It is hard to imagine the awe that the disciples must have felt when they saw the Temple in Jerusalem for the first time. I’ve seen Canterbury Cathedral, the National Cathedral, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine—but I’ve never seen anything as grand as the Temple in Jerusalem. It was one of the greatest buildings ever to be created. There were stones in this temple that were the size of house trailers. The Temple was so huge it had an outer courtyard with porches and columns, an inner courtyard, then an outer temple and an inner temple. The white stones were polished so brightly that people said from miles and miles away, Jerusalem looked like a snow-covered mountaintop. The walls of the Temple itself were covered in gold, such that they were blinding to look at. I can’t imagine it.
Not only that, but the significance of the Temple to the Jewish people was profound. It wasn’t just a place of worship, it wasn’t like National Cathedral or Canterbury Cathedral, but it was also the center of politics. It was the center of social life, the center of economic life. The Temple was like the Capitol, and the White House, the National Cathedral and Wall Street all in one place.
The Temple was that important. Then you have these country folk, who have never been to the big city, walking into Jerusalem and seeing it all, walking into the Temple and experiencing it. They come out of the Temple and they say to Jesus, “Oh my. This is amazing!” But Jesus sees a different Temple.
Jesus sees a Temple whose foundations are already beginning to crumble. And Jesus says, “This Temple with the big stones, it’s going to be knocked over like a building made of children’s blocks.”
That was unimaginable for the disciples. That level of destruction, of having your world fall apart… I remember as a child of the seventies and eighties, growing up during the Cold War. I remember watching the movie “Red Dawn.” Most of you didn’t see “Red Dawn,” because you wouldn’t have been interested in it, but in the movie, the Soviets invade the United States, and our greatest fears of the Cold War were realized. The invasion is only stopped by this band of renegade teenagers who hide in the woods, steal weapons, and manage to defeat the Soviet army. As a teenager, it was a great movie to see, very empowering. But the spectre behind the movie, the spectre of the United States government just crumbling before some oppressive invader, for me that spectre was real.
I remember when I was in the Army this image of Soviet tanks, wave after wave after wave rolling across the plains of Germany, the threat of the Third World War beginning- that’s what we were preparing for. I had this visceral fear of how my world would end if the government of the United States crumbled.
I imagine that it was that level of fear, times a thousand, that the disciples felt when they heard Jesus’ words. For them, it wasn’t just a governmental structure. It was their whole social fabric and their religious structure as well; the Temple was where God lived. Everything was wrapped up in that one building.
Jesus then took the disciples up on a nearby hill, the Mount of Olives, and he gave the disciples his last teaching before the Passion. Now, before I talk about that teaching, which is from the thirteenth chapter of Mark, I want to fast-forward to when their world ended. The world ended in 70 A.D., about forty years after this last teaching of Jesus. Let me start with the year 66. In the year 66, a band of Jewish rebels revolted against the Roman occupiers. They succeeded. They were able to kick the Romans out of Jerusalem- imagine the excitement! And the fear, since Rome was so big. In 68, a Roman army came marching up to Jerusalem; they started to surround Jerusalem, and just as the army was getting ready to attack, something happened in Rome, some major crisis. The general of the army had to return to Rome. Imagine the excitement in Jerusalem—once again, the Temple, God’s Temple, was protected. But imagine the fear.
You know they’re coming back. At that moment, people began to run all over Judaea and Galilee, and to say, this is the end of the world. The battle is upon us! The decisive battle is about to take place; the entire Roman army is going to come back, and we need to be ready. We know that God is with us; if you country folk are with us, come to Jerusalem and fight. Prophets, running all around, saying, the end is near; come to Jerusalem and fight! Can you imagine that level of anxiety and tension and excitement?
In the year 70, the Romans came back. All of the people who listened to the prophets ran to Jerusalem as the army approached. They took their places to guard Jerusalem; they were going to be on God’s side in this decisive battle. The Romans attacked. They laid siege to Jerusalem. They breached the outer wall. They killed the inhabitants. They killed everyone.
