All will be thrown down

It will all fall apart. Do you sometimes feel like this? That things are just coming apart at the seams and you can’t do a thing to stop it from happening? Do you look around and think, things are just a mess. What a mess we’re in. Do you feel occasionally sick at what you see happening around you? The lack of civility, the lack of compassion, people’s indifference to others, illnesses, sufferings, depravity, the careless waste of good things…Do you think, how can people live like that? Sometimes it’s easier to bury our heads in the sand or to blame others. We are usually better at judging and commenting than at acting and doing. Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, unless they begin to take action to confront the situation we are in. Some of you are thinking, what situation? I mean the one in which everything is falling apart. The situation in which things are not how they used to be. The situation in which what was once whole is now broken, what once had life is in decay, what once worked no longer works. You’re a soldier in training on an army base on Texas and one of your own officers opens fire in a classroom and kills 13 soldiers and wounds over a dozen others. This person’s act is linked to some extremist Muslim views, allegedly. And the implications for other Muslims in the armed services is…now the army is a diverse operation, perhaps one of the most diverse institutions we have. But we are in a war with Muslim extremists. Welcome to Chaos. Do you recall Japanese Americans being interred in camps during WWII? Diversity is risky. But sameness creates the façade of tranquility. Chaos is when the forces are at work to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy any semblance of created order. The earth was formed out of chaos, according to Genesis. And yet chaos ensues and disrupts in so many ways, personally, corporately, systemically; threatening to overwhelm us. We are living in a chaotic time. Change is happening at an exponential pace as technologies and advances in communications make it possible to take action on everything from locating friends to buying stocks from the comfort of your computer or handheld device. And yet we feel more alienated, depressed, lost. We are living in a time of great transition and flux, a time of chaos.

Things will fall apart, even here, Jesus is saying to his impressionistic young apprentices. They are amazed by the vast power and beauty, the stability and strength found in the bigness of the temple---the temple as the true center of the universe—the dwelling place of GOD, the point of contact between GOD and man, the center of commerce, politics, and religion in the middle east. Roman temples paled in comparison. This place was the national mall, the national bank, the national shrine. It was impressive. 200,000 Jews ascend the mountain for festivals. But in the midst of the chaos of humanity there is the building, the foundation, the large stones. It has history and power and invincibility---a sign that God’s people will endure. And then Jesus says, “they will all be thrown down.” And he was right. In 70 AD the Romans quelled extremist Jewish rebels by destroying the temple and sacking Jerusalem. The gospel of Mark was likely written in anticipation of the impending crisis. What could it mean that this sign of endurance, of history, of resiliency, of power was destroyed? What did 9/11 mean? An attack on American primacy and strength, from which we have not recovered. Have we? The world and our place in it was altered and we have been avoiding that truth, through the chaos of wars and economic disintegration and debate after debate about who speaks for us, is there an us, are we unified or are we primitively tribal in the face of threats. I see factionalism and politicking and isolationism and circling the wagons in every institution in our society. The game is up. All has been thrown down.

Jesus also claims that the mess will get messier. He describes a kind of hell, a time of chaos and war, a time of dissension and a time of false promises wherein people will not know where to look to see GOD, the truth, who to trust, or how to respond to the threats around us. He describes global crisis. He describes chaos. The mess we’re in. Things will fall apart, disintegrate, be thrown down. What we have built will be destroyed. What we trust, will be broken. Where we seek refuge, taken away. The rug will be pulled out from under us. What we once thought was secure, what we counted on, has been taken from us. We are exiles, all of us. There is hostility and rivalism and there is no peace. We live in a world that no longer is what it was. We live in a time that seems to have such promise and such devastation, with such uncertainty. Most thirty- something’s do not believe they will live as long as the previous generations. I feel this urgency, this expectancy, and I long for what I cannot have: stability, consistency, and the promise that things will get better. We don’t get that luxury. Owning a home and a car does not make a life now. More and more of us are just drowning in the pursuit of happiness.

Followers of Jesus are needed today more than ever to show the world what it means to live in this wilderness, this chaos, this mess, without anxiety and fear. What it means to live in it and still trust that Jesus is LORD; that GOD is in our midst; that Jesus promises new life, new creation, a reversal of fortunes, a time of Jubilee, a time of revival and renewal and resurrection and relief. Not through some escapist coping strategy---other Christians have taken this approach by hiding out in their churches with their safe church friends and their judgmental rejection of others. They’re trying to create their own stability. All will be thrown down. There is no escape, no safe place, no refuge from the storm, no stillness. There is chaos and there is dismantling of what we once believed and trusted in. Even our church buildings, our sanctuaries, are marginal places for a few survivors of a kind of Christianity that has past away. All will be thrown down.

So, what do we have? We have Jesus. That was all the 1st Christians had and all we have now. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. May you come to know Jesus, the temple, the shelter, the rock and cornerstone, the one in whom God dwells fully. And may you live in the chaos by following Jesus. Amen.