Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Mark 13:1-8
1 As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" 2 Then Jesus asked him, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." 3 When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, 4 "Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?"5 Then Jesus began to say to them, "Beware that no one leads you astray. 6 Many will come in my name and say, "I am he!' and they will lead many astray. 7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.
“Kenny, can you hear me?”
My brother, Jimmy, was on the other end of the line. I had just flown down the day before to Ft. Worth, TX, to accompany a former Journeyman friend, Phil Brown, and his youth group on a mission trip to the Rio Grande Valley. I’d flown in a few days early and was visiting another friend, Eloise Parks, before heading out on that trip, and Jimmy had called the afternoon after I arrived.
The connection was not very clear, and I didn’t understand what he said when he first told me why he’d called. I asked him again,
“Eric is dead”
Eric was Aunt Lala’s youngest son. He fell right between Jimmy and me in age. He’d been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, and had been fighting the ravages of the disease for over a year.
He was engaged to be married. He was learning to fly, and wanted to become a pilot. He was planning on moving to Australia. His whole life was ahead of him, and that June day in 1991, it all stopped.
I flew out the following day for a two-day turnaround trip to attend the funeral. My cousin Kim met me as I walked into their house. All we could do was hug and cry. The next two days were a blur. The church was packed with about 500 people. Afterwards, I flew back to Ft. Worth and went on the mission trip with the youth of Rheta Baptist Church.
But it simply didn’t make sense.
This past Tuesday morning, when I got to Riverside Tappahannock Hospital for my chaplaincy rotation, the morning had progressed fairly quietly. Though I’ve been called in on a couple of emergencies, for the most part I’ve not seen the hospital in anything other than a ‘normal’ mode. I stopped in to see Charlotte right around 11, and she greeted me with her usual smile, but her energy wasn’t there. She still reached up to return my hug, but once that was done she settled back into a quietness that I’d noticed the day before as well. After visiting with her for a few minutes, I went on about the day’s duties, driving up to the History Land Nursery worksite on Rt. 17 for a lunchtime visit, and then coming back through Warsaw and stopping in at the Health Care Center to visit Miss Annie and George Schools.
When I got home, it was probably about 3PM. About a half hour to 45 minutes later I was paged by the hospital. I wasn’t able to call immediately, and got another page about 2 or 3 minutes later. When I got through to the switchboard, the receptionist told me that they wanted me in the ICU, and put me through.
“There’s a family here that wants you to come. They have a family member that has expired, the family of Charlotte Lewis.”
I didn’t think I’d heard her correctly, and after taking in a breath, I asked if she had said that Charlotte Lewis had expired. When she said yes, I told her “she’s a member at Jerusalem, I’m her Pastor, I’ll be right there.”
Though the initial shock at the news of both of these deaths was similar, the dynamics surrounding the event were different in most ways, except one critical way.
Eric was as active as his illness would allow him to be at Hermitage Hills Baptist Church. He’d made a profession of faith several years earlier, and to know Eric was to know that he was a follower of Christ.
Charlotte was as active here as she could be. The last few years had seen her abilities diminish, but her zeal for being here and singing with us and joining in worship was untouched. Her life has been an example of living and being the presence of Christ to so SO many throughout the Northern Neck through the years, not just family.
In Eric’s case, if I had been aware of the severity of his illness I may not have been caught so off-guard at the news of his death. I may have been more aware of the risks involved, and how his treatment was going. As it was, though I knew he was not in good health, I had no idea how life-threatening his disease was.
Though on some level I’ve come to accept the fact that he is gone, there is still, an element of tragedy, of something having happened that should not have happened surrounding his death.
With Charlotte, the tide turns the other way for a couple of reasons. First, it is somewhat easier to accept death when the loved one is advanced in years. Especially in the case of someone who has lived such a life as to have our response be sorrow, of course, but a deeper sense of … appropriateness in the passing. Though there is grief, there is an appreciation in spite of the pain for what she has gone on TO.
Still, with both, there is a sense of unsettledness. I remember when I first met Leslie’s cousin John was at Kenneth Maccubbin’s funeral – Leslie’s paternal grandfather. One of the first things he said to me was that “death is the most unnatural thing in the world”. That comment has stuck with me ever since. Both events – the death of a young man and an elderly woman, expected to differing degrees, but still unpredictable in their abruptness.
