Why Stay?

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Mark 13:1-8

I can’t help but imagine what the twelve disciples must have thought and felt at this point in the journey.  They had left everything behind to follow this wandering, parable teaching, miracle working preacher who was proclaiming by everything he said and did that the Kingdom of God was at hand.  They themselves had even healed the sick and cast out demons.  They had traveled a long way in their three years together.  But something changed just a month or so earlier after Peter confessed that Jesus was indeed the Messiah.  Jesus stopped wandering from village to village and started off directly towards Jerusalem.  The healings became fewer and far between.  He taught less except to tell them they needed to be like children if they wanted to be in the Kingdom of God and that humbly serving one another is what would make a person great in the Kingdom.  Mostly, when Jesus did break the silence, it was 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…and then it started.  Jesus sent two of the disciples to get him a donkey (the most impressive and regal of all steeds) and he rode it into town just like a king would. (It was also likely that Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, was coming into Jerusalem about the same time mounted on a warhorse and surrounded by a legion of soldiers.)  No war started.  No armies of angels came.  Jesus just went to the temple and looked around.  As it was late, they left Jerusalem and went to Bethany to spend the night.  

The next day they returned to the temple and Jesus cursed a fig tree for appearing to be fruit bearing when it wasn’t.  Jesus got angry and ran the money changers and livestock vendors out of the table.  This angered the powers that be and they started looking for a way to kill.  Again, Jesus and his motley crowd left Jerusalem for the night.

The next day on the way back to Jerusalem the disciples noticed that the fig tree Jesus had cursed was withered.  He told them to believe in God and they could command mountains to move…but make sure you forgive everyone you need to forgive before you pray or your heavenly Father won’t forgive you.  Jesus spent the day successfully debating the religious authorities.  Then they sat down in front of the temple treasury to watch the people give.  Amid a charade of rich people throwing in large donations that cost them nothing, a widow put in her last two cents.  Jesus made note of her gift and they got up and left again.  

Coming out of the temple, one of the disciples looked back and taking note of this wonderful old building he said to Jesus, “Look Teacher, what massive stones and what magnificent buildings!” like any of us would do upon seeing a beautiful old church or one of those new Christian worship centers complete with a gymnasium and a coffee shop in the lobby.  Unimpressed, Jesus replied in a rather peculiar way as if he hadn’t even heard the disciple saying, “Do you see these great buildings?”  It was as if there was something the disciple was supposed to understand, but weren’t getting it.  “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; until after they climbed the Mount of Olives and sat and stared across the valley of tombs towards the temple.  It seemed Jesus during those last days and hours rather preferred to sit and stare at things, rather than to be a man of action.  The silence finally ended when the four senior elders asked Jesus, “When will all this happen?  Will there be a sign to look for?”  I think they are really wanting to ask,  “What are you sitting around watching and waiting for?  What sign are you looking for?  When is the show going to start?  Messiah, when are you going to take your throne and commence your reign?”.  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 moment would have been a little too much.  I would have had to say to him, “it seems that is exactly what you, Jesus of Nazareth, have done with us and here we have left everything behind to follow you.  How foolish could we be?”  That disillusion would have gotten even worse after Jesus was crucified.  Was he himself really the one who was just leading them astray?  

“Beware that no one leads you astray.”  What an ironic thing to say at that moment.  You would think he would say something like, “The sky will catch fire.  An army of angels will cleanse the city.  The dead in these tombs will rise and then we will go down and I will take my place as Messiah and establish the Kingdom.”  No, he basically says, “It’s going to be a while, there will be disasters and wars, they will suffer on his account but the Holy Spirit will be with them, political beasts are going to do heinous things, imposters will come in his name.  No one knows when the end will be. Just don’t let yourselves be led astray by people who claim they can do the things that only I can do.  Keep awake.”  I have to ask: why, at that moment, didn’t the disciples just walk away?  It seems Jesus is riding his pony on a boat out on the sea or something.  Why didn’t they just walk away saying, “Done!”?

