Sunday, November 17, Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
“Not One Stone Left Upon Another”
Psalm 16; Daniel 12:1-3; Hebrews 10:11-25; Mark 13:1-13
Divine Service IV with Holy Communion
Hymns… #645 “Built on the Rock”; #563 “Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness”; #575 “My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less”
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.
I read a story this week about a family on a beach vacation, somewhere on the shoreline of South Carolina. They’d never been to see the ocean before. Their six-year-old son and his younger sister spent an entire happy afternoon building a magnificent sandcastle – or as magnificent as a six-year-old can manage to make it, anyway. The children had to come inside and go to bed when the sun went down, of course; and then in the morning, they ran out first thing to see their castle… Their parents said you could hear the wail of shock and disappointment for miles up and down the beach when they realized it was… gone. No one had told them about waves and wind and tides.
We human beings, delusional as we are, like to build things that we think will last forever. Some of those beautiful beachside homes along that same Atlantic shoreline get taken by storms and hurricanes now and again. Part of the problem is that our lives are short, and our perspectives are small, as far as time goes. We think a hundred years, or even 500 years, is a long time; but that’s just a drop in the bucket, compared to time and eternity. All we can really manage to do is make a little mark, a scratch on the surface, that time and tides will soon erase. Will the house you’re living in now still be there, one hundred or five hundred years from now? Kind of makes you feel small, doesn’t it?
We do love our monuments. Our Lincoln Memorials, our Capitol domes, our Mt. Rushmore’s, our skyscrapers, our Eiffel towers, our onion-domed Kremlins, our Taj-Mahal’s; those things are going to be there forever, long after we’re gone, aren’t they? They thought the same thing about Greek temples and Roman Coliseums, and the Tower of Babel. It’s all castles in the sand. OK, the pyramids are still there; but the people and kingdom that built them are long gone.
The poet Percy Shelley wrote a poem called “Ozymandias.” In the poem, a man is traveling though the desert, and he comes upon a giant statue, half buried in the sand; and the head of the statue had fallen to the ground. The man reads the inscription on the statue, and it says, “I am Ozymandias, king of kings! Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Jesus, as He walked in this world, was all about changing our perspective, and helping us see the bigger picture. He came to a world that had forgotten God, and was busy building monuments to itself instead; and He tried to get us to turn our minds and our hearts to eternity – from the things that won’t last, to the things that will.
In last week’s Gospel, Jesus and His disciples had been walking through that beautiful Jerusalem temple, built of massive white stones, ten stories tall - the one that had taken King Herod 46 years to enlarge and rebuild, the one the proud Jews were sure was going to be there forever. They’d watched as the rich people came to put their money in the temple treasury box, and then as a poor widow came and dropped in her last pennies; and Jesus told them that the poor widow had put in a gift worth more than all the rest.
And then as they were leaving the temple, one of Jesus’ disciples said to Him, "Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!" Isn’t it awesome? Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it something to be proud of? And here’s where Jesus begins to change their perspective. "Do you see all these great buildings?" replied Jesus. "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down." Our perspectives are short, but our Lord’s perspective is not. He’s the One “who was and who is and who is to come,” the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. He knew what the future was going to bring. Jesus was crucified, raised from the dead, and ascended into heaven, in the year 33 A.D. Thirty-seven years later, in 70 A.D., the Romans finally grew tired of the rebellious Jews, and came to Jerusalem with their armies and legions, and razed that beautiful temple to the ground. They rounded up the high priests, elders and rulers of Jerusalem and crucified them, and killed all the Jews they could find.
After leaving the temple that day, Jesus and His disciples crossed the Kidron Valley and went up on the Mount of Olives. From there they could look across the valley, and see the Jerusalem temple dominating the skyline, bright and white and shining in the sun. The disciples were frightened, dumbfounded, horrified, at what Jesus had said, because they couldn’t conceive of a time or a place, or any possible way, that that symbol of permanence, solidness and stability could suddenly be gone. Like trying to picture the New York skyline without the twin towers…
Peter, James, and Andrew came to Jesus, looking for a little comfort, I think, a little reassurance. Tell us, Lord, when will these things happen? Will we still be alive to see it? Will it happen in our own lifetimes, or long after we’re gone? (Only John was still living by 70 A.D., by the way; Peter, James and Andrew and the rest of the disciples had all been martyred by that time.) And Lord, what signs can we look for beforehand, so we can know when it’s time to run, or fight, or hide?
And here Jesus talks about perspective again, about how short our lives are, and about how patient God is, as He brings the history of this world to its final, glorious conclusion. Jesus said, “Behold, I am making all things new”; but that’s a process, something that will happen in God’s good timing. The thing will go the way God wants it to go; and for our part, we’re only called to be faithful.
Jesus warns His disciples, "Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in My name, claiming, ‘I am He!’ and will deceive (or mislead) many.” There’s a lot of ‘misinformation’ out there about Jesus, whether deliberately or by lack of knowledge about the truth. Our enemy Satan wants it that way, ‘father of lies’ that he is. Apostle John, in 1st John 5, writes: “This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” “We preach Christ crucified,” St. Paul says. We believe and preach and teach that Jesus Christ was and is the Son of God, who was crucified for the sake of our sins, and raised to life on the third day, and that He’s coming again to judge us and all the world one day very soon. That’s the truth, that’s the confession that amounts to saving faith, and there’s no other substitute for it or any other way to be saved. Anyone who tells you anything different has been deceived or is a liar.
