Creation/Destruction/ReCreation

Luke 21:5-19 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

The Destruction of the Temple Foretold

5 When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, 6 “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

Signs and Persecutions

7 They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” 8 And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’[a] and, ‘The time is near!’[b] Do not go after them.

9 “When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” 10 Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; 11 there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.

12 “But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. 13 This will give you an opportunity to testify. 14 So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; 15 for I will give you words[c] and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. 16 You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. 17 You will be hated by all because of my name. 18 But not a hair of your head will perish. 19 By your endurance you will gain your souls.

I thought we were getting the perfect house. Nothing overly fancy. But for the first time in our lives, not a fixer upper. The floors have been refinished to a perfect walnut brown. New furnace, new water heater, new drywall in the dry! basement. Two beautiful refinished bathrooms and a small back yard, just big enough for my two boys to kick a soccer ball around in. We spent our life savings on the down payment. We did financial backflips to pay the closing costs. The boys were on their best behavior, playing video games at the closing while Dan and I signed all those papers. We were going to live differently in this house, keep it clean and clutter free, take care of those beautiful hardwoods with Murphy’s Oil Soap; it was going to be our respite from the chaos of the world. 

Sure, we’d have a bigger mortgage, and we’d have to drive our kids quite a ways to school, but for this house, it was going to be worth it.

until.

Until Levi took a bath. 

That’s all it took. One bath from our six year old and water came streaming through the ceiling fan into our kitchen. Just forty-eight hours into living in our home, just one bath, and we had a major plumbing problem.

I could not believe my eyes. This perfectly redone house had water dripping from the ceiling fan and on to those beautiful walnut finished floors. 

Yes, I know, that’s the risk of homeownership. Something is bound to go wrong. But we’d thought we’d covered all of our bases, at least for the first month. We bought a renovated house, we’d had an inspector spend three hours looking over the place. We bought from a contractor that our realtor knew and trusted. But less than two days as new homeowners and we had serious buyer’s remorse.

So. Ok. Calm down. It’s just a leaky pipe. And we have a home warranty. No problem. Just a little hiccup in our dream home plans. 

But as soon as the plumber comes in to see the damage, he shakes his head. He calls the master plumber, who shakes his head. And then the master plumber calls his supervisor. There will be no simple patching of our pipe, no day-long inconvenience, and then back to our perfectly planned out lives. This pipe has not one, but three holes in it. This pipe is a lead pipe. This pipe is encased in concrete. And the whole line has to be replaced. Or so said our plumber. And so said the second opinion plumber we brought in when we couldn’t believe the news. 

The whole bathroom needs to be torn out. Totally gutted. The toilet taken out. The vanity removed. The new tile, pulled up. The concrete drilled through. New pipe laid. Then we have to somehow put it all back together again.

I know Jesus said that “the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down,” but I didn’t realize I’d have to take him so literally. 

But isn’t this just like life? We build our houses of straw, or sticks, or even stone, and the big bad wolf comes along and blows our house - or at least our bathrooms - down. Yeah. Even our stone buildings get knocked down from time to time. Destruction comes. It just does. It’s part of life. 

Don’t be thrown by this, Jesus says in our passage today. 

See they’re in the temple. And it’s adorned with the prettiest things. Real devotion has gone in to building this place. It’s the mecca for Jews, the place that holds the Holy of Holies, the most revered and adored site for the Jewish people of the Ancient Near East. One stone is lying upon another in perfect symmetry. For some Jews, this is their one pilgrimage, their one time to see the heart of their faith. They’ve scrimped and saved and sacrificed to make this pilgrimage happen, and they’re finally here, and better yet, they’re here with Jesus. This is a holy, sacred time, a once in a lifetime experience to see the heart of their faith and their cultural history and devotion to God. 

Jerusalem and the Temple are both thin spaces, places where God is felt more deeply, more intensely, places where the veil that divides the sacred and the profane is thinner, hazier, more transparent. This is sacred space where the holy is more lucid, clearer, better understood. 

And it’s all going to be torn down, Jesus says.

This sacred place is going to be torn apart. The very place, the very thing, upon which you base your faith is going to fall apart. It’s gonna happen. Not if, but when.

And so, obviously concerned and disturbed, his followers ask him, When. When is this going to happen? 

And Jesus answers them with a warning about false prophets and a whole long list of bad news. 

There’s gonna be people shouting in the streets, “The end is near!” but that’s not the time. 

There’s gonna be wars and insurrections. But that’s not the time.

Nations are going to fall apart and fight each other, but that’s not the time. 