A related question for us today would be why, in a culture where less than ten percent of the population regularly goes to church.  It was 67% just after WWII.  There’s a trend here and why aren’t we, you and I, following it?  Here’s some recent numbers.  In 2001 77.1% of the population checked the Christian box on the census.  In 2011 it went down to 67.3% and in 2021 53.3% and just less than 20% of those still participate.  I suspect that in 3031 the percentage will be in the low 30%.  It is likely the decline correlates to the death by old age rate among the general population.  The older generation is dying and the church along with it.  The younger crowd doesn’t want anything to do with organized religion of any kind.  In the midst of that, the percentage of those with no religious affiliation has crept over the 30% mark and is growing fast and most of these are people who have left the church in the last 20 years.  Dones become nones.  

Here’s something else to think about – ministers leaving the ministry.  In 2022 roughly 42% of ministers said were thinking about leaving the ministry.  Stress, loneliness, and political division were the three highest cited reasons.  It may be comforting to know that only 1% of ministers per year actually leave the ministry (Lifeway Research).  But not comforting and this may be hearsay, in the Presbyterian Church in Canada last May only three of the people who graduated from our three seminaries were looking to go into pastoral ministry.  All the while there’s a huge shortage of clergy as so many churches are too small to afford a minister.  

And about churches getting small, prior to Covid the national average of church closures was one per week.  I can guarantee you that the reason for those closures had little to nothing to do with people throwing their hands in the air and saying we don’t believe anymore.  If churches were businesses those small churches would have been closed decades ago.  The question to ask is not why they are closing.  That answer is obvious; old age.  The question to ask is why small churches persist for so long.  Why do people such as yourselves persist in coming back week after week?

Back to the Disciples, they didn’t walk away but rather stayed for everything that came next except for when Jesus got arrested.  They stayed because they had been with Jesus through so much and had seen him do things only God could and they had done some of these healings and exorcisms themselves.  They didn’t know what nor when the final coming of the Kingdom would be but they knew Jesus was for real and so they stayed.  It wasn’t just a matter of personal belief.

Looking at ministers again.  Why do ministers not leave the ministry even though they think about it? We know we’re called.  We’ve been around long enough to know the real hope that God really does work all things to the good for those who love him and that the things we go through aren’t for naught. God uses them to shape our character to be more like Jesus and so we endure.  Though this is a lonely job, we know we are not alone.  We sense God’s presence and hear the still small voice.  If something happens to hurt us, well for me, I know there are shoulders among my colleagues and in each of these congregations that I can and have cried on.  If I’m feeling lonely and getting down on myself, I just start making pastoral phone calls and have a laugh and catch up.  Moreover, there have just been too many things happen in my life that I can point to and say, “God did that.”  I know that Jesus is real and what he’s doing in this world through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit until he comes is real.  Satan tries to shake me on that but to no avail.

So, how about you folks? When everybody around you has all but walked away from Jesus and the church, why are you still here?  I think it’s because you know your Jesus.  He’s made his presence, his love, his hope real to you.  In a way unique to each of you, you also feel called.  The church is going through a down period now, a period of transformation.  It’s like Jesus has said, “There’s not a church building here that’s not going to be left empty.”  That very well may be the case.  Who knows?  The one thing I know for certain, is he is still with us.  But I also sense that the future of the church lies not in how well we do things inside the church that the church has always done.  We need to do those things out there.  Now more than ever we have to focus on how we go about reflecting Jesus to our neighbours, families, and out in the community.  We love each other deeply inside these walls.  We need to do the same outside these walls as best we can all the while inviting people to come.  Amen.

About Those Buildings

 Mark 13:1-8

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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 21^st Century as the people of God when they wandered in the Wilderness after God freed them from slavery in Egypt.  Amen.

 

In Behind the Disillusionment

Mark 13:1-8
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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.