Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Pentecost 24, November 19, 2006
The Rev. Melissa Skelton
Mark 13:1-8
As Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, `I am he!' and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.
For some reason, the books and plays and poems we read in junior and senior high school stay with us forever.
And so the playful, topsy-turvy world of Shakespeare’s As You Like It lives in my imagination to this day on account of my reading it in the 9th grade. Likewise, from my 10th grade literature class, the young narrator’s voice in the novel A Separate Peace reverberates in my consciousness. And finally, rising up from senior English, Shelley’s poem entitled Ozymandias still has the power to shock me.
Shelley’s poem is a sonnet, a mere 14 lines long, describing a stone statue of a king discovered in the desert. All that’s left of the statue are two massive legs, part of the statue’s arrogant and sneering face sunk down in the sand nearby, and a pedestal bearing these words:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
The poem goes on after this:
“Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.
Yes, the poem Ozymandias still has the power to shock me. For what the poem confronted my young mind with then, what the poem confronts readers’ minds with now, is that all the things we believe will last forever are transitory. Everything we make, everything we build, everything we trust in, everything we hold dear will pass away.
Jesus it seems is trying to make a similar point in our gospel for today. He and the disciples have just come out of the temple where only a few moments before they watched as a poor widow dropped two copper coins into the treasury, prompting Jesus to comment that these two small coins are the largest and most impressive contribution of the day.
But, as usual, the disciples miss the point, focusing instead on what is large and impressive in their own eyes and the eyes of the world. And so we’re told, as Jesus emerges from the temple, one of the disciples invites him to admire and comment on the size of that temple.
“Look, Teacher,” he says, “what large stones and what large buildings!”
Jesus is unimpressed. Not only does he not admire the temple, he asks the disciples “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
The temple will be destroyed, he tells them, but unlike Shelley’s poem, this destruction and other chaotic events yet to happen have a meaning and a purpose beyond the relentless and grinding transitory nature of life. They are instead, as Jesus says, birth pangs for a new way that God will come into the world, birth pangs preceding God visiting God’s own people.
And so I got to thinking about temples in our world—the religious, political and economic institutions we yearn to trust. And got to thinking about our own personal temples—the places where we enshrine all that is important to us, the places where we keep our unshakable truths, our most precious self-image, our firmest convictions, our most valuable relationships. I began to think about our temples, and as I thought about them, in my mind’s eye, I could feel their power and I could see them rising up from the ground, towering above everything else--What large stones and what large buildings!
And I began to think about the times when our temples come tumbling down, when religious, political and economic institutions fail us, when some of our truths no longer hold, when an important relationship comes apart or ends, when our image of ourselves is challenged at the deepest level, when something small happens and life caves in on us or seems to break into a thousand pieces.
How do we get to the place of experiencing these as birth pangs, signaling the coming of something new and life-giving instead of merely the grinding, relentless fact of the transitory nature of human life? How do we get there?
My belief is that we need a tribe to do this. I will even go so far as to say that we need this tribe to do this.
· We need a tribe that tells and retells the story of the Holy One who said yes to this strange and wonderful mortal life and even to death itself, discovering it was the path that led to life
· We need a tribe with a collective energy and power that can carry us, a tribe that gathers around a weekly meal at which all are welcome and all are on equal footing
· We need a tribe that through its bowing and kneeling, through its incense and song, through its silence and stillness, gives us a sense of wonder and over time the ability to see our lives as a gracious and unfolding mystery.
· We need a tribe that will send us renewed into a world where political, economic, cultural and religious temples are being cast down every day, where the lives of many are being broken into a thousand little pieces.
And that, of course, is what this stewardship Sunday is really all about. Yes, we have a building, utilities and salaries to take care of about, all of which are important, but at the center of why we give what we do to this place is a tribe, this utterly holy and human tribe that sustains us, that reminds us, that challenges us to see the tumbling of temples in our lives and in the world as the way by which God is remaking and recreating everything, doing it one stone at a time or even one shard at a time.
And so I’ll end with a story about shards and remaking—it’s a story told to me years ago by the now Dean of a very large temple--Washington National Cathedral. At the time he was the rector of another St. Paul’s in Hyde Park, Illinois, just south of Chicago. I was a graduate student at the University, but more importantly I was a person trying to pick myself up and go on with life after the recent destruction of a number of my temples. It’s a story about God as mother, God as the one who recreates the world when things change, when temples tumble, when life crashes.
One day a child was walking down the hall of an elementary school. School was over for the day, and in his hands he had a small, brightly colored ceramic bowl, one he had made himself during art class for his mother. Now, of course, this was a special bowl, hand-made, slightly misshapen and garishly decorated, the kind of thing every parent prizes and spends years trying to figure out what to do with. The boy was excited to find his mother and give her what he had made, and so he began to run. As he did this, he dropped the bowl and broke it into a thousand pieces. He began to cry, and everyone tried to comfort him. “It was just a bowl.” They said. “You can always make another one.” But the boy was inconsolable. Finally, his mother arrived. She saw what happened, put her arms around him and let him have his cry. Then after a while she said, “Let's pick up all of the pieces. We’ll take them home, put them together and see what new thing we can make out of it.”
Works Cited or Consulted
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822
