Readings: 1 Samuel 2
Mark 13:1-8
We pray: May the words of my
mouth and the meditations of our hears be acceptable in your sight O God, our
rock and our sustainer. Amen.
The end of the world as they
knew it. To the people of Jesus’ time
the prediction of the destruction of the temple was devastating. It was the symbol of all that was unchanging,
impregnable and foundational in their lives, in their faith – they could not
imagine that it could or would become a pile of rubble. And yet a pile of rubble it became.
We, on the other hand, know that
buildings come and go – although we felt reasonably safe and secure that it
would be at our convenience and not too impactful. And then came the earthquakes in Christchurch
– too close to home, devastation, death, destruction beyond our imagining. Foundations of life gone for those who lived
there – and all those church buildings as well – gone in a blink. That certainly wasn’t supposed to happen:
no-one saw that coming!
.
Let me talk about 2016 and the
people of Waiau for a moment. That the small town in the middle of the Hurunui
which also happened to be the centre of the earthquake that rocked North
Canterbury and Kaikoura Districts 2 years ago.
74 properties were red stickered, 262 yellow stickered - spread across
4,500 sq kms. One family took 2 hours to
safely get their family members out of a badly damaged house – a husband and
wife, their 3 grandchildren and their 3 foster children and a friend. They commented that there was a dent in the
ceiling from the toilet bowl. Beyond
imagination. Few would have envisaged
the chaos and devastation to that degree.
What has also been beyond
imagination is the response to the destruction of the earthquake in the
Hurunui. Alongside real frustration and
multiple examples at being treated as less of a priority than Kaikoura, the
level of positive response from a devastated community has been amazing. Mayor Winton Dalley has been at the centre of
that, encouraging those who very foundations of living have been wrenched out
of their hands. And if you were to ask them today what are the foundations they
now stand on, you might find answers like neighbourliness, kindness and
compassion, generosity – the people, the people, the people.
And things that are not supposed
to happen in our well-ordered lives will continue to happen. The rapidly changing climate will uproot long
held expectations of what is normal and expected – safety on our shorelines,
relative consistency in our weather patterns, moderate temperature swings –
destroying yet again our understanding of what is safe and indestructible in
our lives. It keeps on happening.
And each time these foundational
parts of our peaceful lives are taken out from under us, they create, along
with many other emotions, an enormous feeling of loss; in a sense a loss of
innocence because that which we believed indestructible is no longer.
As Christians, what is our
response? We hold the hope that Jesus
will come again, that the kingdom will be realised. We get the warning that it is only in God
that we should place our trust and that temples can come and go but God’s love
for us will always be.
But in this reading is one
further caution for the disciples – it is very easy to become fixated, like
them, on the end event. When will it
happen Lord? How will we know, what
exactly will it look like……?
While these questions are not
trivial, the answer is not for us to know and Jesus is trying to point this out
to those around him. While recognising
the coming of the kingdom, he is warning us about that being our core
focus. What about the life of the world
as it is now? Are we doing all we can to
grow a world that has love and grace and mercy as its temples - now?
And there is a further warning
here from Jesus – he recognises the zeal that the disciples have for the glory
of the temple itself, especially in the context of the time. This text was
first heard at the time Jewish-Roman war around the late 60’s AD – and that was
where the temple was the focus for groups wanting to restore the Davidic
kingdom, to reclaim the purity and independence of the nation of Israel – even
if it means war. So Jesus, by
proclaiming the demise of the temple, is trying to turn the disciples away from
the temptation of claiming the kingdom for God now and back to the goal that
God has for the world – a time when the world will be rebirthed in the person
of Jesus and peace and love will prevail throughout the whole world.
And I think that we also lose
sight of God’s vision for our world and do our best to hurry it along to the
beat of our own drum. And I may step on
some toes here but wouldn’t the way in which some people are trying to purify
the church, judging who is in and who is out be a way we are taking a temple
detour? That agenda belongs to some
within the church, but not I suspect to God. Or equally the idea that there is
no need to engage in the issues of the world because the end time is all that
matters and, after all, we’re ok!
Is that really the way Jesus
taught us to live as God’s beloved people?
Wouldn’t energy expended on proving we are better than others be better
used in caring for each other no matter who we are? Much as we would like to think we are the
advance strategy team for Jesus coming again, that is not what is being asked
of us. Rather we live in God’s way while
we wait and hope for the end time.
Instead, within these incredibly
unsettled times, when the very foundation of our lives is being shaken in a way
we could never have imagined, Christ is calling us to neighbourliness, kindness
and compassion, generosity, to, as a church, love one another, to engage in
relationship with those who are ‘other’, while we keep awake, watch, resist the
pressures of our own agendas. For the
one who came as a child in a manger is with us still and will come again as the
fulfilment of God’s glory. And for this
we say thanks be to God. Amen.
Margaret Garland
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