What Matters the Most to Jesus?

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

The following sermon was delivered at the First Presbyterian Church in Murray, KY on November 14, 2021.
Title: What Matters to Jesus
Text: Mark 13:1-8

When I was growing up in Philadelphia in the 1980’s, the city used to have a rule of sorts that no one could construct a building taller than the hat on the head of William Penn’s statue at the top of city hall. That resulted in a relatively tame downtown skyline that made it really cool to visit New York City where the sky literally was the limit.

Out of all the buildings in New York City, I always wanted to see the Empire State building. It wasn’t just a giant rectangle of glass with a point on top. It had character and a sense of history that made it unique compared to so many other buildings.

To this day, I can’t imagine a trip to New York City without a moment to gaze at the Empire State Building. Central Park is nice enough, Time’s Square is an annoying mass of humanity with people shoving promotional flyers in your face, and Fifth Avenue is dull shopping. But the Empire State building gives you a sense of being somewhere unique and historic.

I imagine we each have a favorite building or location in a city. But there really is nothing in modern American cities today that can quite capture the impressive nature and significance of the City of Jerusalem and the temple mount complex for the Jewish people at the time of Jesus.

It’s hard for us to imagine how steep and imposing the valleys around the city used to be. We can hardly put ourselves in the sandals of peasant fishermen who had grown up in the forgotten backwater of Galilee.

The size and scale of the temple in Jerusalem and the surrounding buildings and walls were truly unique and impressive. And this was especially true for people who had only known small villages and cramped family homes. At that time adult children often built an addition to the existing structure when they were ready to start out “on their own.”

The stones used on the walls in Jerusalem and around the temple mount were enormous blocks that sometimes weighed as much as a 747. We can hardly imagine having to move those stones into place, much less stacking them up on top of each other with any kind of precision.

Today you can still see the lower portion of Jerusalem’s walls around the old city from the time of Jesus, and they remain quite impressive. I can only imagine how imposing these walls could have appeared at the time of Jesus when the valleys around them were deeper and people in that region would have had little experience seeing cities on that scale.

Now, the temple wasn’t just a fancy building in the big city. It was the center of worship and a symbol of God’s presence and their special status as God’s chosen people.

So when we read today about the disciples marveling about the massive stones and buildings, the truth is that we are still impressed today by the remnants of those stones. However, the tragic thing is that we can also be impressed by the massive indentations in the earth those stones made when the Romans hurled them to the ground in AD 70. The remnants of that destruction are also extremely impressive.

When we join Jesus and his disciples walking out of Jerusalem’s temple mount, we shouldn’t forget what Mark has already recorded.

In Mark 9:31, Jesus dropped some heavy news on his disciples: “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.”

A short while after that, his disciples engaged in an argument behind his back about which of them was the greatest. It turned out that empathy for their master wasn’t at the front of their minds.

Mark chapter 12, which precedes today’s passage, showed Jesus in rather tense discussions and debates with the religious leaders of the temple establishment. They were trying to discredit if not incriminate Jesus.

Although Jesus had warned his disciples of his impending death and the discussions with religious leaders were extremely tense and combative, his disciples didn’t have a lot to say about it. In fact, while Jesus had the anticipation of his death and resurrection weighing on his mind, the disciples were acting like tourists sightseeing in the big city. “Hey, look at these stones! THEY’RE HUGE!”

In a sense, they acted a lot like fishermen from small town Galilee. Some commentators wonder if they were even anticipating Jesus’ coming conquest as king. Then Jesus, and by proxy them, would be in charge of the massive walls and impressive buildings.

Yet, Jesus directed the conversation in a rather jarring and painful direction. At the peak of their admiration for the beautiful buildings at the heart of their country and the temple at the center of their faith, Jesus snapped them out of it with a harsh dose of realism.

One day soon, their beloved temple would come crumbling down.

