Things Fall Apart
A sermon based on Isaiah 65:17-25; Luke 21:5-19
Last week, I preached on the words of the prophet Haggai. “Build the temple,” said the prophet. “The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts; and in this place I will give prosperity, says the lord of hosts.”
We build the church because it’s an important witness in a world that finds what we do increasingly irrelevant. We build together, in an act of hope and courage.
And this week we hear very different words from Jesus about the temple. Jesus said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”
Things will fall apart. Bad things are going to happen. You will be arrested, persecuted, brought before kings and rulers, tried, punished, betrayed and put to death.
Jesus and Haggai were talking about the same temple, but at very different times in history. Haggai was encouraging people to build the temple after they had returned from Babylonian enslavement about 550 years before Jesus. The people rebuilt the destroyed temple; they restored their hope in community and in their relationship to God.
And Jesus was predicting–550 years later–that the temple would fall, that all the work of the Israelites following their captivity will be destroyed again.
The gospel of Luke was written at about the same time as the temple had been destroyed. The temple was destroyed about 40 years after Jesus was put to death, and the book of Luke was written at about the same time as the destruction of the temple. The words of Jesus were written down in this gospel at a time when Jesus’ predictions had just come to pass, when they were living in the the destruction to which Jesus spoke.
Jesus was talking about the temple destruction, but considering that this story was so close to Jesus’ life story, he’s also referring to his own destruction. He’s predicting how his own death will be. Arrested, persecuted, brought to trial before rulers….
And yet, all of this–Jesus said–would be an opportunity to testify. All of the persecution, trials and destruction will be an opportunity to speak the good news of God’s reign among us.
Persecution, destruction and trials–all opportunities to speak of God’s reign. This doesn’t sit well with me. I’m disturbed that Jesus suggests that the hard times are the opportunity to testify, that it may be a time of clarity to see God at work.
I doubt that churches that are closing their doors would see their demise as an opportunity to testify. I doubt that when we think about the possibility of our own death, that we find it easy to think about testifying to God’s love and grace.
Instead we see our wealth as a sign of good news. We see our church’s growth as as sign of success. We see our health as a sign of God blessing us and saving us.
And that doesn’t sit well with me either.
When my family prays over our dinner meal, we typically say something like, “Lord, we thank you for this food, and for our many blessings.” When we pray, we thank God, for what we have been given. But I have often wondered what people who don’t have my many blessings pray at their dinner meal. What do they testify to when their opportunity comes?
How do we testify when things are falling apart all around us? How to we speak to God’s goodness and presence when all of it falls away?
The only way we know this is when things fall apart around us, when our plans are destroyed, when our health is compromised, and when we lose it all.
This summer, my friend Mark learned he was dying. Mark was a theatre director–he loved playing with words. Writing, acting and talking about words were what he did best.
The day he learned that he had weeks to months to live, he wrote this:
Fall Apart in my backyard. THIS IS MY NEW MOTTO. This is what I want this time to be for us. Fall apart in my backyard. I’ll be your backyard you can fall apart in. You can be my backyard I can fall apart in. Let’s all fall apart in my backyard. Let’s run, fall apart, get up fall down meanwhile we keep dancing in my backyard.”
This is not a suggestion that we all cry together about what was happening. It was more like, “let’s practice letting our guard down together. Let’s practice taking the mask off and being real with each other.”
When Mark’s life was falling apart, when there was no stone left upon stone, he asked to be surrounded by his friends, to testify together to what was real and true. And in his bedroom, surrounded by medical equipment, we practiced letting our guard down, and speaking about what was real.
In that time that everything in our lives falls apart, we learn what is most important, and what is real.
This church will not be here forever. What has been built by the faithful for the last 325 years, will fall apart. This building that we love so much will not be here forever. So, what will remain when this all falls apart? To what do we testify when the brick and mortar is gone?
In the same way, all the blessings in our lives will fall away. Those material things we thank God for at our dinner table, will go away. When those things we feel most blessed by go away, what’s left? To what do we testify?
It can be overwhelming to think about our lives and our congregation being taken down, stone by stone. But in the destruction the tearing down, there are the hopeful words of the prophet, Isaiah:
I am about to create new heavens and a new earth! The things of the past will not be remembered or come to mind. Be glad and rejoice forever and ever in what i create.
Let us not be fear what may be destroyed. Let us not try to prepare, or try to hold on too tightly After everything is torn down, we can see what is most important–and to that we testify. We testify to the New Heaven and new earth we see being made, even in the middle of the destruction. We tell the story of God’s presence all the time–in the blessings and in those times when the blessings seem elusive.
To what do you testify today?
Building the Church
Sermon based on Haggai 1:15b-2:9
In the book of Haggai, the people of Israel have returned from their enslavement, and are back in their homeland. The Babylonian empire sent them home after 50 years of slavery, and provided them with resources to build their temple again, the one that had been ruined when they were taken from their homeland. This is what the people of Israel had hoped for, dreamed of, prayed for, and demanded of God. And now they had come back home from enslavement in Babylon, but things are not immediately easy. They were home, but their homes were destroyed. Their land did not seem like their land any longer.
The people of Israel were dispirited, apathetic, and indifferent. And the prophet was calling them to re-build their house of worship.
These were folks that were just trying to survive. They were just trying to take care of their families, to look out for their children, to put a roof over their heads and food on their tables.
The temple was destroyed. And after 50 years of being away, the Israelites were focused on rebuilding their families and creating stability for themselves.
