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My grandfather had some health issues that led to my grandparents having to sell the house that they had always lived in. For over fifty years it was their home, the place they raised their family, the place we grandkids knew as a second home. Quite frankly, it was the Benson family temple. It was the place anyone of us could go home to, door always open, refrigerator always full, Grandaddy ever-ready to listen, Grandma ever-ready to talk, a bed ever-ready for a sleepover. The home was as full of unconditional love, hospitality, and generosity as it was permeated with the smells of the natural gas range and Grandma’s cooking.
After the final box was carried out Grandaddy took a few minutes to stand alone in the house and say his thanks, say his goodbyes, to a very close friend of his. The memories of so many Christmases, of children running and playing, of coming in from work and putting his policeman’s belt and holster on top of the dining room hutch where no kid could ever reach it, summer evenings on the front porch, the bannister up the stairs that had helped so much the last few years as he no longer had the air to make the climb without stopping a few times. So many memories with such a good friend, his home. So much of who he was lived embodied in that house and he knew he didn’t have much longer himself. So, those last few minutes in a way was Grandaddy saying goodbye to himself. His next little bit of time on this earth in a new house would never be as good as the years he spent in that house and would never amount to anything more than waiting for what awaits on the other side. He had lived a good, full life.
When I picture Jesus sitting on the Mount of Olives looking across the Kidron Valley at the Temple, I cannot help but think of my grandfather and his last moments in his home. It was a magnificent Temple. It wasn’t the Temple Solomon built. That one had been robbed and razed by the Babylonians when God passed judgement on his people for their idolatry and abusing their poor and sent them into exile in Babylon in 586 BC. Then, roughly 100 years later a remnant of several thousand returned and in time they managed to piece together a less than magnificent Temple but still a place for their God who had brought them out of slavery in Egypt and returned them from Exile to come and repose among them. This meager Temple in Jerusalem was the heart and home of the Jewish people and their faith. It was the place of the sacrifices, where the relationship with God was maintained, kept pure. It was where the prayers of the people entered Heaven. Jews made frequent pilgrimages to Jerusalem because that was going “Home”.
Well, in 20BC King Herod the Great began a major renovation of the Temple. The modest post-exile Temple became a massive display of national opulence. The historian Josephus tells us that Herod put gold plating on the front of it so that at sunrise you couldn’t look at it for it was as bright as the sun. He said that the outer surface of the rest of those massive stones were polished so white that when you saw the temple from a distance it looked like a mountain covered in snow. It took a year and a half for Herod to renovate the Temple itself, but he also set in motion a project of building the Temple complex that took sixty years to finally finish. It also took a lot of tax dollars. This building project and the Scribal administration that oversaw it turned the Temple into the devourer of widow’s houses that I spoke about last week. Temple taxes and Roman taxes were robbing the nation. People were losing businesses and homes. And so, Jesus pronounced the sentence that the Temple would be destroyed. In 70AD that happened. The Romans burned it to the ground and carried its wealth away to Rome like a prisoner of war.
So, there sat Jesus facing the Temple. Quite a lonely, heartbreaking moment I would think. This Temple was his “home” too. I can imagine him feeling like I do when I go back home and take that nostalgic drive out in the country and pass by the house where my great-grandmother lived. So many cherished memories of that little house, the wrap-around porch, the outhouse, the garden, the chicken house…always well-kept. But now, the people who own it have closed in the porch. Instead of the garden there’s this massive, gaudy satellite dish. There’s old vehicles and junk everywhere. It breaks my heart.
Likewise, Jesus as a child, his family was among those who made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem almost every year. Luke tells the story of when Jesus was twelve how he scared his parents by sneaking back to Jerusalem to go to his Father’s house to teach the Rabbis a thing or two and they were impressed. So many cherished memories he would have had of Jerusalem and the Temple, only to come to the realization of what it had become and therefore what must happen to it for it was no longer the place where God and the people came together, where heaven and earth came together. It was just a gaudy display of everything that God was not and his people were not supposed to be. This Temple may have looked impressive, heavenly even, but for all its wealth it was spiritually bankrupt. It would be like somebody tearing down my great-grandmother’s homey little home and replacing it with one of those massive stone estate homes that are so popular today. Jesus’ home, his Father’s House, was nothing more than a vulgar display of religious hypocrisy and national debt.