In a sense, everything around us is fragile and lacking permanence. Think of how many buildings have endured for 2,000 years. But the disciples immediately discerned that Jesus was talking about something far worse: Jerusalem will be destroyed by an invading army, which was exactly what happened about 40 years later.

We could spend the rest of our time talking about what else Jesus could have meant here. The rest of this chapter could also have something to say about the days in the future before Jesus returns. Then again, this chapter could very well refer to the events shortly after the ministry of Jesus and not much more than that.

It is compelling, to me at least, that Jesus ended this entire discourse, which is addressed to his disciples in the second person, with the following statement in verse 30: “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” In addition, there was a strong Jewish tradition of using dramatic language of heavenly turmoil, such as stars falling from the sky, in Apocalyptic literature at the time that Mark wrote this Gospel.

All of this is to say, it’s likely that this passage is primarily about Rome’s war against the Jewish people and the final Roman siege of Jerusalem, even if we can’t necessarily rule out references to future events.

Now, some have devoted their time to passages like this as if decoding future events was all that Jesus asks of us. As I read what Jesus had to say, I wonder if figuring out the end of time was much of a priority for Jesus. While he offers details about the immanent destruction of the temple and surrounding buildings, he isn’t just delivering insider information about the future. Jesus doesn’t want his disciples to be led astray or to retreat in fear so that they can endure in their faith with confidence and hope.

There’s a sense that the disciples were still not fully aware of what was going on with Jesus as he traveled to Jerusalem. Even after several tense encounters with the teachers at the temple and Jesus’ dire warnings about his coming death, it appears many of them couldn’t quite put it all together.

They weren’t preparing themselves for the tribulation that Jesus would soon face or supporting him in his hour of need.

In fact, while Jesus did offer them some clues about the coming destruction of the temple, he gave them many warnings about themselves. Much like Jesus comforting the women who wept for him, Jesus prepared his clueless disciples for the adversity that would soon come their way. While drawing so near to his own suffering, Jesus prepared his followers for a distressing and uncertain future where they would need to rely on the Holy Spirit in order to persevere.

In today’s passage Jesus warned them about being led astray by false teachers who would come in his name. But in the verses that follow, he gave the chilling prediction that his disciples would be slandered and attacked. There would be family divisions over faithfulness to Jesus, and he went as far as predicting that everyone would hate them!

Although the disciples were concerned about the fate of stones and buildings, Jesus was concerned about their safety and faithfulness. He predicted attacks and trials, but most importantly he promised that God would help them endure, saying:

“When they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.”

These are high stakes situations where their world is going to be flipped upside down. Family members will be divided, the religious leaders they once admired will treat them like enemies, and their freedom and safety are far from guaranteed. Jesus isn’t as concerned about the buildings of Jerusalem enduring as he is concerned about his disciples enduring.

It’s easy to empathize with the disciples here. War in that era was terrifying and devastating, bringing famine, the destruction of communities, and the brutality of an occupying army. The Jewish people were already living under the oppressive rule of Rome, but Jesus predicted something far worse that would signal the loss of religious and national symbols.

In addition to the distressing wars, invasions, famines, and natural disasters, the disciples also had to prepare themselves for false prophets claiming to speak in the name of Jesus.

This level of disruption to their nation, their society, their religion, and their personal lives is quite staggering to consider. Although the disciples started this conversation merely worried about the future of the temple and the city of Jerusalem, they now had a whole pile of fresh worries to weigh on their minds.

It’s a little jarring to hear in this morning’s passage Jesus saying, “Do not be alarmed” about the coming wars and famines and disruptions. Alarm feels really natural, and every other coming crisis he mentions seems to warrant alarm as well.

Yet, there’s a comforting pragmatism in what Jesus said. These things must take place. They can’t stop them. However, they can trust themselves to God and rely on the Holy Spirit to guide their thoughts and words in the midst of this coming disruption.

This unusual and uncomfortable passage may prompt us to ask what we value right now. What are the things that impress us? What gives us a sense of security or belonging? What are we counting on?