And this is where the prophet Haggai comes in. We know little of Haggai historically, except for what we read in this book. What we do know is that Haggai called the community to rebuild the temple, knowing that it served a critical function in the community. In chapter one of this book, Haggai suggested that the temple needed to be rebuilt because the state of the house of God reflected the people’s relationship with God.
Haggai prophesied to a recently enslaved, and more recently released people. He’d prophesied to a tired, wary, and protective people. And he told them to rebuild that which was broken. Not just rebuild the temple, but make it more grand and more spectacular than it was before.
“The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts; and in this place I will give prosperity, says the lord of hosts.”
What does it take to rebuild that which was broken? What has to happen inside a person or group of people to continue to rebuild that which has been destroyed?
When we were in Hebron with Christian Peacemaker Teams, Ron, Charlie and I spent a few hours at a Palestinian school that was being built. We were–at the invitation of a Palestinian group called Youth Against Settlements–cleaning up the future site of a small kindergarten classroom littered by barbed wire, trash, and rocks from walls that had been knocked down. This week, I saw this little school in the news–nearly completed, it had been vandalized, covered by racist, hateful graffiti. In that same school yard last week, video was released of soldier harassing the leader of Youth Against Settlements, pushing him, and screaming in his face. He raised his hands to them–not in violence–but as a sign of his unwillingness to fight.
Youth Against Settlements will clean that graffiti of the kindergarten doors and walls. They will rebuild. And young Palestinian children will begin their education in this sweet little building. There is no doubt in my mind about that.
Last year, when Phil, Christine and I went to Far Rockaway with to help out after hurricane Sandy, we worked with a group of Amish men from Lancaster county. When things got quiet on the farm, they would work with Mennonite Disaster Service, clearing out after storms, rebuilding homes.
Christine and I couldn’t keep up with Phil and the Amish guys–we spent a good deal of our time just trying to clean up after their efficient work efforts. What was amazing on this trip is that we didn’t ask questions about the how or the why. We just knew we were there to tear down so that the people of Far Rockaway could rebuild. There was not question that rebuilding needed to happen.
The people of Hebron and the people of Far Rockaway know that rebuilding is a sign of hope. Rebuilding is a sign that people haven’t given up, that they are not discouraged, that they can see things bigger picture.
In the same way and in with that same spirit, we keep building the church. There are some days when it makes absolutely no sense to do so. There are some days when do is completely absurd. Why do we worship? Why do we have this building? Why do we put our time into creating community and interacting with each other?
Haggai reminds us that we build and create to connect with each other. We build and create to connect to God. We build this church, and do the work of God because we can’t live on our own. We can’t live in our houses in isolation. We can’t raise our children or care for our parents without each other. We sing, we worship, we share, we laugh and cry, because we are more than just individuals, we are more than the work we do, we are part of something bigger.
We are building and re-building church because it matters. It matters that we have a place to ask questions, to celebrate, to hold each other up. What we do matters.
When things get hard, it can feel like this isn’t worth doing. When relationships within this place feel strained, we want to return to our own homes, and focus on our four walls. That can feel safer than trying to build something that can be destroyed again.
Nadia Bolz-Weber, Lutheran Pastor and writer, describes what she says to new attender at her church. People come to her church because she’s cool, and her church is edgy. It’s easy for people to become enamored with the hip atmosphere at The House for All Sinners and Saints, where she is the pastor. But she tells new people–”We will let you down, we will upset you. But if you run away in the middle of the conflict and in the middle of the hard stuff, you miss the change to see resurrection happen again.”
We fear rebuilding because it’s hard work, and because it involves risk. But, building the church, showing up here week after week, is an act of hope in a world that feels hopeless. It is an act of turning to God, in a society that scoffs at reliance on anything other than ourselves. It is an act of courage, when everything about what we do defies logic and reason.
Sisters and brothers, we are building the church–with our time, with our talents and with our money. We build the church, day by day, stone by stone, an act of solidarity with God and each other, and an act of hope and courage. AMEN.
A Month of Gratitude
On facebook this month, many of my friends have taken the gratitude challenge. Every day in November, they will list those things for which they are grateful. While I don’t often participate in that online, our family does focus on that at our dinner table during November.
In the spirit of gratitude for which we turn our hearts this month, I’d like to share a few of the things that have been on my mind lately:
1. For punishments that result in a loss of screen time. When those screens go (even for the short amount of time that they are permitted on them) my kids remember the creative things that they also love. It turns out, not having access to a screen is not much of a punishment.
2. For “not enough money.” We have to say no to our kids–we don’t have the money for that exact (and expensive) winter coat she wanted, or for that expensive activity he wanted to attend–but we are grateful for what we do have.
3. For chilly weather. As the seasons change, my kids turn to their favorite activity–snuggling under the blankets. Somehow this always happens when I’m trying to fold laundry, but I’m happy to put off my laundry folding to snuggle up!
4. For moments of grace. My nine and twelve year old are learning what grace means. And when my son needs help and my daughter offers it–unsolicited–he learns about grace. When my daughter has broken something I really valued, and I give her a hug (even through clenched teeth), she learns about grace.
5. For growing up. I know, I’m supposed to savor every moment, because they grow up so fast. But today I’m grateful for kids that can walk to and from school with their friends, that can stop at the grocery store on their way home and pick up some milk for me, or that can ride their bikes up the road to spend the afternoon with friends. I’m so pleased to see my kids take on these new responsibilities with joy and enthusiasm, knowing that they are loved and trusted.
What are your moments of gratitude with your kids? What are theirs? Let’s take some time with our children this month to reflect on those things–big and small–for which we give thanks to God.
Cross posted at practicingfamilies.com