I’m going to change gears for a moment and the grinding may cause some discomfort. The Temple coming to an end immediately makes me think of church closings. We used to rarely hear of a church closing. Every Presbytery used to have that little country church that after 40 years of no one being able to understand how it kept going finally closing its doors. Our Presbytery is rural and small town which means we have more than our fair share of little churches that just keep going. The Whitehorse church near Wingham closed about seven years ago and was the first to do so in a long while. But then in the last five years four of our churches have closed. One amalgamated. The next five years will prove to be even more brutal. It is the same with our sister denominations of the United and Anglican Churches. Rural/small town Ontario is seeing church closures on an unprecedented scale.
Unlike the Temple in our reading, the reason for our church closures isn’t a judgement upon our iniquitous opulence. Show me a rural church that’s not frugal to a T and generous to a fault. The rural small church is all about relationship and community cohesion. It has been a vital part of rural community life. Well, about 40 years ago there started a significant migration to urban centers that stunted generational continuation in rural congregations. On top of that there is also the general demise of institutional Christianity as our culture has become more secularized. A recent survey of religious affiliation in Canada found that just over 50% of the population claim to be agnostic, atheist, or no affiliation and only 11% of the population attends a religious service on a somewhat weekly basis (that’s inclusive of all faiths, not just Christians). Those claiming Christian affiliation are in the 20%. The most recent National Census may show we’ve dropped into the teens. The terms “None”, “spiritual but not religious”, “Done” (with the church), and “faithful remnant” adequately describe the religious landscape of Canada.
When I first started in ministry 25 years ago, Congregational Redevelopment was the area to be in. Today, it is church planting. Those who plant churches today will readily tell you that they have no intention of ever building a building to meet in. In fact, they find that most people today do not understand what goes on in a church building and have no desire to ever step inside of one. They do not understand why if a church is supposed to be a charitable organization getting tax breaks and all that, then why so much money is wasted on buildings that could be otherwise used for actually helping people. New church plants are content to meet in homes, vacant storefronts, or wherever they can find a space for cheap. Afterall, the early church didn’t have buildings and met mostly in homes, in forest groves, and sometimes even in tombs. Moreover, nearly all significant church renewal movements started in places other than church buildings. It seems the next major form of the church will be building-less.
Well, I don’t think that it is a stretch to say that for most of us in the faithful remnant, we have a difficult time separating our faith from our buildings. It is very difficult for us to in envision a Christian faith that does include a church building. But, the harsh reality of today is that if we cling to our buildings, we will lose our congregations and in the case of rural Christianity, rural communities will lose Christian communities meeting and worshipping in their midst. Rural Christianity will disappear. In so many communities, that one congregation still holding on in its building is all that’s left of the Christian faith in that area and beyond. Churches close and the members say they will go elsewhere, but they don’t because elsewhere is too far away. It would have just made sense to sell the building but keep the congregation and just met together somewhere other than the building that had simply become too much for them to maintain.
In the world in which we live our old friend, our church “home” is no longer an asset to Christian witness and mission. It is no longer a building block to ministry it is a stumbling block…and this is very, very sad. We love our buildings. They are “home” to us. We have sat in these pews for years with family and friends and felt the peaceful, still presence of God and heard his voice in times of difficulty. We have enjoyed countless meals in our church fellowship halls. Our children have run and played up the aisles of the sanctuary and out in the church yard. It is “home”.
In today’s world, if we take our advice from the church-planters, it would be prudent we make the proactive decision to sell our church buildings but continue on as a congregation in our communities so that there will continue to be Christian presence in our rural communities. The assets freed up from the sale of buildings can do a great amount of good in our local communities if there is a worshipping, witnessing Christian presence in that community willing to be generous with them. Church planters tell us that people are more willing to come to a potluck thing at their neighbour’s house that may have a Christian atmosphere, than they are willing to go to a potluck at a church.
Wrapping up, what is happening with respect to the church and its buildings in the Canadian countryside is very, very sad. It just plain hurts. Yet to look to the future as we must, the church just two to three decades from now will likely not be a Sunday morning meet in a church building thing. The Christianity that’s left and that is therefore moving forward will have found a way beyond that sacred moment in a sacred place way of being the church and rather discovered a great freedom and an abundance in being adaptable as they wander in the wilderness of the 21st Century as the people of God when they wandered in the Wilderness after God freed them from slavery in Egypt. Amen.
