How would you feel if you were visiting Washington, D.C. and overheard someone prophecy, “This is a wicked city! It will be destroyed and leveled to the ground!”
It might depend on whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, but most of us, regardless of political leanings, would hate to think of the collapse that would follow the destruction of our capitol city.
How would you feel if someone made the same kind of prediction about Plymouth or St. Thomas?
Jesus and his disciples were in Jerusalem. One of his disciples, looking at the temple, said, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” The temple was as tall as a fifteen story building. It stood high on Mount Zion where people could see it for miles.
Jesus responded:
“Do you see these great buildings?
There will not be left here one stone on another,
which will not be thrown down.”
Later, when they put Jesus on trial, his enemies accused him of threatening to destroy the temple. In Mark’s Gospel, that’s the only accusation that they made against Jesus – that he threatened to destroy the temple. He didn’t do that, of course. He just said that it would happen.
It did happen, too, about thirty years later. The Romans finally got tired of dealing with Jewish zealots, so they destroyed Jerusalem and killed most of the people.
When I say that they destroyed Jerusalem, I mean that they leveled it. The emperor wanted to create a place so desolate that no one could ever tell that anyone had ever lived there, so that’s what his soldiers did. They set fire to the temple. Then they pulled down the stones so that no stone sat on another stone. They leveled Jerusalem.
It had happened before. Six centuries earlier, Jeremiah the prophet had said that it would happen. People then did not want to hear it, so they imprisoned Jeremiah in a big cistern.
Unless you read survivalist sites on the web, you might not be familiar with cisterns. A cistern is an underground cavern used to store water. In the days before mechanical pumps, people dug cisterns near their homes and filled them with rainwater during the rainy season so they would have water during the dry season.
The people of Jerusalem threw Jeremiah into a cistern to shut him up when he said things they didn’t want to hear. The cistern didn’t have any water in it, but the bottom was muddy and Jeremiah sank into the mud. He probably would have died there, but someone said, “Micah, the prophet, gave us the same warning. Maybe Jeremiah is a prophet, too” (Jeremiah 26:18). So they rescued Jeremiah from the cistern. They let Jeremiah out of the cistern, but they failed to repent as he was calling them to do. The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and its people. That happened in 587 B.C.
Now Jesus was warning that it would happen again. He was saying that Jerusalem would be destroyed because of the people’s sins. Just as the people had failed to heed Jeremiah’s warning, so also they failed to heed Jesus’ warning.
What Jesus predicted came true. In the year 67 A.D., the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and leveled the temple. They killed most of the people.
So what does that have to do with us? What is God telling us in this scripture today?
Notice what Jesus told his disciples after he predicted the destruction of the temple. He and his closest disciples were sitting on the Mount of Olives, across from the temple, and he said this. He said:
“Be careful that no one leads you astray.
For many will come in my name,
saying, ‘I am he!’
and will lead many astray.”
This warning is for the disciples in this room and not just the disciples sitting there with Jesus.
There are so many deceivers out there today that I hardly know where to start. People tell lies to sell us toothpaste. People undermine our nation by their greed and lust for power.
This last week, our daughter Avery was exposed to a hazard that involved her cell phone. She was in a biology class at IUSB and was working with staph bacteria. Due to the nature of the lab and the bacteria, they were in gloves to prevent exposure. Avery used her phone to respond to a text message during the lab and then handled it afterwards.
Most hazards involving cell phones are less obvious than the infection she got. That one was easily treated after a visit to her doctor. There is a lot is misinformation out there you can get from a cell phone that is not so easily treated. We get it from television, from advertising, from friends, and from the Internet. Every day we are bombarded with misinformation and examples of self-destructive behavior. The self-destructive behavior is pitched to us as entertainment and not a cautionary tale. It is a dangerous world out there.
There are ten times as many people in prison today as there were thirty years ago. Much of that increase has to do with drugs and the crime associated with drug use.
So what is it we are called to do? What are some of the things we can do to keep from being led astray?
We have to support each other. We do that by coming to church and praying for our friends and neighbors. None of us is strong enough to go it alone. We rely on grace, but we rely on our brothers and sisters too.
There is a temptation, because we are a nation of rugged individualists, to be independent and reject the help of others. We fall out of community and then lack the support network when we are in crisis.
You have heard me talk before of my desert place in the early and mid 90’s. I lost both my parents and Susan and I lost four pregnancies in a period of about five years. I was like a zombie going through the motions. A blessing I had was that I had established the habits of going to church, paying my pledge and saying the Daily Office. I will confess these experiences seemed a little empty to me, but I knew that they had not always been that way.
I came to realize later how very important it had been to stand in church and have my brothers and sisters say the Creed with me. This was a time in my life when I thought I was getting very little from the practice of my faith. In retrospect, it was just the opposite. I received so much and had so little to give. At the time, it just seemed like words to me. I am convinced that the practice of the faith – even when I was discouraged and it seemed a little futile – was the thing that fanned the flames of the Holy Spirit that were smoldering. They jumpstarted things again when I emerged from the desert.
Today is the baptism of Eliana Maria Martinez in the Latino service. She is being baptized into the Body of Christ. Her family is here with her today in support of her. They are witnesses to the power of Christ in their lives, and they are raising her in the faith.
We need to pray for her and her family. We need to pray for each other.
The most powerful thing we can do for Eliana Maria and each other is to provide a witness with the way we live our lives. We have to keep ourselves safe from the deceivers.
I have said these words in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Sermon preached by Fr. Tom at St. Thomas, Plymouth
November 18, 2018; Proper 28 – Year B
1 Samuel 1:4-20
1 Samuel 2:1-10
Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25
Mark 13:1-8