Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

The Worship of God · November 15, 2009

Litany of Praise and Invocation

From Psalm 16  

Protect us, O God; in you do we take refuge.

     The Lord is our chosen portion and cup.

Life has fallen into good places because of it.

     The Lord is our chosen portion and cup.

We bless the Lord, source of council, we shall not be moved.

     The Lord is our chosen portion and cup.

Let us pray:

     In your presence is fullness of joy;

     In your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Amen.

New Testament Lesson

Mark 13:1-2

As he 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.”

Message

Scattered Stones

Tim Carson

 Once upon a time, there was a church that had a building program. They went through all the things one must do to accomplish an oversized goal like building. First, there was the self-study and the needs assessment. Next, there was actually compiling the plans and the scale models. Then finally, they entered the fund-raising portion of the campaign in which they asked everyone to give generously to the project. Over the course of the next 12 months, they constructed this handsome new building, and it was a beauty. The stone façade was impressive and the interior finishings were especially warm and inviting. There was in this building a harmonious balance between aesthetic beauty and functionality; it was lovely while achieving practical objectives for the congregation.

 Finally the day came to dedicate the building, and there was a large gathering, and many speeches were made. In addition, the chair of the building project got up, thanked people for attending, and then said, “I know how impressed you all are with this structure and what we’ve accomplished because you’ve told me so. And I also know how this fulfills a dream for our congregation. But I would be remiss on this occasion if I didn’t tell you one thing and it is this: In time, there won’t be one stone left standing on another. I’m not sure how or when, but all this is coming down, and in a million years it will just be part of the rubble upon which some other civilization will stand.”

Then he sat down.

 How’s that for a little celebration speech? If you can imagine the wet blanket that would have doused the enthusiasm of that occasion, then just imagine how the disciples must have received Jesus’ words about the temple. 

Jesus and his disciples were in Jerusalem, spending time on the temple mount. And Jesus was observing all the doings of the temple and sharing his insights with his disciples. There was the pompous way the religious elites paraded their piety while disregarding the poor. He told his followers to watch the sacrificial giving of one widow woman who gave all she had while the noise of all the conspicuous donations of the wealthy drowned her out. Then came the zinger.

 One of the disciples said, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings” (13:1).

 That disciple must have sounded like a farm boy on his first visit to the big city. Wow, the lights, the action, the skyscrapers! Or did he sound like an American tourist strolling through his first European cathedral? He staggers around, “How lovely! How magnificent!”

 It wasn’t the first time that Jesus delivered some shock therapy, but they couldn’t have been prepared for his words: “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down” (13:2).

 Ashes, ashes, they all fall down. That’s like a tour guide in the nation’s capital ending comments about the Washington monument with a terse reminder that it won’t always be there. What’s that about?

 To begin with, it was straight talk about the nature of empires, religious or other. Empires rise and they fall. They expand and they contract. They grow and they shrink. Civilizations rise and fall. Anything we build eventually gets un-built. Jesus’ message, of course, was that the kingdom of God doesn’t rise and fall like the empires of this world. And you shouldn’t deify anything made with human hands – even for religious purposes. It’s a form of idolatry to do that, to take something that is relative and contingent, and raise it to the level of the eternal. We tend to endow our own creations with too much eternal significance.

 Haven’t we all experienced this in our own lives?

 I remember growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, and spending a lot of time at my grandparents’ home. There was television in the living room and actually eating on TV trays (a real luxury for us!). One time I had a bowl of oatmeal on the TV tray. I bumped it, and it went off onto my grandmother’s carpet, which is why you shouldn’t eat in the living room in front of the TV on a TV tray. We played in the mysterious attic where all the musty things are kept. I remember going down into the basement where my grandfather’s workshop was, there amidst the smells of sawdust and 3-in-1 Oil. On summer evenings, we rolled down the embankment of the front lawn as it terraced down toward the road. And we ran in twilight chasing after fireflies in the backyard. There was the old well in the back that we would always beg to take off the top so we could look down in. Then there way my grandmother’s garden out beyond the long clothesline where she grew asparagus by the back fence. When it was in season, she took her scissors to cut the asparagus off and bring them in. I remember watching her cook it on the stovetop.

 In my young mind and for years to come, that place took on a kind of eternal presence in the world. It just always had to be there, even after my grandparents died. But years passed as they do, and some 25 years later, I returned to their street looking for the old home place. I couldn’t find it, because that whole side of the street had been covered over by a strip shopping center.

 I walked along the edge of the center until I came to the end and there – between the center and the building next door was open ground. I walked this ground and started finding foundation stones and traces of the house that used to be there. It was the foundation of my grandparents’ home. And I found the garage markers, the well, and even the sloping yard out back. But the house was gone and everything within it. The only thing that lasted was my memory of it.