The Romans entered the Temple; they burned the wooden foundations. The walls, the huge stones, came tumbling down like children’s blocks. They went into the inner Temple. They took all the beautiful, holy objects, the gold, the silver. They took the altar and tipped it over, and they defiled everything in the Temple. The Temple was destroyed. Never to be rebuilt. The only thing that remains is the western wall of the outer courtyard, now called “the Wailing Wall.” Imagine that level of devastation.
We think that Mark’s Gospel was written sometime between 68 and 70, around the time that they were getting ready for this decisive battle that would mark the end of the world. Let’s now look at this last sermon that Jesus preached, this last teaching that he gave.
Jesus said, “It’s going to feel like the world is ending. There will be wars; there will be rumours of wars; there will be false prophets running around, telling you what to do in order to save the world. Don’t listen to them. And don’t worry. Don’t worry about what you’re going to do, or what you’re going to say, because in your time of crisis, the Spirit will tell you what to say and what to do. This is not something that you have to prepare for; this is not something you have to build fortresses for. And it’s not the end of the world, regardless of what the false prophets say. It’s not the end of the world; it is actually the beginning of something new.”
Later on, in chapter thirteen, Jesus continues, “And, when you see the desolating sacrilege, when you see the army coming to Jerusalem, run away.” This makes sense to us, but was very counterintuitive at the time. What the false prophets were saying was, run to Jerusalem, because we can’t live without the Temple; we have to do everything we can to save the Temple, so run to Jerusalem to save the Temple.
But Jesus is saying, “No, run away—because it’s not about the Temple. Run away, don’t listen to the false prophets, because the Temple being destroyed is not the end of the world.” I am sure that was hard to hear, because it certainly felt like the end of the world. But it wasn’t. The Temple being destroyed was actually the birth of something new; of something unexpected and completely surprising. Because the Temple was destroyed, Judaism was freed to move throughout the world, and Rabbinic Judaism was born.
Because the Temple was destroyed, Christianity was freed. At the time, Christianity was a small Jewish sect, still centered in Jerusalem. When the Temple was destroyed, this movement was cracked open and was able to spread throughout the whole world. Even though it felt like death, it was the beginning of something new and different and spectacular.
I think this reading is historically fascinating. But this teaching about the Temple being destroyed, and not listening to false prophets and not running to protect the Temple because you can’t live without it—I think that applies to us, here, now. I think there is a spiritual truth and a spiritual wisdom that Jesus is trying to teach us, not just to his disciples two thousand years ago, but to us, right now.
There are things that happen in our lives that make it feel like our world is crumbling. That our world is falling apart. Someone we love, someone we can’t live without, dies. Or we find out that we’re sick. Or our job takes us away from our friends, familiar surroundings, extended family; or we lose our job entirely. Something that we can’t live without crumbles. Jesus tells us, it’s not the end of the world. It’s not the end of your life. Don’t listen to false prophets; don’t listen to that voice in your head that says, ‘You can’t live without that Temple! You can’t live without it, and you’ve got to do everything you can to fight to save it!’
Let it go. Because it is not the end—it is the beginning of something you can’t even imagine. And don’t worry about these things happening. Let’s say you’re happily married, you’re healthy, and you have a job. Don’t spend your time worrying, “Oh no, Brian said at some point these terrible things are going to happen.” Don’t! Terrible things are going to happen, but don’t worry about it! You’ll be given the resources to make it through whatever happens to you, and on the other side will be something bigger and grander, something you never even imagined. Something you’re not even smart enough to pray for, will happen. So have faith, and be of good cheer.
We have one other tool—the passing of the Peace. This is something that I just learned; I’ve been a priest for a long time and I didn’t know this. The passing of the Peace is a radical statement of hope. I had thought that it was just this casual moment in the service, a time to stretch. But it’s a radical statement of hope, because in the seventies, the years following the Roman invasion of Jerusalem, the Temple is falling apart; the world is crumbling. In the middle of that, disciples would hold each others’ hands and say, “God’s peace is with you.”
Then, in the nineties, when the disciples didn’t know if they would ever see each other again because someone might be taken or executed between one secret service and the next, they would say “God’s peace be with you.” And the peace was made manifest in the handshake, in the embrace, in the kiss. Because we are together, because we love one another through thick and thin. When you feel like your world is crumbling, we will not let you go. God’s peace, and our peace, is with you.
So don’t be afraid. The peace of the Lord be always with you. Amen.