I grew up in a small, rural church under the grand oak trees of southern Minnesota. It was the sort of church where farmers caught up with the area news with a cup of coffee in hand. It was the church of roast beef dinners, men and boy’s nights with fishing and hunting quizzes, and day long Vacation Bible School in the summer, all headed up by the gentle and congenial, Pastor N. Pastor N was beloved by the parish and he loved them.
Pastor N knew what he was doing. When he saw that the old church needed a gathering area for people to hang their coats and talk before and after church (he understood the importance of community in a small town) he convinced the congregation through some fine, one-on-one coffee sessions, to put an addition onto the front of the church for such a purpose. And, it worked! He even got a new, larger office out of the deal…all the better.
It was a beautiful, small, thriving church in a beautiful, slice of pastoral landscape in middle America.
Now it is just a building. That is not exactly true. A handful of people still worship there on Sundays, but the thriving ministry is gone and the sheen of newness has faded well into the past. If you had told me that the thriving church of my childhood would be all but gone in 20 years, I would not have believed you.
The Disciples cannot believe it either as they stare at the grandeur of the temple in Jerusalem. It is easily the largest structure they have ever seen. It is massive, with its commanding stones. It is fit to be the home of God. Yet, as they stare up, Jesus declares that it will be gone very soon.
“Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
And, it will. The Romans will exact their revenge upon the Jews for rising up against them, and the stones will literally be thrown down. The rubble still rests in a pile to this day.
May I say something very simply? Things fall apart. Temples rise and then disappear. Churches are built and then crumble. The peace of a nation is established, and then is blown away by terrorists. Lives are changed, hearts are broken, and all that once seemed stable vanishes over night in gunfire and explosions.
And, when stability vanishes, we yearn for what we once had. We yearn for the innocent days of pastoral landscapes and bustling family churches where all felt secure, and wholesome, and whole. We become attached to our temples. We yearn for the way things used to be.
This is why Jesus’ words are so jarring. Jesus is telling his disciples that their attachment to the great temple and the way that the temple does things is not healthy. It is following a false prophet. In reality, the temple actually does not gleam as much as it appears, and when you look close, sin discolors its walls. Sin does that; it discolors everything. Jesus warns that the old way of relating to God is not the future.
In the same way, stains can be seen on that pastoral church building of my youth. The way we did ministry back then is not working today. Even Pastor N does things differently today. He understands that roast beef dinners just will not pull the people in anymore.
Understand, it is not that the way we did things back then were bad ideas. To the contrary, they were great ideas. Our existence is a testament to the effective ministry that used to occur. But, things are different now. To think otherwise would be following a false prophet.
But, you know that. You are not a group of unsuspecting disciples, staring at a glorious temple, waiting to see a predicted future arrive.
Instead, we have already seen the stones falling. We see churches closing up. We see a culture that no longer lives and breathes the Christian story. We already know that we cannot assume that people know what we are talking about when we say “we will need the patience of Job to pull us through this.”
Cultural institutions that we hold dear, such as marriage, are not important any longer as the rate of people getting married plunges.
“No one comes to church anymore?” is heard as people confusingly try to figure out the new world that we are in.
Many of today’s children are an entire generation away from church…meaning that there are lots of children who have never heard God’s story…ever. The church that was made to help people after they wander through the church doors obviously will not share the story of Christ with today’s children. These children will not even know to wander through the doors in the first place.
Given this new, chaotic and, quite frankly, depressing spiritual reality, and add on top of it the terror and death of innocent people in Beirut and Paris this week as terrorists seem to be getting the upper hand, more and more people are increasingly asking me flat out, “Is this the end of the world pastor, is this the end?” Well, I don’t know. Tell us Jesus, is it?
After Jesus tells Peter, James, John, and Andrew that things will soon be very different (there will be no temple), he continues:
"Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, "I am he!' and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. 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."
Alright, the wars and earthquakes and terror jump out at us immediately, but did you also hear this: “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs”?
What a strange and incredible thing to say. I do not know if you hear the good news there or not…but birth pangs are not bad news, they are good news.
Consider: while a baby is being born, and while the mother screams in pain as she pushes, and as the top of the baby’s head pokes through, family members do not say, “There’s the head, I guess this the end of the world.”
Well maybe they said it about an old boss of mine, but most people do not bring the end of civilization as we know it along with their birth.
No, the pushing, the pain, and the top of the baby’s head gives a sense of anticipation for the future. What will the baby look like? Will the baby be OK? What will this baby do in the future? Will he or she be a football player or a dancer? Will he or she look like me?
A birth has lots of unanswered questions, but there is one thing that we can say with all certainty, barring any complications, a birth is not the end, it is just the beginning of something very new.
So, though we do not know what the future looks like us people of faith, and though our world is changing quickly and we do not necessarily know how to adapt, Jesus has a word for us, “This is not the end, it is just the beginning.”
We are a resurrection people after-all! Things die in this life, things change, people change, cultures change, and temples crumble, but one promise holds true…Jesus cannot be kept in the grave. We are a resurrection people who have the story of Jesus rising again embedded in our hearts and we know that new life…a new way of being will come, no matter how dark the world becomes.
That is great news, is it not? Given that, how do we minister in this new world where people do not just show up to church? How do we minister in this new world where traditional morality seems to have shifted so much? How do we minister in this new world of terror where people go out to have a nice meal and end up dead? How do we share God’s story effectively in a world that is so different than the days of that thriving pastoral church?
I do not know. No one seems to know. But, that is OK. When no one has the answer, there are no false prophets to follow! It’s nice to not have to worry about following false prophets into the wilderness.
Instead, we get trust and follow Jesus. We get to trust Jesus, follow where he points us, and then, we simply try stuff.
That is right, we just try stuff. As you know, all success is built on a vast foundation of trying and failing.
When I was first learning the guitar, the bane of my existence was the G chord. You have to stretch and bend your fingers across the fret board in ways that God did not intend fingers to stretch. God did not create the guitar…some minion of Satan did…I swear. So, first, you cheat and play only half the chord. But, after a year or so of trying to stretch that little finger down, it finally goes and you can play a basic G chord. But, it took trying and failing repeatedly to finally get it right.
Do you think the people of my home congregation always knew that a roast beef dinner would bring in the people? No, someone tried the lutefisk dinner first, and when chemically preserved fish shockingly failed, they moved to hot, roast beef and gravy!
And, we get to do that! A new era of faith is being birthed right now, and we get to be a part of it! We get to see what God is up to! We get to catch the baby as it comes out. The disciples of Jesus learned how to live without a temple, and Jesus will lead us in this new day too. For this is but the beginning of the birth pangs. A new birth is about to take place.
No comments:
Post a Comment