Following Jesus can
be disillusioning at times. I can’t help
but imagine what the twelve disciples must have thought and felt at this point
in the journey. Jesus simply was not meeting their expectations. They had left everything to follow this
wandering, parable teaching, preacher who proclaimed in both word and deed that
the Kingdom of God was at hand. They had
even healed the sick and cast out demons themselves. They had walked a long way in their three
years with Jesus listening to teaching after teaching and were convinced that
Jesus was the expected Messiah. It would
just be a matter of time and Jesus would deliver Israel from the Romans and
establish the Kingdom of God and he would reward their faithfulness with perks,
power, and privilege.
But something had changed
in the last couple of months for them since they were in Caesarea Philippi and Peter
confessed their belief that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. It all started when Jesus fed nearly 15,000
people on two fish and five loaves of bread leaving them with twelve basketfuls
of crumbs that they took on a long journey all over Israel and then beyond to
share them even with the neighboring Gentile people. Jesus had done things that only the Messiah,
indeed only God, could do. But when Peter
made that confession, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God”, things
changed. Jesus started walking towards Jerusalem. The healings became sparser. He taught less except to tell them odd things
like they needed to become like children if they wanted to enter his Kingdom and
that being the least is what would make one great in the Kingdom. Mostly, he said nothing only breaking the
silence to say that in Jerusalem the authorities would mock him and put him to
death.
The day came when
they finally arrived in Jerusalem. Mark
said the crowd following Jesus was greatly afraid. No one knew what to expect. Then Jesus’ uprising started. He sent two of the disciples to get him a
donkey (the most impressive and regal of all animals) and he rode into town
like a king. But, no war started. No armies of angels came. Jesus just went to the temple and got on a
table turning rant saying that his Father’s house was to be a house of prayer
not big business. Then they left
Jerusalem for the night. The next day
they returned to the temple where Jesus rather successfully debated all day
with the religious authorities pointing out that their position and wealth came
at the expense of taking the homes of widows.
Then they went to the temple treasury where Jesus just sat and watched
the people noting that it was nothing more than a charade of rich people
throwing in large donations that really cost them nothing. Then a widow put in her last two copper coins. Jesus made note to his disciples that she had
just given all she had. They got up and
left the city again.
They come out of the
temple and it was a magnificent temple.
It wasn’t some small, brick box set off on a sideroad somewhere. It was masterfully constructed from massive,
flawlessly hewn blocks each weighing tons and set one atop the other. You could have set several buildings the size
of this church inside it. It would take dozens of teams of elephants working
themselves to death to destroy those walls. The whole courtyard and complex was
several city blocks big. It would have
given Robert Schuler’s Crystal Cathedral a run for the money…it was the Fort
Knox of Israelite faith…the Vatican City of Jerusalem.
As they were leaving
the temple one of the disciples looked back and probably in hopes this was
where their new palace would be, he said to Jesus, “Look Teacher, what massive
stones and what magnificent buildings!”…That is something any of us would say
upon seeing a beautiful old church or one of those new Christian worship centers. “Wow!
What a wonderfully big multipurpose worship space this is! What a magnificent gymnasium! It even has a Christian bookstore and a
Starbucks in the foyer! They must really
love Jesus here! People will flock to
the Lord here because of these superior facilities.”
Well, Jesus wasn’t as
impressed and replied in a rather peculiar way as if he hadn’t even heard what
the disciple had said. “Do you see these
great buildings?” It was as if there was
something profound there that this disciple was supposed to clue in on but
wasn’t. “Not one stone will be left here
upon another; every one will be thrown down!”
Well, that shut everybody up for a couple of hours. This was unexpected behavior from Jesus the
Messiah. They believed the Temple was to
be the hallmark of the Kingdom not become a pile of rubble.
Jesus then led the Twelve west out of Jerusalem,
across the Kidron Valley where lay the rich people’s tombs, and climbed the
Mount of Olives. Jesus just sat down and
started staring again, staring across that valley of whitewashed tombs towards
the temple. It seemed that rather than
be a man of action Jesus preferred to sit and stare at things. The four senior disciples finally broke the
silence and asked Jesus something to the effect of, “Why are you sitting around
watching and waiting? What sign are you
looking for, Jesus? When’s it going to
start? Messiah, when are you going to
take your throne?” Except, the question
they asked showed a little more polite restraint. Jesus gave his classic reply, “Beware that no
one leads you astray. Many will come in
my name saying, ‘I am’ and they will lead many astray.”
If I were one of the
disciples at that moment I believe the irony of the statement would have been a
little too much. I would have had to say
to him, “it seems that misleading is exactly what you, Jesus of Nazareth, have been
doing with us and here we have left everything behind to follow you. What were we thinking? How foolish could we
be?”
This disillusionment
would have gotten even worse after Jesus was crucified. Was he, Jesus, just leading them astray? Could it really have been like his mother and
brothers thought in the early days? Was
he just an extremely intelligent nut trying to teach a handful of people in
grand fashion not to follow nuts that act like messiahs? “Beware that no one leads you astray.” What an ironic thing for Jesus to say at that
moment. One would expect him to say
something like, “Keep watching. Any
moment now the sky will catch fire. An
army of angels will come cleanse the city.
The dead in these tombs will rise and then we will go to the Temple and I
will establish the Kingdom and take my place as Messiah.” But, he just says wars and famines and
earthquakes will continue to happen, but they’re not the end. The end is still
coming. Do not let yourselves be misled.
Following Jesus can
be disillusioning at times. Things will
not go as we expect them. We so often
hear people say God’s got a plan for our lives and imply that all things will
be wonderful for us if we just trust God and be faithful. This is a misleading teaching for several
reasons and the primary one is that we tend to put the plan, the dreams, we
have for our lives in the place of God’s plan and expect God to come through on
working our plans and dreams out for us.
We make God a servant to us rather than the other way around and that’s
not faith. Another thing wrong with
saying that God has a wonderful plan for our lives that he’ll bring about if we
stay faithful is that it can’t hold water when terrible, senseless, and
undeserved things happen to humble, faithful people.
This is a fallen
world in which terrible things do happen for no reason even to the most Jesus-like
of people. If we take the Book of Job
seriously it is often the case that the faithful suffer simply because they are
faithful. The point of evil and the Evil
One is to destroy the faithful. The
point of faith is that we cannot know what God is up and we have to simply be
satisfied with his presence with us when we suffer. As Jesus says the end is coming God will put
all things right, but in ways we don’t expect.
God takes our tragedies and works good from them all the while behind
the scenes he is doing stuff that we are un aware of that usual involves people
praying that we don’t know about.
Back in my early
twenties my brother had his son baptized at the church we went to as children,
but didn’t go to much because my parents divorced and churches back then didn’t
know how to handle divorce. After the service an elderly women walked up and
said she had taught me in Sunday school.
I had no idea who she was. I was
too young to remember. But she said, I
have often thought about you. That is
Presbyterian for, “I have often prayed for you.” Suddenly, I knew why I had this sort of back
in my mind feeling throughout my teens that something, someone, was watching
over me and I needed to find out who. I
believed in God, but the God I believed in was just some way out there distant
moral judge and not actually a God who was looking out for me. We will likely not know what God is up to or
why things happen the way they do, but God will let us know that we are not
alone, that he loves us, that there are people who love and pray for us that we
don’t even know about. And it all means
that somehow he’s working things out to the good.
So, God’s Kingdom
comes to us on bended knee, not necessarily our own, but the bended knees of a
multitude of people we aren’t aware of.
Have you ever felt the need to pray for someone? Amen.