There will be famines and earthquakes and plagues. There will be portents and signs and persecutions. But that’s not it either. 

Things are going to get bad. You’ll think it’s the end. You’ll think you won’t be able to withstand one more thing, and then the bottom will drop out. And then more bad stuff will happen and you’ll think surely we’ve hit bottom now, but the bottom just keeps getting deeper. You might despair. You might lose faith. 

St. John of the Cross called this the darkest night of the soul. It happens to all of us, at least once, who try to search authentically and truly for God. The bottom drops out. We start to question the things we thought we knew. We start wondering if there really is a God, and if there is, does that God love us, and if God does, then is God powerful, because how could God let us go through such a dark, dark night, leaving us to feel so, so alone? 

See, some of our beliefs will be encased in concrete, but eventually, it’s all got to come out. Some part of the simple answers we learned in Sunday School will fail us, and we will be left with dust and empty hands. What will we do then? Jesus says, not if, but when. Our faith house is going to come falling down. 

This is terribly painful. And unfair, really. But this is how we grow, through huge paradigm shifts. Creation, destruction and re-creation.

Life, death, and resurrection. 

This is by design. 

Our faith is based, not on a set of precepts and theological maxims, not on rites and rituals, not on actions or even on right beliefs. Our faith is based upon a person. This is radical and dangerous. Can you see how radical and dangerous this is? Because people can die. People do die. And our person did die. Jesus is this embodiment of our faith journeys. Life, death, resurrection. Creation, destruction, recreation. 

Our faith houses are going to be blown down. Even if we think we’ve built them of solid stone, not one will be left lying upon another. 

We will experience a death of some kind. It’s just part of life. We will suffer broken relationships and broken hearts and broken bathrooms. We will experience deaths and lost jobs and financial burdens. Our church will divide itself. We will get sick. Some thing, or if you’re like me, many things, will come along in life to bring you to your knees, they will knock the wind out of you, they will have you questioning the things you thought you’d wager your whole life on to be true. 

The good news is that this vulnerable person upon which we have depended doesn’t just leave us there. We are not left on the cross to hang and that’s the end. There is resurrection. It just might not look like the temple you once built. 

This temple is built out of grit and gumption and tenacity. It’s rebuilt out of heartache and broken dreams and new beginnings. It’s built out of endurance and questions and doubt. This is the stuff of faith - not certitudes and assurances, not bumper stickers or tracts or sandwich boards on the streets, but hopes, and wagers, and fears, and trembling hands. This is the temple of faith. One that will be rebuilt by a person, not by rules, regulations, devotions, or commitments. But by grace. The grace that raised Jesus from the dead, and the grace that will resurrect all of our broken, fumbling attempts to “believe” the “right” things. 

I wonder, what kind of Resurrection does God have in store for Peters Creek?

Some churches think in terms of the three B’s: belief, behavior and belonging. For most of these places, belief has to come first, then the behavior, then the belonging. If I believe the right things, I will act the right way, and then I’ll finally belong to the community. You don’t belong until you’ve got the beliefs and the behavior all figured out. 

But what if we became the community of belonging first? A community that doesn’t care about where you are on your creation/destruction/recreation faith journey because we’re all traveling the same paths? What if you just belonged, even if you don’t believe the “right” way, or you questioned the wrong things, or if your temple is in the middle of dramatic reconstruction? 

“It’s all going to get torn down,” Jesus says, “even me. But you’ll still belong. You’ll still be a part of me. You’ll be resurrected with me. And things will fall apart again, and you’ll feel like you’re in the dark again, but you’ll be recreated, just as I was, again and again and again.” 

Creation, Destruction, Recreation.

Life, Death, Resurrection.

And within that death, within the destruction, Jesus gives us words to testify. “Testify” is just a fancy word for telling our stories. We will feel hard pressed on every side. We will feel alone and persecuted and imprisoned. 

“But this will give you an opportunity to testify,” Jesus says. “So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you the words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” 

It’s within that death, during that destruction, in the midst of our brokenness we are given the words to testify - to tell our stories. Not with hell and damnation, not with a prosperity gospel that says “Just hold on, your millions are coming,” but with a peace that passes all understanding. 

When you reach that peace in your story, then you know you’ve been recreated, you know you’ve been resurrected, you know that you’ve been through hard things and you’ll go through them again, but nothing, neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come, nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation, including leaking drain lines and busted up bathrooms and heartaches and deaths and brokenness and questions and doubts or anything will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Thanks be to God.