 This was a lesson in “Impermanence 101,” that is, nothing lasts forever. As Isaiah puts it, “The flower fades, the grass withers, but the word of the Lord lives forever.” Most things in life, regardless of how stationary we presume them to be, pass away. “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide…”

 Have you ever followed the Buddhist monks who go about designing their sand Mandelas? A Mandela is an intricate geometric design that holds spiritual symbolism. They spend hours and hours meditatively placing each grain of sand it its place in order to construct this figure of beauty and spiritual import. And do you know what they do at the end of each? No, they don’t try to somehow preserve it and put it in a museum somewhere. Rather, they destroy it. Why? Because nothing is permanent. Everything passes away. We only have the illusion of permanence. 

 Some of our greatest unhappiness comes as we labor under the illusion of permanence, the illusion that things will somehow stay the same. They never will. And our grasping to keep it the same leads to a kind of suffering.

 So whether it is my grandparents’ house, or the sand Mandela, or the Jerusalem temple, not one stone will be left standing on another.

 Just recently, I was out horseback riding, and as I passed through a valley, I looked from left to right and beheld the river, the bluffs, the trees, and the land … and I realized as I have many times before that they will all outlast me. I’m passing through. I’m a visitor. I’m a guest. And hopefully during my brief visit, I will know the harmony of being one with all this and even united to forces of the universe, what Jesus called the reign of God, and that transcends anything that is created. 

 One time I was gazing at the Andes mountain range in Ecuador and turned to one of my Ecuadorian friend and said, “The mountains will all outlast us.” And he said, “And God outlasts the mountains.”

 Jesus looked at the great temple, turned to his disciples and said, “See these stones? Not one will be left standing on another.”

 This really begs the question: So why bother to build, to create, to endeavor, to care? Why bother? It is all passing away. I think the answer is in the little word, why. That is, why do we do what we do?

Once you know that nothing is forever, including yourself, then you can really commit yourself with abandon to the purposes of God – but for the right reasons. Your commitment will not come because you have any assurances about the permanence of what you are creating. You will create, build, and endeavor in order to be faithful to the call of God in this present moment without asking, “Will this last forever?”

 The answer is, “No.” You are not going to wait for that before you build.

 Kent Keith wrote a poem that I love. Some attribute it to Mother Theresa, but that is not true. If you read Mother Theresa and this, you know it’s from two different hands, two different minds. I love it; listen.

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
be successful anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
give the world the best you have anyway.

You see in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
it was never between you and them anyway.

 The truth is that once we embrace the spiritual truth of impermanence, we’ll find our true freedom. We will do more with more integrity than we ever did while we were clinging to the illusion of permanence. Our giving will be more pure and our offering more unselfish and less cluttered with ulterior motives. When we become focused on doing the right thing for its own sake, living for God’s kingdom that can’t be seen, then what we do in the here and now is transformed. When we discover that we are in this world but not of it, we become God’s most effective agents in the work of transformation. We are freed to live by a wholly different order of values, principles, and goals.

 Since we are talking about paradoxes, here is another one: Just because something is falling apart, it doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing. It can mean suffering and loss, but that loss may be the prelude to something that needs to be born. Have you ever felt like your life is falling apart or, at least, a portion of your life is falling apart? I have.  Sometimes that becomes the greatest gift you have received. After the stones have tumbled, room is made for God’s transformation in our lives and in the world. Sometimes falling apart is the very best thing.

 I like the way that Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz puts it (Parabola, Winter 09, 72-75):

 “When you go up a ladder, you cannot continue to stand on the lower rung. Just try that. On a ladder, you have to give up your place on one rung in order to get to the next. So change always means losing one thing, and getting another.”

 So you see if we are tied to a notion of permanence, believing that everything should stay the same, it keeps us from moving up the ladder, taking the next step, for fear of losing our imagined security on the previous rung. When we are spiritually free, we don’t fear losing the last foothold.

 I am no rock climber (now THAT would be funny … and disastrous!), but I understand that courage comes in making one move after another in which you must give up the security of one foothold or handhold for the next uncertain one.

 I know I have been amazed to watch the circus performers on the flying trapeze soaring in the top of the big tent. You’ll remember how there are two partners working together – the flyer and the catcher. The catcher is stationary on one swing, receiving the flyer who must let go of his swing and fly through the air and be caught by the catcher and then back again to his own swing. For the flyer, there is that moment of time in between, after they have let go of the security of their own swing but before arriving in the safety of the catcher, a time when they are flying by faith alone.

 All of this – whether climbing a ladder, or rock climbing, or flying on the trapeze – requires letting go in order to embrace the new. It’s hard. It’s risky. But it’s the only way to transformation, a whole new place, new level, new reality.

 And that’s the other side of Jesus saying that not one stone of the temple will be left standing on another. The answer is not to be found in these stones that pretend to be permanent. The answer is in the flying you will experience beyond them. And that requires a risk-taking faith by risk-taking Christians within a risk-taking congregation. It’s the way to God’s transformed future, on the other side of scattered stones.

 Thanks be to God. Amen.

Benediction

 Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship and communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.