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Remembrance Sunday
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Scripture citation(s): Mark 13:1-8
A Sermon by
Fr. Austin
on
Mark 13:1-8
✛
We Know Not When Jesus Will Come Again
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The temple in Jerusalem, built under Herod, was “admirable for its massive dimensions and handsome style” [so Gundry, Mark, 735]. In today’s gospel, one of Jesus’ disciples, leaving the temple in Jerusalem with Jesus, is so impressed with the temple that he exclaims: Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!
For the past three days, Jesus has been living with his disciples in Bethany [Mk 11:11] on the outskirts of Jerusalem. On the first day, he entered the city riding on a colt, and the people greeted him by spreading their garments and strewing tree branches before him, and they cried “Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord” [11:7-9]. That day Jesus went into the temple, looked around, and then went back to Bethany.
On the second day, Jesus entered the temple with deliberation and cast out the buyers, sellers, moneychangers, and dove-merchants. Thereby Jesus became instantly notorious to the temple rulers; the scribes and chief priests sought some way to destroy him. Yet, for now a free man, Jesus left the city again for the night.
On the third day, Jesus did much teaching in and around the temple. He parried with chief priests and scribes about his true authority. He taught the parable of the vineyard. He outfoxed an attempt to trip him up over paying tribute to Caesar. He refuted the Sadducees who argued against the resurrection. When a scribe asked him which commandment is first of all, Jesus answered with his famous summary: love God, and love your neighbor. He taught the people to beware of religious leaders who were full of pretense, and in contrast, praised the widow’s offering of two “mites” (a mere penny), saying she had given more than anyone, for she “cast in all that she had” [all this, ch. 12].
And it is at the end of this long, this very full third day in the temple, when that disciple proclaims admiration for the temple edifice. The reply of Jesus is a shock: not one stone will be left upon another. The whole thing will be thrown down.
When will this be? they ask Jesus. And what we need to do, we who read this passage, is to note that Jesus does not answer their question. He does not say when the temple will be torn down. The awesome temple, which Jesus had entered the first day, purged in the second, and taught within with authority through the third—it is not the time of its destruction that Jesus goes on to speak about. There is something else more important for his disciples.
Two things, in fact. First, he wants to warn them against being deceived. There are going to be people who come along after he has gone, claiming to be saviors. These are false Christs, and many will be deceived: don’t be amongst them, Jesus warns his disciples.
And the second is about the world. There will be wars and rumors of wars . . . nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be earthquakes and famines and troubles—but all these are only beginnings. Do not think the end is at hand. Two warnings: don’t be deceived by someone claiming to be a new savior, and don’t think that international crises signify that the end is at hand.
Two warnings: don’t be deceived by someone claiming to be a new savior, and don’t think that international crises signify that the end is at hand.
It seems to me that fallen humanity is ever prey to rumors and panics of global catastrophe. Sometimes they appear as anticipated disasters, perhaps environmental, or economic, or something else. Sometimes they appear as all-too-real terrorist attacks. In whatever form, the clamor is ever there: this thing is the thing that will be the end. Jesus saw it all: there will be false messiahs who call for our allegiance, and there will indeed be awful international events. But, Jesus says, such things will not be the end. They will not be, as it were (taking it symbolically), the destruction of the temple. We do not know when the end will come, when not one stone will be left upon another.
Remember those three days in the temple. Jesus entered it; he cleansed it; he taught within it authoritatively. These three days are, if you will, the incarnation, the crucifixion, the resurrection.
Will you trust me and come along on a wild flight of association? Let’s say the glorious temple is the pinnacle of human accomplishment. It is the absolute best that we humans can do. Jesus first comes and visits us—that’s the incarnation, his entry into our world, his taking our flesh. But the best we can do is tragically marred by sin. So for our good (and because he loves us) he must purge our sins, whip them and overturn them and drive them out. He does this by taking God’s wrath upon his own flesh, by dying.
And the third day he takes the loving gaze of the Father for the Son and turns that gaze upon us. On the third day the Father looks at us and sees his Son. This is the pedagogy of the resurrection. We learn on the third day that Jesus is the one with authority, that we should give God everything that is God’s, that indeed the dead do rise again, that the most important thing for us, as we go on living in the world, is to love God and to love one another, and that we should care about nothing except to give ourselves completely to God.
Three temple days: incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection. It is the deep irony of the gospel of Mark that the disciples don’t get it. They go out at the end of the third day, having received the pedagogy of the resurrection, and what do they say? What a great temple this is! It is a failure ever close to us also. We are quite capable of going out of this building today and saying, What beautiful stones are here! All around us in New York—thrusting skyscrapers, sublime music, culinary excellence, fine clothes, prestige, worldly importance! And they seduce us. Gape not thy jaw at the stones of the earthly temple! Remember that Jesus, who was himself the glorious temple, himself suffered, and that he promised that we too are likely to suffer. But when suffering appears, he also told us, do not think it is the end of the world.
The end of the world is when Jesus comes again. Thus a robust resurrection faith, on the third day, even with the headlines of today’s paper, says: What a great Jesus this is! He is the living temple who, risen from the dead, will assuredly come again.