Perhaps we can ask how we could depend on God if we were apart from our work, apart from our homes, apart from our cars, or apart from certain relationships? What can’t we imagine living without?

It’s possible that we may be focused on the wrong priority right now, and we need Jesus to redirect our attention to what matters the most. Perhaps we are so focused on outward religious practices that we fail to ask about the state of our souls or the resilience of our faith.

We may hear of rumors and predictions that alarm us and leave us frightened. There’s no guarantee that the institutions or organizations that we count on will always be there to support us when everything falls to pieces.

Jesus can remind us of the fragility and uncertainty of our world. Disruptions have happened in the past, and they will certainly happen again. Can we stand firm in our faith and hope in God’s presence and power to carry us through the moments that we simply can’t even imagine?

If Jesus could help a group of small town fishermen tourists to Jerusalem endure in their faith after years of missing the point, I believe that he is more than able to help us today. Amen.

Prophets Are Always Most Popular When They’re Dead

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

The following sermon text is from a sermon I preached at St. John’s Episcopal Church on March 7, 2021 on the Gospel passage in John 2:13-22.

Prophets are always at their most popular when they are dead. Their challenging messages that disrupt the status quo have a way of softening in their absence as the original audience for the prophet’s message fades away.

We could describe Martin Luther King Jr. as a prophet  who quoted scripture throughout his struggle in the American Civil Rights movement, advocating in part for voting rights, fair wages, just laws, and equality for all.

Ironically, politicians who have voted against what King stood for annually offer him social media tributes without fail on MLK Jr. Day. One former member of Congress with strong ties to white supremacy even had the gall to share one of the more inspirational King quotes that conveniently avoided any discussion of racial justice.

The Washington Post quoted King’s daughter Bernice on a recent MLK Jr. Day, “There will be an overflow of King quotes today… We can’t, with truth and consciousness, quote my father, while dehumanizing each other & sanctioning hate.”

We may also remember that Pope Francis spoke to Congress in 2015 and honored King, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and Abraham Lincoln as  “four representatives of the American people,” using their dreams of justice, equal rights, liberty and peace to make America a better place.

Yet, during their lifetimes, Merton and Day were often criticized, ostracized, silenced, and slandered for calling into question the buildup of nuclear weapons during the cold war. Merton and Day exchanged letters over their frustrations as exiles among the mainstream of Catholicism that approved of war.

Merton wrote to Day with his customary sarcasm,

“My peace writings have reached an abrupt halt. Told not to do any more on that subject. Dangerous, subversive, perilous, offensive to pious ears, and confusing to good Catholics who are all at peace in the nice idea that we ought to wipe Russia off the face of the earth. Why get people all stirred up?”

The Hidden Ground of Love, Page: 74

Merton later griped in his journal about not being able to write about nuclear war:

“I am still not permitted to say what Pope John said… [The] Reason: “That is not the job of a monk, it is for the Bishops.” [But] Certainly it has a basis in monastic tradition. [Quote] “The job of the monk is to weep, not to teach.” But with our cheese business and all the other “weeping” functions we have undertaken, it seems strange that a monk should be forbidden to stand up for the truth, particularly when the truth (in this case) is disastrously neglected.

Intimate Merton, Page: 215

It’s easy to honor a prophet when you’re not the immediate target of the prophet’s message.

At the time of Jesus he noted that his people wept at the tombs of the prophets whom their ancestors had killed. We shouldn’t be surprised to learn what happened to John the Baptist and Jesus when they took up the prophetic mantles of the likes of Elijah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah.

Our challenge today is to encounter the message of the prophets and to do our best to imagine ourselves in the same shoes as the prophet’s audience. We need to see how these messages, cutting through the pretenses in their original audience, can convict us as well. It’s not an easy or desirable position to be in!

If we can place ourselves alongside the original audience of the prophets, we may find that the prophets have messages for us about how to draw near to God and how to treat our neighbors with love, kindness and justice.