The Black Widow Widow and a Hermeneutic of Resurrection

Luke 20:27-38

27Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him 28and asked him a question, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. 29Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; 30then the second 31and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. 32Finally the woman also died. 33In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her."

34Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; 35but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. 36Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 37And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 38Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive."

Never Not With

Luke 19:1-10 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

Jesus and Zacchaeus

19 He entered Jericho and was passing through it. 2 A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. 3 He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. 5 When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. 7 All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” 8 Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” 9 Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

I never grew up with the Zacchaeus nursery rhyme. You know, “Zacchaeus was a wee little man/ and a wee little man was he. / He climbed up in a sycamore tree / For the Lord he wanted to see.” But I did grow up climbing trees. There was a vacant lot full of mulberry trees that we’d climb, build forts in, pretend to run away in when we got in trouble or didn’t get the second slice of birthday cake. And I was short. Really short. My very first drivers license said that I was 4’11” and 85 pounds. I was always on the top of the pyramids and in the front row in the pictures. Bigger kids would throw me around like a rag doll, and my mall rat friends would tolerate me by patiently waiting outside of the Gap Kids store.  

Zacchaeus and I have some more things in common, besides tree climbing and being short in stature. We also both have this drive to want to prove ourselves, a competitive edge, a need to succeed and be “better” than the person next to us. In a lot of ways, Zacchaeus is the American Ideal. He’s worked the system better than any Jew; he’s pulled himself up by his bootstraps and bought his way into the power system of the Roman Empire. He has amassed for himself enormous wealth by collecting taxes from those “beneath” him, scraping a little off the top for himself as he goes. But this has put him in a precarious position. He’s hated by his fellow Jews because he has become wealthy and powerful at their expense; he’s despised and distrusted by the Roman elites above him who feared that he may become too wealthy, too powerful and threaten their own status. But Zacchaeus knew how to play the game. He may be short in stature, but he’s the big man in town. Anyone who wants to grow their business, improve their status, or better their livelihood has to go through him. One of my commentaries states, “That Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector implicates him more deeply in the corrupt tax system of the Roman Government. In a corrupt system, the loftier one’s position, the greater complicity in the system.” 

He was the chief tax collector of Jericho, fully immersed in this give and take, tit for tat, this for that culture of his time. It was a culture of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” If a favor is done, one was indebted. If you needed something, you’d better have something to offer in return. He’s the perfect politician, and he’s worked his way to the top at the expense of the poor at the bottom. Diana Butler Bass says, “This is a story about the guy who cuts in line, cheats on tests, and stuffs the ballot box in order to become class president.” This way of life has worked very well for Zacchaeus, for although he’s alone, he’s alone with all his stuff, his wealth, his prestige, his tight connections to the ruling classes. 

And yet, here he is, the supposed hero of our gospel story today. For some reason, he needs to see Jesus. For some reason, he climbs that tree. For some reason, Jesus invites himself over to his house for dinner. 

This is especially perplexing because Luke is so very hard on those with wealth in his Gospel. Unlike Matthew’s “blessed are the poor in spirit.” Luke’s Beatitudes say “blessed are the poor,” full stop. Luke’s gospel emphasizes the beloved-ness of the lowly and poverty-stricken, the oppressed and the downtrodden. And in the passage right before ours today, Jesus has just stated how hard it is for the wealthy to enter the Kingdom of God, harder than for a camel to get through the eye of a needle. 

Luke has set us up to hate Zacchaeus and everything he stands for. He’s the one doing the oppressing. He’s the one benefitting from this broken system of haves and have nots. And here he is, the hero of our story.

My favorite professor from college likes to tell this story about his daughter, who, when she was really little, once said that the word “with” is the most important word. Because you’re never not “with.” You’re with someone else or the trees or the birds or with yourself. You’re never not with. 

Except maybe for Zacchaeus. Maybe he’s not with anyone or anything. Could he be the exception to the rule of “with?” He’s hated by his community, he’s intimidating to those above him. He’s alone in the world of with. 

Zacchaeus was certainly not “with;” he’s given up all of his with-ness so that he could have stuff. But there’s something about Jesus. Zacchaeus wants to get back “with” so that he can see Jesus. We don’t really know why. Is it for bragging rights? Does he want something from Jesus? Is there a spark of faith deep inside him that is just curious to see what this man is about? We don’t know. We just know that he wants to see Jesus. So first he tries to get with the crowd. But he’s too short to see over them and too disliked to make his way through them. Rejected by the “with” of community, he tries a tree. 