There’s a popular contemporary Christian radio station a lot of people listen to; I do too, sometimes. The music is uplifting and good, but you have to be careful when you listen to the words. One song that’s popular right now says, “Jesus looks at me, and He wouldn’t change a thing.” No, no, no. That’s wrong; that’s really bad theology. Jesus looks at us and loves us as we are, that’s true - but He loves us way too much to leave us as we are. Jesus very clearly preached about sin and the consequences of it. He was clear about heaven, but He was also clear about a real and fiery hell. Jesus’ message was about repentance and turning away from sin, and about the blood He shed on a cross to bring forgiveness to us. He never said we were OK just the way we are. Instead He called us to confess our sins and repent and be born again, and to be changed from the inside out.
This world is full of different religions, different denominations, and different churches that claim the name of Jesus Christ. Be careful. Our Lutheran Church teaches that the true Church exists “wherever the Gospel of Jesus Christ is taught truthfully, and where the Sacraments are administered according to God’s command.” If you walk into a church that isn’t doing those things, walk away again. “Watch out that no one deceives you.” Know your Bible. Cross-check me, I don’t mind. If you hear something in one of my sermons that doesn’t sound right, let me know, and we’ll talk about it. (There’s an outside chance I might be wrong about something, and if I am, I’ll apologize!)
It's so important that we cling to our precious faith and continue to live in God’s truth, because the world around us is just plain nuts. Jesus knew what would happen to the Jerusalem temple, and to all the monuments we humans in our arrogance would put up after that. He knew about all the conflicts and battles and world wars to come, and that His people would have to live through them. He knew about human pride and greed, and about some men’s love for deceitful diplomacy and dirty politics, and about the disasters those things always lead to. “Such things must happen,” He says, “but the end is still to come.”
The earthquakes and famines Jesus talks about have been happening for as long as there’s been a world. Whether or not there are more of them than there used to be, I don’t know; it’s hard to say. Jesus, curiously enough, calls those things “the beginning of birth pains.” St. Paul says in Romans 8, “The whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” God is in the process of creating – of giving birth – to something really wonderful. His plan, from the beginning, has been to bring us all to a perfect paradise, to a heaven beyond belief, where sin is gone and peace is real and love is everything. But we’re not there yet, any more than a pregnant woman has yet to deliver her baby. Before the moment of joy comes the necessary pain.
Jesus says in our Gospel: “You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of Me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them.” Jesus, again with that power of His to see the future and everything that’s to come, gives us a picture of the life of His Church on earth for these last 2000 years. Those first disciples were martyred – flayed and beaten, beheaded and murdered, burned at the stake – because they wouldn’t stop telling the truth about Jesus. And God’s faithful people have been persecuted and abused for the sake of their faith in all the years since. We’ve had it easy here in America, compared to what some of our brothers and sisters around the world have gone through, and are still going through; but it may not always be that way. “Be on your guard,” Jesus says.
“The gospel must first be preached to all nations,” Jesus says. When our turn comes to testify before governors and kings - or before a neighbor, or before our families at the Thanksgiving table, “to testify” is our purpose, and why God has put us here. In the clearest, kindest, lovingest way possible, we’re here to tell the truth we’ve come to know about Jesus, crucified, risen, and coming again. A little scary sometimes? Sure; still needs to be done, though. Pray first, ask God for help, and the Spirit will give you the words to say and the courage to say them.
Will everyone like or appreciate it? No; that’s the painful part. Especially when it comes to the brothers and fathers and children and parents Jesus talks about – it’d be easier most of the time just to keep our mouths shut, not bring up God or Church or religion, for the sake of “not making Uncle John mad.” That isn’t being faithful, though – or loving, either. “Friends don’t let friends go to hell.” At least, not without trying to do something about it.
“All men will hate you because of Me,” Jesus says. That’s part of the birth pains, part of the “getting there.” We live in age where saying, “Jesus is Lord” can get you cancelled, or kicked off social media, or fired, and where daring to say, “We’re saved by faith in Christ alone” can get you charged with a hate crime. Pointing out sin makes people mad. Telling them they need to repent and change their hearts makes them madder still. Jesus pointed at that magnificent temple, and told them all it would soon be gone. That’s one of the things they crucified Him for. Telling people their cherished monuments and towers are turning to dust, or that some treasured belief or philosophy of theirs is wrong or untrue, isn’t going to win us any friends in the world. But the truth is what it is.
“He who stands firm to the end will be saved,” Jesus says. To stand firm to the end means “to endure.” It means to be faithful no matter what happens. It means to last, and to outlast, every lie the devil tries to tell us, and every disaster the world throws at us. The writer of Hebrews tells us, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.” And prophet Daniel says, “Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.”
Help us, O Lord, to put our faith and our hope and our trust in the things that matter and the things that last. Help us to trust in You, Lord Jesus, as our Rock and our Refuge, even as the monuments of this world shake and quake and fall away. Help us to keep our hearts from the love of temporary things, and to keep our eyes on the glory that’s coming for those who remain faithful and true to Your Word. We pray for those who have yet to come to faith, especially those brothers and sisters near and dear to us. May our faithful and loving witness bring them all home to You. In Jesus’ name; Amen.