Today’s Gospel reading clearly presents Jesus as a prophet within the Jewish tradition. In order to better understand today’s reading, let’s begin with a brief look at what a prophet was and how a prophet functioned.

A prophet in the Judeo/Christian sense may be described as a person who conveys a message from God. Abraham J. Heschel writes about the canonical Hebrew prophets like this, “A prophet is… endowed with a mission, with the power of a word not his own that accounts for his greatness—but also with temperament, concern, character, and individuality… The word of God reverberated in the voice of a man.”

We should not view prophets as men and women who merely reveal the future. Prophets reveal God’s perspective. Some call prophets ambassadors for God, and so their revelation may be a message about what is coming in the future, but even that message about the future tends to be more wrapped up in God’s assessment of the present moment.

Jesus frequently imitated the prophetic ministry of Isaiah, Elisha, and Jeremiah with his miracles, messages, and actions. For his original audience that was steeped in these stories and traditions, the prophetic role of Jesus was beyond dispute. Taking a whip into the temple like he did in today’s story is exactly the kind of action we would expect from a prophet.

Jesus’ words in John and the other Gospels were drawn directly from the prophet Jeremiah, even as he hinted at the destruction of the temple:

We read in Jeremiah 7:11-14 NRSV

“11 Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? You know, I too am watching, says the Lord. 12 Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel…  I will do to the house that is called by my name, in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your ancestors, just what I did to Shiloh. ”

In other words, a foreign invader will destroy the Jerusalem temple in the southern kingdom of Judah just like what happened to the holy place of Shiloh in the northern kingdom of Israel.

Much like the prophets before him, the words of Jesus are a little easier for us to read today since we aren’t the primary targets of his message. And since we lack any kind of modern equivalent for the Jewish temple, we’ll have to work especially hard to grasp the significance of what Jesus did and what he said.

Setting the Scene for the Cleansing of the Temple

The temple was the religious focal point for the Jewish people. At least three times each year, the Jewish people traveled en masse to the temple for major feasts and holy days. The Passover was among the most important, and we should imagine Jewish pilgrims arriving from not only throughout Palestine but from around the world. There are travelers of Jewish descent and also Greeks who have adopted the Jewish religion as the two cultures interacted together.

There is hardly a united front of Jewish leaders at this time. There are factions and divisions along religious and political lines at the very least. Caiaphas the high priest and the religious leaders in the Sanhedrin have arguments and feuds, and among them is the location where sacrificial animals for the temple and money changers for the temple tax will be located. Historically, these merchants and money changers were located outside the temple grounds in the nearby Kidron Valley, but allegedly, a Jewish Midrash reports that a feud among Caiaphas and other religious leaders in 30 AD resulted in select merchants and money changers receiving a prime position within the temple.

We may imagine that this was likely not popular with the Jews of Greek descent who now had to pray while mingling with nearby animals and merchants. In addition, the entire atmosphere of the temple would have been altered significantly. Perhaps the typical pilgrim was annoyed but also resigned to accept whatever the most powerful religious leaders demanded.

We shouldn’t be surprised to know that Jesus soon earned himself a number of powerful enemies when he drove out the animals and money changers. He likely expressed the opinions of many Greek Jews and of many pilgrims who were likely shocked by this change at the temple grounds.

Nevertheless, Jesus still appeared to be attacking the most important religious institution of his people. First, he attacked the money changers and drove the animals out of the temple who made its functions run smoothly. Even if they had to relocate, there was surely a disruption to the day’s religious practices.

Second, Jesus predicted that the temple would be destroyed. We simply don’t have a comparable institution to the temple that embodied religious and national identity like the Jewish temple. To predict its destruction, even in a prophetic tradition, touched a nerve among the Jewish people. In fact, the paranoia of the Romans coming to destroy the temple was a part of what drove the conspiracy to kill Jesus.

What Does This Prophetic Act Mean for Us Today?

