Sermon, 11/17/24: Do not believe everything that you think!

26 Pentecost

Canticle: (I Sam. 2: 1–10); I Samuel 1: 4–20; Hebrews 10: 11–25; 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!’ Mark 13:1

Good People of St. James, these last weeks have been submerged in rhetoric, as well as behavior, which has challenged our belief, the spiritual and psychological and emotional equilibrium of people of faith—and that includes you and me.  And I cannot ignore the personal day-to-day assaults on our own activities.  Yet, I stand with humble certainty that, as believers in Christ, God’s Messiah, you and I still have a mission, an assignment before us.  And put in the simplest of terms, our assignment is to be a witness (to use a term from my previous life), to be a witness to the never-ceasing love which our Creator God has for our creation, a creation consisting of individuals and the aggregate.  You and I stand under authority!

On Friday afternoon at an electric traffic signal, while driving from Stop & Shop Supermarket in my town, I came alongside an SUV which sported a sticker that read: “Do not believe everything that you think.”  I chuckled aloud and wondered why I could not have thought of and copyrighted that catchy phrase.  Did the author of this pithy phrase have in mind the turmoil of these last weeks?  And as I sat at my desk, contemplating the lectionary appointed for this 26^th Sunday after Pentecost, I read again the following from the Gospel according to St. Mark:

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.’  Mark13:1ff.

Imagine, if you would, how upsetting that response must have been for that unidentified disciple!  Did I not see myself mirrored in his surprise and probable consternation which has hovered above me these last days?  With the SUV’s catchy phrase still fresh in my mind, an unanswered and unanswerable question occurred to me.  Was the response which Jesus gives this unnamed disciple his way of saying “Do not believe everything that you think”?  Given what we know about the character and ambitions of Peter, James, John, and Andrew (who later came privately to Jesus), we can speculate what was on their minds: ‘What will replace this temple if you destroy it and rebuild it in three days?  Where will we fit in, in all this?’  All appropriate questions from those men who had given up all that they had in order to establish the kingdom of God as Jesus had described it to them. 

I know not what the unnamed disciple thought when he expressed his awe and wonderment of the great edifice before him.  Let us not forget that the group closest to Jesus were not city dwellers, but were the blue-collar men of their era, from small villages that did not sport stone buildings with spires.  We know that they did not wear fine clothing and received invitations to banquets in buildings inhabited by the upper crust of their society.  But I could and can imagine, or suggest, several thoughts because you and I have been in that disciple’s situation at one time or other in our own lives.   

Recently, as I watched on YouTube the consecration of the new bishop of the Diocese of New York, the camera scanned the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, a building second only in size to the Basilica in Rome.  For decades nicknamed by New Yorkers “St. John’s The Unfinished,” it took a fire to reignite the push to finish this beautiful, awe-inspiring structure. And the restoration took over a decade.  Stone carvers, required for a project of this nature, are in slight supply in the USA.  And we cannot ignore the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris which essentially was demolished in our own time by fire, but which was reopened just prior to the summer Olympics 2024.  We know, as well, that cathedrals took centuries to build, and that the original architect/builder never lived to see his work in its completed form.  But I digress.

What thoughts went through the mind of the unnamed disciple, I do not know!  Just sheer wonderment for sure, but looking up at and amazed by the size and material of the Temple, could he perhaps have thought, ‘Our religion is better than that of neighboring Syria!  Our God is stronger than those of Egypt!  Our temple attests to our future.  We will make Israel Great Again.’  What did the unnamed disciple think?  The feelings which prompted this exclamation surely gave rise to other feelings and questions.  And Jesus’ response was, like the sign on the SUV, ‘Do not believe everything that you think!’

Theologians more learned than I, especially as they read the words, “I shall tear down this temple and rebuild it in three days, state with biblically-based validity that Jesus was attempting to show what kind of death he was to die.  One of the gospellers stated as such.  However, I propose another understanding of Jesus’ concern, especially as presented to us in today’s gospel.  I propose an urgency, a this-earth-centered directive that we dare not ignore.

What was so distressing to Jesus, first ,about the unnamed disciple’s reaction to seeing the imposing Temple in Jerusalem and, second, about the hidden agenda of Peter, James, John and Andrew?  What did they think, i.e. believe—that that building was the dwelling place of God?

On the surface, nothing about their praise of the beauty of the Temple should have upset Jesus.  Religious Hebrews were expected to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem.  The Temple was holy as it was dedicated to God.  None of us had the privilege of seeing the Temple that stood in Jesus’ day.  However, this much we know: it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God.  That is to say, it was architecturally pleasing to the eye.  Millions who travel to Rome to see the Sistine Chapel or who visit the Cathedral in Florence, Italy, stand in awe.  In Florence, one can climb, step by dizzying step, into the tower that stands separated from the church itself, and view the architectural beauty of cathedral and terra firma, earth, from a different perspective.  Make a pilgrimage to our own National Cathedral, the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, in Washington, D.C., and you will surely understand the awe of the unnamed disciple. 