In our text, Mark has just told the story of the widow’s mite, and Jesus has made the point that it is what you give from your heart that makes the difference in what you put in the plate. The very next scene, Jesus and the disciples are leaving the temple, and one of them turns to him and says ‘Look, Rabbi, at this glorious Temple! Look what we have for worship.” He was taking pride in what Jerusalem had to offer by way of glorifying God. Jesus didn’t take long to cut him down to size. “Not one of these stones will be left standing.”
The disciples spent most of their time with Jesus in a state of confusion, and this time it was no different. What was Jesus talking about? They walked all the way to the Mount of Olives before someone asked the question: What is the sign? How will we know?
Like all of us, they wanted a sign; they wanted to know ahead of time so they could be prepared for the end of the world. The Temple had stood for hundreds of years; they could SEE the symbol of their faith. So what sign that the end time had come would they see?
Jesus wanted the disciples to see his truth, so he warned them about false prophets who would seek to lead them away from his true path. Beware of those who tell you with absolute assurance that they have the final, exact truth about God’s plan. There will always be gurus setting themselves up as saviors who would rescue us from our fears about what’s going on in our world. The problem with gurus is that you don’t have to have any faith of your own. All you do is what they tell you.
Then Jesus described what is known as the end-time happenings. There will be wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and famines. Those are supposed to be the signs of the end of the world as we know it.
The only catch to this list of apocalyptic signs is that they have always been happening. There is not an age in the history of the world in which there were not wars, earthquakes, and famines. So it is really hard to see one particular sequence of events as the true sign of the end of the world. Many have tried and predicted, but so far they have all been wrong. We just can’t know when the end time will be because we don’t control the magma boiling under shifting tectonic plates and erupting earthquakes. We don’t control old historical grudges when they erupt into war. We don’t control weather conditions that create drought and famine in Africa. Personally, I just don’t think any of us are going to get out o the responsibility of continuing to live our witness for the whole of our lives.
That means we are always living in the meantime. We are living in the meantime between the birth of Jesus as Messiah and the return of Christ in glory. And we want signs, too. We want certainty, and leaders who will tell us exactly what is going to happen so we can feel secure. We want somebody to be in charge, so life won’t feel so unsettled.
Hebrews 10:22 says, “let us approach (God) with a true heart” What is a true heart? It means we are supposed to be honest with God. We’ve all heard prayers of people who are speaking to those around them rather than to God. It is a temptation I have to struggle with every time I as a Pastor am asked to pray. A true heart takes us to God with all the mess-ups and mistakes we have made. Our hearts are cleansed by confession. Our bodies are washed in baptism. So we can be honest with God because we know we have been forgiven. We have the assurance of faith that we won’t be condemned by God, because through Christ’s sacrifice, we have been forgiven. Our hearts are pure before God. This is the foundation of our faith.
We heard earlier, in our responsive reading, the verse from Luke:
If you work the words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who dug deep and laid the foundation of his house on bedrock. When the river burst its banks and crashed against the house, nothing could shake it; it was built to last. (Luke 6:48, The Message)
So what are these words Jesus mentions?
“Come, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest”
“Come, take up your cross and follow me”
Jesus points to himself.
There is no assurance in anything else. Not in Buildings, the Temple at Jerusalem was utterly destroyed less than 40 years after Jesus told his disciples no stone would be left atop another.
There’s no assurance in status or wealth, in the parable of the rich young ruler, after accumulating all that wealth, the man dies in his sleep.
There’s no assurance in health or youth. Eric was an athletic young man when his disease caught him.
There is no assurance anywhere but in our faith in Jesus.
What does this mean for Jerusalem?
We’re in the process of setting a budget for next year. The realities are a little daunting, with projected expenditures outpacing projected giving.
We know that the foundation for this church is not in the fact that the cornerstones were well-laid, though that does play a part. We know that the foundation of this church is more than that – it comes from legacies of faith lived out by those who’ve gone before. The cloud of witnesses I spoke of last Sunday has been increased in the last week. It is from their witness that we draw strength. It is by their example that our faith is upheld. It is through their reliance on the providence of God that we can approach the throne of the almighty with pure hearts.
Let’s pray.
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