We could spend a lot of time asking what this passage means for us today and focusing on what Jesus may drive out of our own churches and sanctuaries. Are we abusing or misusing our sacred spaces? Are we too focused on our own self-preservation and not on the ministry of prayer and worship?

That isn’t a wrong line of application here, but it’s certainly the low hanging fruit. This is the easy application that frankly doesn’t ask too much of us. Perhaps we’ll uncover some issues that we need to address, but there’s something deeper and far more challenging in this story that we can experience and apply if we’re willing to follow Jesus into the fog of his mystical ministry.

At the climax of this story, Jesus made a shocking, confounding, and ultimately tragic statement about destroying the temple and then “raising it up” in three days. He used a verb, raising up, that applies to both construction and resurrection. John directs our understanding of this statement, saying it refers to Jesus’ death and Resurrection. While commentators have speculated about the many different meanings and possibilities here, I think we can find a lot to ponder if we take John at his word.

What if Jesus wasn’t just challenging the corruption of the temple? What if he was challenging the very centrality of the temple for his people?

His authority to cleanse the temple comes from his place as the new meeting ground between God and humanity. He will unite God with humanity through his death and Resurrection, and that connection to the Father made him the definitive voice on worshipping God.

Now, it’s not a shock to think that Jesus was more or less reimagining the role of the temple around his own body and the significance of the Resurrection. Consider in John 4 that Jesus explicitly predicts the replacement of the temple as the center of worship.

In John 4 Jesus spoke to the woman at the well.

21 “Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem…  23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 

If we take the whole of John’s Gospel about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the significance of Jesus himself becoming a new “temple” or center of worship after his resurrection, then this passage challenges us to go beyond the simple interpretation that only looks at our own buildings and traditions for a point of application.

This is a passage that draws us into the mystical ministry of Jesus where we are united with Jesus through the indwelling Holy Spirit. Yes, we benefit from having a sacred space for worship together, but Jesus doesn’t want us to get lost in the details of where we worship. Our sacred space for worship is within our own bodies since God is present with us. The Spirit is resting within each of us, and so the dwelling of God is with humanity.

Worship is now in Spirit and in Truth, not within stones and wood. Jesus prophetically told his listeners that the temple is irrelevant in comparison to the new Resurrection life he will bring to the world. When the Holy Spirit of God comes, the pilgrimage is now complete. God has made the pilgrimage to each of us, and so the “where” of worship is no longer a central issue.

We could spend our time fighting over the details of sacred space, and we may need to make changes in order to ensure our sacred spaces are houses of prayer that allow people to focus on God the Father. Yet, we’ll miss the bigger part of Jesus’ mission if we only look at buildings.

We need to look into the fog of his shocking message. We need to step into the void where our knowledge and concrete experiences fail us.

And perhaps entering into this mystery will help us ask new questions about what prevents us from praying, what interferes with our awareness of the Holy Spirit? What fills our minds or undermines our ability to be present for a God who is dwelling within us even right now?

Do we need to drive something out of our lives? Do we need to flip some things over? Do we need to let the hard message of Jesus today shock us into a new awareness of God among us?

I won’t say that our sacred spaces aren’t important. Yet, for the audience of Jesus, their resistance to his message was rooted in part in their attachment to the familiar stones and sacrifices they had used for years. They couldn’t enter into the mystical unknown of a God who didn’t actually require temples or sacrifices or temple taxes. When offered freedom to worship God in whatever space they came from, far too many of them retreated to the system that, although corrupt and broken in many ways, felt familiar and safe.

Jesus is offering an invitation to join him in the mystical fog, to trust that the Holy Spirit has been given to all who trust him, believe in him, and follow him. That Spirit is present for you as you pray, as you worship, and as you study. We surely see many benefits from gathering together to pray in sacred spaces together, but we’ll miss out on the great liberation and freedom of Jesus if we reject his prophetic invitation to follow the wild winds of his indwelling Spirit into the places of worship that are as close to us as they are unfamiliar.

Amen.