May I be so bold as to suggest that we have nearby other cathedrals no farther than five miles away from Teele Square, not of a religious nature, but which, nevertheless, call up within us the awe and wonderment similar to those of the unnamed disciple. 

We do not have in Boston the tall cathedrals of Manhattan or in the UK, but we have the gilded dome of our capitol, the Pru (Prudential Building) and the John Hancock Building, and these edifices are not the tallest in the Boston skyline.  We do not worship in those places, at least not in a traditional sense.  However, do we not stand in awe and wonderment of what we have accomplished and what might and power they show to the world?”  And only a few hundreds of miles away, but still reachable in a day’s journey, or within hours should we fly, does not our National Capitol, built by slaves but desecrated by insurrectionists—do these buildings not evoke memories of temples built to honor Greek and Roman god?

So, why should Jesus become upset?  If he claims to be the Son of God, why would he not want God to be housed in splendor?  To answer that question requires only a reminder of the Magnificat, the Song of Mary.  In that praise of God is to be found Jesus’ rejection of what the Temple had come to signify.  Mary sings: “He (God) has put down the mighty from their seat.”  Religion, as it would appear, at least on the surface, was reserved for the rich.  It was, and still is for us Christians today, that which disturbed Jesus.  And what did the Temple signify.  Biblical Israel, for all our desire to elevate that nation above all nations, was no less a classed society than is today the United States of America.  The poor were not truly welcomed to share in the beauty, for they could not afford a wedding garment, i.e. their attire gave them away as being not worthy of remaining in the temple precincts, except to pay their dues.  That symbol of privilege had to be not simply dismantled, but eradicated!

And that is where we come in, you and I.  That is where we are reminded by the words of Christ, even in our own troubled times, that we have an assignment.  We must not shirk away from building that temple of God not made by human hands.  I have shared with some of you a manifestation of real temple building.  Prior to the pandemic, I believed that I encountered a temple not made by hands, the kind which Jesus proposed and which the Prophet Isaiah envisaged.  It was a Friday afternoon, when I took the 71 bus from my home in Watertown into Harvard for a review session in German with several students at the Science Center.  For the 15-minute ride, I stood, not because there were no seats, but because I would be sitting for ca. 2 hours behind a desk.  And because I stood, I witnessed temple building in its living miniature form. 

At the Watertown/Cambridge line where Star Market is situated, a woman laden with a pizza box, her own heavy shoulder bag, and a paper CVS bag boarded the bus.  As she sat down, the CVS bag ripped and its contents spilled onto the floor.  A woman sitting opposite her bent over from her seat and retrieved several of the items and returned them to the woman.  Seated next to woman #1, a third woman reached into her own bag, pulled out a plastic bag and gave it to woman #1.  “Thanks” and “you’re welcome” were exchanged.  And then a conversation developed between woman #1 and woman #3.  When the three women began to alight from the bus at Harvard, thanks were again exchanged, and I thought, Butler, that was why the Prophet Isaiah was so giddy, so effusive of praise of God’s new Jerusalem and what Jesus wanted his disciples, and anyone else who might be listening, to understand.  God’s temple was established and magnified in people, not in a stone structure. 

On a random Friday evening, God was in that place, in a temple not made by hands.  Three quite different woman, each previously unknown to the other and to the rest of us on that bus, demonstrated the Good News proclaimed by Christ, namely God the Creator seeks to build community, to reunite us all to God, but using human actions to bring it about.  Woman #1 was African American.  Woman #2, judging from her attire, was Muslim.  Woman #3, from her appearance and accented English, was Asian.

Serious commitment, not to talking but to doing, is what God has called us to be about, living out the values of love and justice each day of our lives.  And frankly, as a mere parish priest, I do not think that God is too terribly interested in our rhetoric or even, dare I say, in our theology, or our buildings, however much we need them and appreciate them.

The sticker on the window of the SUV read: ‘Do not believe everything that you think.’  That was precisely the message, so I believe, which Jesus imparted to his disciples, and even us.  The glory of and to God is not to be found or constrained in and by a building, however magnificent the Temple may be architecturally.  In our anxieties, in our fears of may or may not occur in our individual lives and in the collective life of these United States, my faith is reinforced by words of Scripture: ‘whatever you do to the least of these…you do it unto me.’ ‘By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”    ‘God so loved the world that he sent Christ not into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him, might be saved.’

So, if not there, where?  What, indeed, are the true stones out of which the temple of God is made?  That question remains as stark, unadorned, and as penetrating today, as it did then.  The Good News of Jesus of Nazareth is: Each of us carries within ourselves a different kind of stone, one that contributes to that temple not made by hands.   I repeat; You and I, as people of faith, stand under authority that says we are to witness God’s love, not to cower in fear and resignation.  And to that our Creator God who entrusts us with this crucial building block, I utter my humble thanks and sing high praise.  Amen