon many centuries earlier, Jewish worship on that spot ceased.
For the Jewish people of that era, this was a catastrophe. It was nothing short of a spiritual holocaust. The elaborate sacrifices, according to the ancient rituals prescribed in the book of Exodus, would take place no longer. No longer was there a holy of holies at the heart of the temple, into which the high priest would venture each year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, to free the people from their sins. The religious action would shift, more and more, to the synagogues. Synagogues were houses of study, located throughout the Greek and Roman world, where learned rabbis taught the scriptures. There the traditions of the faith were kept alive. While the people might yearn for a rebuilt temple, no Jew would ever see such a building again.
At the time Mark is writing his gospel, the memory of the Roman destruction is a very recent one. The Jews are struggling to make sense of this catastrophe. It's no wonder, then, that Mark would include in his gospel this prophecy of Jesus' about the destruction of the temple. It wasn't literally true that "not one stone would remain upon another," but the Roman devastation was so thorough that further temple worship was impossible. To this day, only the Western wall of Herod's temple complex -- the famous "Wailing Wall" -- remains.
What are the "stones" on which we depend? What are the building blocks of our lives, which we could hardly bear to see cast down? For some, it's the stone of wealth. For others, the most essential stone is the stone of professional accomplishment. For still others, it's good health, and for others, family stability. Over the course of our lives, all of us construct certain temples, certain structures we judge to be stable or secure. Yet it's surprising how quickly things can change -- how rapidly we can descend from certainty into doubt, from consistency into chaos, from comfort into pain.
When temples tumble, let us remind ourselves that no matter how troubled or chaotic life may become, there is one who has known in his life an even fuller measure of pain and heartache. That one is God's own son Jesus Christ, our Lord. That one is close at hand, to comfort and console. He doesn't promise any one of us a life free of trouble. What he does promise, to all who trust in him, are rich resources of faith. That faith allows us not only to persevere through hard times, but to triumph over them: until the day when we achieve final victory in him.
Prayer For The Day
When the temples of our lives tumble, O Lord -- when certainties dissolve into confusion, and we wonder where to turn -- ground us in the resources of our faith. Help us to know that we are equipped not only to survive, but to prosper: bearing witness to your presence and power in a world where you often seem difficult to behold. Send us signs of your loving presence and bless us with evidence of your grace. Most of all, send us the gift of your Holy Spirit -- the advocate, the comforter -- that we may be restored to confidence and hope. Amen.
To Illustrate
Here is the story of a man who endured unspeakable suffering in his life, but triumphed in the end. The man was a politician, a member of the New York State Assembly. One day a telegram arrived in his office in Albany. It contained a single three-word sentence: "Come home now!" Not long before, his wife had given birth to a baby girl; he had gone back to work thinking all was well, but it was not.
The young man took the next train back to his home in New York City, and as he walked through the door of his house, his brother greeted him with a strange lament: "There's a curse on this house." Rushing up to the bedroom, he found that his wife, Alice, lay dying, from unforeseen complications of childbirth. He sat and held her, and could be heard pleading: "Let her live, let her live."
Sometime during the night, a family member intruded on their solitude, whispering into his ear, "If you want to see your mother before she dies, come downstairs now." The man left his wife and walked down a flight of stairs into his mother's room, where he held her until she died at 3 a.m.
He returned immediately to his wife's bedside, where he kept vigil until she also died, at two that afternoon. As heavy grief descended on that household, occasionally there could be heard the cry of his infant daughter, who was now without a mother. The man opened his daily diary and slashed a huge "X" across that day's page. There he scribbled: "The light has gone out of my life." The date was February 14, 1884: ironically, it was Valentine's Day.
Two days later, as identical rosewood caskets were brought into New York's Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, friends observed that this doubly bereaved man was "in a dazed, stunned state." They wondered if he would ever recover.
He did, though. As difficult and painful as that Valentine's Day was for him, he did recover. Over time, he would find healing. He would marry again. Professionally, he would serve as assistant secretary of the Navy, governor of New York, and president of the United States. His name was Theodore Roosevelt. In his later life, he would triumph not only over personal tragedy, but also over political and professional defeat. (Adapted from a story told by Victor Parachin, "Tending a Wounded Heart," in Plus magazine, December, 2002, pp. 25-27.)
Here is what Teddy Roosevelt wrote, after some of these experiences -- wise advice, for all who must live for a season through the tumbling of temple stones:
It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man tumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust, sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. (From a speech, "Citzenship in a Republic," delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris, April 23, 1910)
***
In Corrie ten Boom's book, The Hiding Place, Corrie tells of her first encounter with death. As a girl, she and her mother visited the family of an infant who had died. The idea of losing a loved one overwhelmed Corrie. Sobbing, she told her father that he couldn't die, because she just couldn't handle it. Her father reminded her of their trips to Amsterdam, and how he always gave her ticket to her just before they boarded the train. Her father told her that God does the same for us when a loved one dies: giving us the strength we need, just in time.
***
Without your wounds where would your power be? The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken in the wheels of living. In love's service, only the wounded soldiers can serve.
-- Thornton Wilder, The Angel That Troubled the Waters (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1928)
***
Merely accepted, suffering does nothing for our souls except, perhaps, to harden them. Endurance alone is no consecration. True asceticism is not a mere cult of fortitude. We can deny ourselves rigorously for the wrong reason and end up by pleasing ourselves mightily with our self-denial.
Suffering is consecrated to God by faith -- not by faith in suffering, but by faith in God. Some of us believe in the power and the value of suffering. But such a belief is an illusion. Suffering has no power and no value of its own....
To believe in suffering is pride: but to suffer, believing in God, is humility. For pride may tell us that we are strong enough to suffer, that suffering is good for us because we are good. Humility tells us that suffering is an evil which we must always expect to find in our lives because of the evil that is in ourselves. But faith also knows that the mercy of God is given to those who seek him in suffering, and that by his grace we can overcome evil with good.
-- Thomas Merton, "To Know the Cross," from No Man Is an Island (New York: Harcourt, 1978)