He’s so desperate for some kind of with that he ignores all propriety, eschews the behavior associated with his social status, and climbs a tree, like a little kid, like when I was young and would stain my fingers with all that mulberry juice. Finally, he can see. He can see Jesus coming down the road, but he’s still separate, still alone, still tall in finances but short in everything that matters. 

“Come down from that tree,” Jesus says. “Come down.” Come down from all your prestige and social climbing, come down from your greed and your power and come have dinner with me. What a perplexing thing to do. Jesus, of lower status, a scruffy wandering ascetic who hangs out with the prostitutes and the lepers and the outcasts, invites himself over to Zacchaeus’s house for dinner. 

This upends all the social standards of the time. Zacchaeus should be the one asking Jesus over for dinner. And then Jesus will be indebted to him, and Jesus will have to find some way to pay him back. That’s how the social world is set up at this time. That’s what Zacchaeus expects. A this for that. A quid pro quo. You do something for me and I am indebted to pay you back. It’s a barter system. The beginnings of a capitalist economy. Jesus should want the prestige of having Zacchaeus over for dinner, not the other way around, and yet, here he is, rudely inviting himself over to Zacchaeus’s house, expecting all the honor and hospitality that comes with it. 

See, I think that Jesus returns Zacchaeus’s “with.” Jesus is with Zacchaeus. And the crowd is outraged. This is not at all what they have come to expect of Jesus. Out of all the lowly and struggling, out of all the pious and holy, out of all the people in that crowd who deserve to have Jesus over for dinner, Zacchaeus is the least worthy. And that’s what makes all the difference. Jesus is once again turning the tables on us all. Just when we think we’ve got Jesus figured out, just when we think we know what to expect, Jesus flips it around. He offers his “with” to the people we all love to exclude. 

Again, my commentary states, “Luke’s audience might assume that the wealth and those who rule are out, sinners and tax collectors are in. What then do we make of someone who is all of these things? […] In his characterization of Zacchaeus, Luke pulls the rug from under every cliche, every formula by which people’s status before God might be calculated.” Jesus saves those who are routinely excluded on every level.

Diana Butler Bass says, “The whole structure of society was based upon elites doing favors for those beneath them to secure political loyalty. In normal circumstances, Zacchaeus should have invited Jesus to his home. Once Jesus accepted Zacchaeus’s hospitality, then Jesus would owe Zacchaeus his gratitude, an obligation to repay the favor that had been extended to him. […] But Jesus undermined this whole gratitude business by inviting himself to Zacchaeus’s house. Jesus offered the gift of his presence to one who did not deserve it. This made Zacchaeus not a benefactor, but a beneficiary of a gift. Technically, Zacchaeus now owed Jesus something.” 

And the crowd grumbles. They gripe. They moan and complain. How dare Jesus spend time with their enemy? But Jesus isn’t done with Zacchaeus yet. Because Jesus upends the social norms and invites himself over to Zacchaeus’ house, he’s messed everything else up as well. Jesus has placed himself on the other side of Zacchaeus’s “with.” Zacchaeus isn’t alone anymore, he isn’t separate anymore, he’s not up in that tree or hidden by the crowd. He’s seen by Jesus, and when Jesus says he will eat with him today, Jesus is officially with Zacchaeus. And being seen and known by Jesus gets him to the point where he’s willing to lose everything he thought was worthwhile so that he can be on the other side of with. 

Zacchaeus responds with gratitude. His life is completely changed. Zacchaeus has found another way in his encounter with Jesus. No more tit for tat. No more quid pro quo. In fact, he goes above and beyond what he needs to do to make things right again. Butler Bass says, “Out of his sense of gratitude, Zacchaeus promised to give away half of his wealth to the poor and pay back all those whom he defrauded four times as much as he skimmed. Ultimately, it would have been impossible to give back this much money. Zacchaeus promised to bankrupt himself. In effect, he resigned his position. […] He got out of the tree - extricating himself from the Roman hierarchical structure of debt and duty.” 

And with this promise, he is suddenly with his community again. He has rejected his old paradigm and adopted an entirely new economy, from an economy of “what can I get” to an economy of “with.” Zacchaeus is back with. He’s back with his community. He’s back with his God. He’s back with himself. That’s what it means to be saved. God is on the other side of with. 

This is such good news for us, isn’t it?

Because just when we think of a way to exclude ourselves or one another, Jesus comes in and tells us to get down from that tree. Jesus invites himself over to our house. Jesus puts himself on the other side of our with. Jesus with us. Us with Jesus. This is salvation. 

Thanks be to God.