BBC sermon 15 November 2009

Mark 13:1-8  - The big stones

[SLIDE 1]

I have seen two buildings in my lifetime that have left me absolutely inspired and awe struck. In 1996 Jenny and I, together with friends from the Box Hill church spent six weeks in Nepal and India and, of course we visited the Taj Mahal in Agra [SLIDE 2]. There were eight of us in the party and we travelled from Delhi to Agra in two Ambassador taxis – the old Morris Major with a diesel motor. The only problem was that one of the taxis broke down shortly after we started the journey home and so we had eight plus the driver in a little Morris Major on a four hour trip home. Was it worth it? Was it ever! Visiting the Taj was a spiritual experience; it had an other-worldly, dream like quality like nothing else I had ever seen, and the heat and humidity only added to the atmosphere.

The other building that stopped me in my tracks was the Getty art museum near Los Angeles [SLIDE 3]. It was an absolute architectural wonder, so much so that when we had to pass through LA on another occasion we stayed an extra day just to visit the Getty [SLIDE 4, 5, 6]. John Paul Getty was a fabulously wealthy patron of the arts who bequeathed some of his multi-billion fortune to the creation of an arts museum that would always be free to the general public. It houses an amazing collection of European art [SLIDE 7], but it was the building itself that I found overwhelming. ‘What large stones, and what large buildings’. [SLIDE 8]

Buildings have a capacity to instil awe and wonder in generations of people; the pyramids; Angkor Wat; St Paul’s Cathedral; the World Trade Centre. Great buildings, it seems to me, tend to be in honour of a deity or a religious symbol. The Taj Mahal [SLIDE 9] was built by the Emperor Shah Jahan when his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal died in childbirth with their fourteenth child. He wrote these words to describe the meaning of the Taj:

Should guilty seek asylum here,
Like one pardoned, he becomes free from sin.
Should a sinner make his way to this mansion,
All his past sins are to be washed away.
The sight of this mansion creates sorrowing sighs;
And the sun and the moon shed tears from their eyes.
In this world this edifice has been made;
To display thereby the creator's glory.

[SLIDE 10]

Obviously the temple in Jerusalem, built by Herod the Great not long before Jesus lived, inspired at least one of the disciples with this sense of wonder; what buildings, what stones, what a remarkable monument – but to what exactly? Jesus didn’t diminish the significance of the temple as a place of worship; he became so angry with the traders and money exchangers who were exploiting the worshippers that he made a whip of cords and drove them out. But neither did he accord the temple the status of a sacred place – if it was sacred it was because of the people, not the building; ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.’ And indeed the temple was destroyed not many years after when the armies of Caesar Titus laid siege to Jerusalem and burned the temple to break the hearts of the Jewish population and crush the insurrection.

The conversation with an unnamed disciple about the temple buildings was obviously heard with interest by the others, especially when Jesus said that they would be destroyed. The gang of four, Peter, James, John and Andrew, want to know when will it happen, and what does it mean.

What follows is a most amazing passage filled with lurid descriptions of terrifying events; wars, earthquakes, famines, solar and lunar eclipses, meteoroid showers, and persecutions and great suffering. Religious opportunists will capitalise on the catastrophes and claim to know when the end will come – false messiahs, false prophets. Don’t believe a word of it says Jesus, they are all charlatans. There are always people who are prepared to claim special powers or special knowledge in order to influence others and gather a following.

I well remember a person in a church Jenny and I once belonged to, who claimed to have insights into what was going to happen to other people and what God wanted them to do. The favourite phrase that I heard this person use was, ‘I know that I know that I know’. How can you argue against that? This seemingly spiritual person caused more havoc in people’s lives than almost anyone else I have encountered in the church, and I confess I didn’t know how to handle it back then.

So what do we take away from this disturbing passage of Scripture?

Be very careful what you put your faith in and who you put your faith in.

Remember the passage from the Sermon in the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus says:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

What is my treasure? What is our treasure? What is of ultimate concern to us? What do we value more than anything else in the world? And Jesus says, ‘Make sure you get it right’.

I think it is a gift that this was the lectionary reading on a day when we have a church meeting, and in that meeting we will be thinking about the big decisions that we will be making in the near future about these buildings. Look what lovely ceilings and windows, look at this magnificent pulpit, this pipe organ that is listed as a significant instrument on the organ heritage list. I wonder what would Jesus say to us? I think he might say something like:

Whatever you do with these buildings, make sure it is for the sake of the Gospel, because on day there will not be one stone or brick left upon another.

[SLIDE 11]

We have come to treasure some things about the Gospel in this church that we dare not compromise as we work on the buildings:

- The Gospel is for all people and none are left out.

- The Gospel includes the people pushed to the margins in society – the poor, the wounded in body and mind, the refugees, the indigenous people whose land we are building on.

- The Gospel is about creating a community where the values of justice and inclusiveness and peace are embodied.

No building program is worth compromising any one of these values for, because these are the indicators that God is with us.

[SLIDE 12]