Year C
\u00a0Daniel 12:1-3
\u00a0Psalm 16
\u00a0Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25
\u00a0Mark 13:1-8<\/p>\n\n\n\n
May the words of my mouth O God\u2026\u00a0 speak your truth\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Grandmother, what big eyes you have!”
“The better to see you with, my dear.”
“And Grandmother, what big teeth you have!”
“All the better to eat you up with.”
And the wolf ate Little Red Riding Hood…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We just heard the very beginning of Mark’s Ch. 13\u2026 at the end of Ch. 12 vv. 38-40\u2026 while teaching\u2026 Jesus admonishes\u2026 Beware of the scribes\u2026 who like to walk around in long robes\u2026 and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces\u2026 and to have the best seats in the synagogues\u2026 and the places of honor at banquets\u2026 they devour widows\u2019 houses<\/em>\u2026 like wolves devouring the innocent\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then\u2026 as Jesus sat down opposite the Treasury\u2026 he watched many rich people putting in large sums of money\u2026 but then a poor widow came\u2026 and put in two small copper coins\u2026 and he said to his disciples\u2026 this poor widow has put in more than all the others\u2026 for all of them have contributed out of their abundance\u2026 but she\u2026 has put in everything she had to live on\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And when he came out of the Temple\u2026 an anonymous disciple\u2026 unnamed perhaps because he was intended to represent all of us\u2026 gushed over the grandeur and the immensity and the stability of these large buildings\u2026 and Jesus said\u2026 they have no permanence\u2026 not one stone will be left on another<\/em>\u2026 and it reminds me of what Jesus said in Matthew 24:35\u2026 heaven and earth will pass away\u2026 but my words will not pass away<\/em>…<\/p>\n\n\n\n Katherine Grieb\u2026 who teaches New Testament at Virginia Theological Seminary wrote about the difference between what seems changeless\u2026 and what\u2019s not\u2026 the Jerusalem Temple\u2026 newly reconstructed by Herod the Great at significant expense\u2026 was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world\u2026 the project began about 20 years before Jesus was born\u2026 and according to the Jewish historian Josephus\u2026 although the inner sanctuary was completed in only about 18 months\u2026 the Temple took many more years to complete\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n It occupied a platform of more than 900 by 1500 feet\u2026 twice as large as the Roman Forum with its many temples\u2026 four times as large as the Athenian Acropolis with its Parthenon\u2026 about as long as five football fields\u2026 and about as wide as four\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n The huge retaining walls that supported the Temple were composed of great white stones as long as 40 feet\u2026 some of which still stand as part of the Western Wall\u2026 the front of the Temple itself was a huge square\u2026 150 feet on each side\u2026 much of it decorated with silver and gold\u2026 and the complex was so high\u2026 that it could be seen by pilgrims miles away\u2026 as they journeyed to Jerusalem to worship there\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Professor Grieb ends\u2026 whoever it was who made that initial comment to Jesus would also have been impressed by what the Temple represented\u2026 the symbol of God\u2019s presence with Israel\u2026 and God\u2019s actual dwelling place at the center of the known world\u2026 but he would also have been impressed by the Temple itself\u2026 by its massive sense of stability\u2026 and by it\u2019s stones which seemed changeless and immovable\u2026 both of these things were so weighty\u2026 so foundational\u2026 both literally and figuratively\u2026 that no one could ever imagine them going anywhere\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And we don’t know just how much time passed\u2026 but later on\u2026 when Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives\u2026 opposite the Temple\u2026 Peter\u2026 James\u2026 John\u2026 and Andrew asked him\u2026 when is this going to happen\u2026 and for what sign should we look\u2026<\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Today is the second week of our seven-week Advent\u2026 last week and today\u2026 we focus on eschatology\u2026 the word itself comes from the Greek and means last discourse<\/em>\u2026 and refers to that part of theology concerned with death\u2026 judgment\u2026 and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n So Advent is about waiting for this last discourse\u2026 not just for the incarnation\u2026 but for the completion and perfection of God\u2019s kingdom\u2026 Advent is about waiting for that moment which makes sense of all of our moments\u2026 it is fundamentally about transition\u2026 and all of us have gone through one kind of transition or another\u2026 that creates an in-between time for us\u2026 Fr. John Shea wrote that these in-between times are like being a trapeze artist who\u2019s let go of one bar\u2026 but hasn\u2019t yet taken hold of the other one\u2026 you\u2019re not where