Witness to the World
Pentecost + 26 - November 17, 2013
*To view this sermon on YouTube, click here
So, this is one of those passages that makes me surprised when you all respond “Praise to you, O Christ,” or “Thanks be to God,” when I finish reading it out loud. This is the kind of passage that makes me want to put a question mark after those responses: “Praise to you, O Christ?” - because there’s not a whole lot in it that feels worthy of praising or giving thanks for. Tell me I’m not alone in this.
We join this story with Jesus and a bunch of people at the temple. And some of them are marveling at the building before them. “Isn’t it great, Jesus? Aren’t you impressed? See the workmanship in the stones! Look at all of the memorial gifts people have given! Isn’t it amazing?” But Jesus is like a wet blanket, dampening all of their enthusiasm. “All this you’re admiring so much – the time is coming when every stone in this building will end up in a heap of rubble.”
What a shock this must have been to them. Not just because the building was a massive, solid piece of architecture that would have seemed hard to destroy, but because of all that the Temple represented. The Temple was the dwelling place of God, the tangible symbol of where God can be found. This is where people come to encounter the living God, in praise and worship, in song and story. To suggest that one day it wouldn’t exist anymore was an affront to their beliefs. If the Temple is gone, then where will they meet God? How will they know they have been in God’s presence if the Temple isn’t there?
We sitting here this morning so many years later may kind of scoff at that idea, that God can be contained in a building, because we know and understand and believe that God is present everywhere. But I wonder how often we get caught up in that same general mindset. We make temples all on our own, out of all sorts of things and experiences. Sometimes it’s a church building, but it’s not just buildings. Our worship styles and habits and traditions become temples to us at times. There are things that speak to us, ways that we have powerfully felt and seen God’s presence moving in our lives, and so we want to set those things in stone. We want to make them immovable, so that we can come back to them again and again, so that we can be sure we’ll find God in those things.
So we are just as offended when we hear Jesus speak these words so casually this morning. “These temples that seem so important to you? Not gonna last forever,” he says. We get bent out of shape about all sorts of changes: when a beloved pastor of many years retires and moves on; when the way we distribute and receive communion changes; when we add more lay leadership in the form of acolytes and try and work out the kinks of what that looks like; when we plan to get new hymnals – and I’ll just be straight with you so you’re not surprised when we get them somewhere down the road. There will be hymns in there that you’ve never sung. You won’t like singing them to begin with. Some of you will find your favorite hymn didn’t make the cut. There are ten, count ‘em, ten!, settings of the liturgy in there, and it’ll be an adjustment as we start to learn a new one here or there. I know, believe me, that change is hard, and that sometimes it feels, indeed, like the sky is falling, like the foundations of our faith, the things we have relied on for so long to help us encounter God, are being rocked in earthquake-like proportions.
It’s normal and natural that we would get caught up in lamenting the ways that things used to be, that we might argue and squabble and complain in our efforts to keep the temples we have built standing. But I have to be honest with you this morning. I have to tell you that these temples are not the things that Jesus Christ lived and died and rose again for. As important as these things may be and have been to our own faith journeys, as much as we may have felt God show up in certain ways through certain traditions – they are not eternal. They are not the only way we can meet with God. In the grand scheme of things, they are not such big deals.
Look around us at what’s going on in the world. There are people and places where the rest of these verses from Luke are coming true for them. Wars and uprisings, earthquakes and famines. The tremendous, heart-wrenching destruction in the Philippines, the loss of life and property, the desperate need for food and water and all of the necessities of life. The neighbor who is having to choose between paying the rent or feeding their family or buying diapers. The former drug addict or convicted criminal who is trying to claw their way into a new life and keeps getting knocked down. There are people all around us, next door or across the globe, who are in urgent need of good news, of hope, of hands reaching out to lift them up.
And if we get caught up in our little church disputes about non-essential stuff, what does that say to those who are looking to the church to see who God is and what God is like and what God has to say about all of the tragedy and hurt in the world? What is our witness to the world?
We are to be about bigger and better things. We are to be lights in the darkness, to offer hope to the hopeless. We are to be doing God’s work with our hands.
I’m glad to say that I see lots of that here. Donations to the food pantry. An upcoming mission trip to Honduras. Donations to ELCA World Hunger and the Malaria Campaign. Visitation to the homebound and hospitalized. Meals for the chronically ill and bereaved. Care packages for active military members. Small groups where people give and receive love and support and wrestle with the big questions of life and faith. A Good Samaritan fund that helps people from all walks of life with all sorts of problems, with compassion, not judgment.
This is just a sample of what I have seen in the past month of being with you, the people of Ascension Lutheran Church. I’m willing to bet that there are many, many more. This is God’s love, flowing to you and then through you to a dark and desperate world. This is the power of the risen Christ empowering you to steady someone else’s shaking ground, to shore up a sky that seems to be falling. This is you, the body of Christ, becoming a living temple, where people can come and know that they have been in the presence of the living and ever-loving God! Stay with it – that’s what God longs for. Stay with it to the end. Let these things be what this place is known for. Let this be your witness to the world. You won’t be sorry.
Amen.
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