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.