you were\u2026 and you’re not yet where you\u2019re going to be\u2026 he calls it mid-air living\u2026 the identity you had is gone\u2026 and the identity you will have has not arrived\u2026 it’s one way that we are always being made new\u2026 but really\u2026 when you think about it\u2026 our entire lives are mid-air living\u2026 we talk\u2026 we act\u2026 we plan as though most things in our lives are changeless and immovable\u2026 but the truth is that our lives are in an almost constant state of flux\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n It used to be\u2026 that people were used to waiting\u2026 waiting to finding answers\u2026 or communicating with someone\u2026 could take weeks\u2026 or months\u2026 ships used to bring letters from Europe to America\u2026 the Pony Express delivered messages before we had the telegraph\u2026 or you might have to plan a trip to the city library to do some research on something\u2026 now we have Google\u2026 and instantaneous texting and email and video calls\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n But with the advent of this technology\u2026 and a consumer driven society that promotes instant gratification\u2026 we don\u2019t want to wait\u2026 and we\u2019ve forgotten how to just sit with something\u2026 an issue\u2026 a dilemma\u2026 a decision\u2026 and reflect on what it might mean\u2026 and consider the consequences for ourselves and for others\u2026 we\u2019ve lost the intrinsic value of gratification delay\u2026 we want fast answers so we can put things behind us and move on to the next event in our lives\u2026 and then there are some things that seem to throw a wrench in the works\u2026 like a medical diagnosis or some other kind of loss\u2026 and the waiting can feel like things are falling apart around us\u2026 stone by stone\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus was sitting in both literal\u2026 and figurative opposition to the Temple\u2026 his values were in opposition to those of the Temple\u2026 he knew it would crumble because it didn’t serve all people\u2026 and the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 CE\u2026 because when domination systems don\u2019t reflect God\u2019s love\u2026 no matter how stable or grounded they seem\u2026 when the things we’ve thought of as foundational oppress people\u2026 they cannot stand in opposition to God\u2019s law\u2026 and I am certain that the more we live into serving God\u2026 we will not only serve ourselves\u2026 but we will seamlessly serve ourselves and our families and our communities\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n We live Advent lives\u2026 waiting for new life to come\u2026 but this new life comes with birth pangs\u2026 not because God desires it\u2026 but because we\u2019re the ones who have to dismantle\u2026 sometimes stone by stone\u2026 the systems which are in opposition to God\u2019s law\u2026 either those which we have created or those which we simply support\u2026 systems we think are inviolable\u2026 and when the Temple is gone\u2026 we live in an in-between time\u2026 not quite who we were\u2026 not yet who we will become\u2026 and during this time\u2026 it can be difficult to know what the best mid-course corrections are\u2026 and when we realize that we live mid-air lives\u2026 and no longer have the certainty of what we were holding on to\u2026 it is possible to become more sensitive to all those around us who live mid-air lives too\u2026 and maybe instead of grabbing for the bar we think we want\u2026 the bar that serves only us\u2026 we can grab hold of the bar of God\u2019s justice that is placed in front of us\u2026 now that would be a Cirque de Soleil<\/em> act worth seeing\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Year C\u00a0Daniel 12:1-3\u00a0Psalm 16\u00a0Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25\u00a0Mark 13:1-8 May the words of my mouth O God\u2026\u00a0 speak your truth\u2026 “Grandmother, what big eyes you have!”“The better to see you with, my dear.”“And Grandmother, what big teeth you have!”“All the better to eat you up with.”And the wolf ate Little Red Riding Hood… We just heard the very beginning of Mark’s Ch. 13\u2026 at the end of Ch. 12 vv. 38-40\u2026 while teaching\u2026 Jesus admonishes\u2026 Beware of the scribes\u2026 who like to walk around in long robes\u2026 and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces\u2026 and to have the best seats in the synagogues\u2026 and the places of honor at banquets\u2026 they devour widows\u2019 houses\u2026 like wolves devouring the innocent\u2026 And then\u2026 as Jesus sat down opposite the Treasury\u2026 he watched many rich people putting in large sums of money\u2026 but then a poor widow came\u2026 and put in two small copper coins\u2026 and he said to his disciples\u2026 this poor widow has put in more than all the others\u2026 for all of them have contributed out of their abundance\u2026 but she\u2026 has put in everything she had to live on\u2026 And when he came out of the Temple\u2026 an anonymous disciple\u2026 unnamed perhaps because he was intended to represent all of us\u2026 gushed over the grandeur and the immensity and the stability of these large buildings\u2026 and Jesus said\u2026 