St. Paul's On-The-Hill Episcopal Church

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

24 Pentecost; November 15, 2009

Hebrews 10:11-25

Mark 3:1-8

WHEN LIFE FALLS APART – SOMETHING ELSE IS BEING BORN

These days we look around at the world around us, and it seems as if everything is falling apart. Institutions that had endured for years, that we had trusted for years, are no more.

Financial, governmental and religious institutions seem unsound, easily undermined.

It wasn't so in the time of the disciples. They had the opposite problem. All the institutions of their day seemed unshakeable. Government, religion, trade – it was all impregnable, all strong, all suffocating the life out of new religious movements like Christianity. How could a religious movement founded on the idea that ordinary people should love one another, survive against the mighty edifices of religious and government traditions with such deep roots and so much money?

But of course, 40 years after Jesus made this prophecy that the walls of the temple would come down, it came down.

All that remained was this tiny, humble, vulnerable movement – of Christianity; actually that and another tiny movement based on humble, ordinary people and not on mighty institutions – Rabbinic Judaism. These two movements of ordinary people studying their sacred texts is what survived the destruction of empire and religion; and they are what survived the destruction of every empire and religion and seemingly impregnable institution since then.

So do not worry when empires fall. Do not worry when institutions – religious or otherwise – crumble. The simple, common religion of simple, common folk, endures.

That's what Jesus said. And that may be why we endure. We look back to our founder and say – 'oh, that's what he said would happen. I guess we can relax.'

2,000 years ago the disciples around Jesus were walking outside the Temple – just after Jesus had pointed out the poor widow inside and said how her faithfulness in the midst of her poverty was so much more impressive than a rich man's lack of faith in the midst of his wealth.

The disciples seem to be very impressed with the size of the Temple. “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings.” Perhaps they are country bumpkins from Galilee, impressed and overawed by the big city, feeling small next to the grandeur. Perhaps, as I said, they wonder how their tiny movement can possible compete. Perhaps they are pointing out to Jesus the incredible edifice the rich man's treasure is buying and – while it might be nice to value the poor widow's faithfulness, a little extra money would be nice too!

Then Jesus turns to them and says: “Do you see those great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” So much for the investment of those rich men. So much for the grand schemes of institutional religion subsidized by Herod the King who built that temple.

All would be thrown down in the war to come, and in the standard cycles of civilizations' fall and rise and fall and rise after that.

All that would be left – would be people, people who love and care and help and forgive and fall down and get up and fall down and get up again with each other's help.

Some wise man was once asked how he got through the day. He said: “I fall down, I get up, I fall down, I get up.” We do the same. But we get up with each other's help, while the institutions and impregnable edifices rain down around us.

This is what Jesus said would happen. He said “nations 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.”

So the world will continue to fall apart, as it has, for 2,000 years or more.

But – this is not the end. This is the beginning. “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” It is not death, but life; and the cry you hear is not the last of pain, but the baby's cry of life.

It is but the beginning of the birth pangs, the birth pangs that signal new life, new hope, new dreams. They were the birth pangs of a new religion while the old, impregnable edifices of Rome and Temple fell to the ground.

And since then, so many impregnable edifices have fallen to the ground. Rome is no more. Every empire that ever rose through history, is no more. The great invincible, unconquerable empires of the 20^th Century – Soviet Communism, and Nazism – are gone.

Ordinary Russian grandmothers and hidden priests outlasted Soviet communism. American and British farm boys and factory workers brought down Nazism.

So why do we worry, when we hear Jesus' words, that all these things will fall? The bigger they are, the harder they fall, seems to be the appropriate abbreviation for Jesus' words here.

Our job – when we are surrounded by these edifices – is simply to wait, and love, and wait, and love; and when people fall down, to help them get up, and when we fall down, know that they will help us get up.

This is the work of the church.

The Book of Hebrews gives the clue:

“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

The Day is the last day, the end of the world. But it is simply the end of this world, and the beginning of the next. It is the end of the world of mighty institutions that take it upon themselves to tell the rest of us what to do and how to live our lives and what to think. Their day is fading. They began to come to an end when this Jewish carpenter, the son of God, stopped believing in them and started preaching belief in God come to earth to ordinary people who might or might not go to Temple, who might or might not hold high offices in government.

He started preaching belief in a God who came to each one of us bypassing temple and government. So why not bypass them ourselves; and then – ourselves – simply love one another as he loves us, and so build up this mighty movement of people all over the world meeting in humble places like this one?

Then, as structures fall around us – structures of banks and industries, governments and religions – we look out the window at them and say to each other: 'look, its raining again.' Then we get back to the far more life-giving business of loving one another, helping one another, and picking one another up when we fall.

Every time we do that, a new world is born. You can hear the happy cries of the new born world, even now, even here.