they have no permanence\u2026 not one stone will be left on another\u2026 and it reminds me of what Jesus said in Matthew 24:35\u2026 heaven and earth will pass away\u2026 but my words will not pass away… Katherine Grieb\u2026 who teaches New Testament at Virginia Theological Seminary wrote about the difference between what seems changeless\u2026 and what\u2019s not\u2026 the Jerusalem Temple\u2026 newly reconstructed by Herod the Great at significant expense\u2026 was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world\u2026 the project began about 20 years before Jesus was born\u2026 and according to the Jewish historian Josephus\u2026 although the inner sanctuary was completed in only about 18 months\u2026 the Temple took many more years to complete\u2026 It occupied a platform of more than 900 by 1500 feet\u2026 twice as large as the Roman Forum with its many temples\u2026 four times as large as the Athenian Acropolis with its Parthenon\u2026 about as long as five football fields\u2026 and about as wide as four\u2026 The huge retaining walls that supported the Temple were composed of great white stones as long as 40 feet\u2026 some of which still stand as part of the Western Wall\u2026 the front of the Temple itself was a huge square\u2026 150 feet on each side\u2026 much of it decorated with silver and gold\u2026 and the complex was so high\u2026 that it could be seen by pilgrims miles away\u2026 as they journeyed to Jerusalem to worship there\u2026 Professor Grieb ends\u2026 whoever it was who made that initial comment to Jesus would also have been impressed by what the Temple represented\u2026 the symbol of God\u2019s presence with Israel\u2026 and God\u2019s actual dwelling place at the center of the known world\u2026 but he would also have been impressed by the Temple itself\u2026 by its massive sense of stability\u2026 and by it\u2019s stones which seemed changeless and immovable\u2026 both of these things were so weighty\u2026 so foundational\u2026 both literally and figuratively\u2026 that no one could ever imagine them going anywhere\u2026 And we don’t know just how much time passed\u2026 but later on\u2026 when Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives\u2026 opposite the Temple\u2026 Peter\u2026 James\u2026 John\u2026 and Andrew asked him\u2026 when is this going to happen\u2026 and for what sign should we look\u2026 Today is the second week of our seven-week Advent\u2026 last week and today\u2026 we focus on eschatology\u2026 the word itself comes from the Greek and means last discourse\u2026 and refers to that part of theology concerned with death\u2026 judgment\u2026 and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind\u2026 So Advent is about waiting for this last discourse\u2026 not just for the incarnation\u2026 but for the completion and perfection of God\u2019s kingdom\u2026 Advent is about waiting for that moment which makes sense of all of our moments\u2026 it is fundamentally about transition\u2026 and all of us have gone through one kind of transition or another\u2026 that creates an in-between time for us\u2026 Fr. John Shea wrote that these in-between times are like being a trapeze artist who\u2019s let go of one bar\u2026 but hasn\u2019t yet taken hold of the other one\u2026 you\u2019re not where you were\u2026 and you’re not yet where you\u2019re going to be\u2026 he calls it mid-air living\u2026 the identity you had is gone\u2026 and the identity you will have has not arrived\u2026 it’s one way that we are always being made new\u2026 but really\u2026 when you think about it\u2026 our entire lives are mid-air living\u2026 we talk\u2026 we act\u2026 we plan as though most things in our lives are changeless and immovable\u2026 but the truth is that our lives are in an almost constant state of flux\u2026 It used to be\u2026 that people were used to waiting\u2026 waiting to finding answers\u2026 or communicating with someone\u2026 could take weeks\u2026 or months\u2026 ships used to bring letters from Europe to America\u2026 the Pony Express delivered messages before we had the telegraph\u2026 or you might have to plan a trip to the city library to do some research on something\u2026 now we have Google\u2026 and instantaneous texting and email and video calls\u2026 But with the advent of this technology\u2026 and a consumer driven society that promotes instant gratification\u2026 we don\u2019t want to wait\u2026 and we\u2019ve forgotten how to just sit with something\u2026 an issue\u2026 a dilemma\u2026 a decision\u2026 and reflect on what it might mean\u2026 and consider the consequences for ourselves and for others\u2026 we\u2019ve lost the intrinsic value of gratification delay\u2026 we want fast answers so we can put things behind us and move on to the next event in our lives\u2026 and then there are some things that seem to throw a wrench in the works\u2026 like a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1423,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sermons"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/trapeze-artist-285x300-1.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1424,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions\/1424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}