See what large stones!

Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost - November 18, 2007

“See what large stones they are!”

the disciples exclaim to Jesus.

Old King Herod had grand ideas; he became known as one of the most ambitious builders of the ancient world.

Here a place, there a palace, everywhere, palaces, ports, cities, an artificial mountain prepared as his tomb,...and not just in his own realm but scattered around the empire.

Oh, he had big ideas, and spent lots of money accomplishing them.

And among the grandest was the temple in Jerusalem.

The second temple, the one built after the return from exile in Babylon about 500BC, was a poor imitation of Solomon's Temple of 900BC.

They did not have the resources to do what had been done 4 centuries earlier.

So, when Herod came along in the late 1^st century BC, and he wanted to show his restive subjects that he was truly concerned about them, he decided to pull down the 2^nd temple and built a 3rd, one that would rival and surpass the grand memories of Solomon's temple.

Everything was done on a big scale.

Hillsides were cut off and ravines filled in to expand the open courtyard on which the temple stood to more than 5 football fields long by 3 football fields wide.

Some of the individual foundation stones for the retaining walls are 35' long by 8' high,

So huge that the only way to move them was as cylinders that were literally rolled into position and then the sides cut off to make them square.

The stones used in the temple itself were 28'feet long and 8' high and purest white.

There were 162 columns in just one of the parts of the portico, each one 27' high and 8' wide holding up a huge roofed area.

“See what large stones!” most anyone would exclaim who saw the place.

The disciples were ordinary country people.

The archaeologists show us a particular foundation underneath the glass floor of a church in Capernaum as the house of the apostle Peter.

It is smaller than half of our chancel.

Some individual stones in the Jerusalem Temple were nearly as large as Peter's entire house in Capernaum.

What large stones indeed!

But Jesus is not impressed:

“Not one stone will be left upon another,” he says.

And less than 40 years later, it was true.

The Romans crushed two revolts led by the Zealots, completely flattened the Temple, and drove any remaining Jews who were not killed entirely away from Jerusalem.

Disaster! Terror! Dismay!

See what large stones....not one left upon another.

Of course we are not just talking about stones here, but the place of all human accomplishment.

The most enduring thing that humankind has made is fired pottery; it will last far longer than our plastic jugs.

The Mediterranean world is littered with untold millions of pieces of pottery, 99.9% of it smashed into shards.

The “7 wonders of the ancient world” are almost all gone. There was voting earlier this year for a new list of 7 wonders of human accomplishment, and some of them are not in good shape.

“Dust you are, and to dust you shall return,” says scripture.

This life, this world, this building, these stones, are all terminal.

But Paul observes, “If for this life only we have hoped, we are most of all to be pitied.”

So then we take up a different game, saying that we live on through the next generation.

I can leave a legacy to my children and grandchildren.

I can endow a chair at the college.

I can make my own Trump Tower, or at least have the most grandiose marble monument in the cemetery.

I may die, but my college, my club, my monument, my name will last forever.

“Look at these stones!”

“Not one shall be left upon another”.

After that somber pronouncement, Jesus says to his disciples, “Look up! Your redemption is drawing near.”

Every day, in a thousand ways, we are acting as though we are our own redeemers, without any need of God.

We act as though we have earned it, that we deserve God's favor.

God has blessed us because of our hard work, of course.

“See what large stones I have made of my life, all by myself!”

Not one stone shall be left upon another.

By ourselves, there is no hope, no hope at all.

Everything we cherish falls to dust, even our bravest attempts at doing good things.

They get twisted up with sin, somehow, every time, and do not accomplish all that we had dreamed.

Perhaps our true redemption can begin with the simple admission that we need a redemption that comes from outside of ourselves; it can't be of our own manufacture.

Perhaps the source of our hope begins with the admission that we are without a durable hope, and that true hope is a gift to us in Holy Baptism.

If Jesus does not love to raise the dead and reach out to the unreachable and give life to the dying, then we are truly without hope and cannot be redeemed.

The good news is that this is precisely a good time for us to bear testimony to the lordship of Christ.

We do not hope only for this life at this point in the history of this country and for this particular corner of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Our hope is big, including every part of the creation, and fixed not on ourselves, but on the Lord God who made us, who saves us from our perfidious selves, and promises a place in a re-made creation.

Hear what one person wrote about her life and struggles:

“I have been forced to go on a journey that I did not want to take,” she wrote.

She has had a terrible, difficult struggle with cancer.

“And yet,” she continues, ”this, the worst of my times, has also been the best of times.

I am closer to God than I have ever been.

Because of so many of the things that I have leaned on have been taken away from me, I have been forced to lean on Jesus.

And I have found him trustworthy and true. It is well with my soul.”

What a positive witness this woman has given; what a positive example for the rest of us, when we realize that our own pile of stones is crumbling.

When I was working on this sermon, our bell control system chose a hymn at random, and that hymn turns out to be exactly to the point:

Fear not, I am with you,

oh be not dismayed,

For I am your God

and will still give you aid.

When through fiery trials

your pathway shall lie,

My grace, all sufficient,

shall be your supply.

[LBW 507]

That is the kind of faith we have been hearing about all this year as we have been reading from the Gospel of Luke.

Holding onto faith, despite the problems;

doing what needs to be done, despite the anguish; being what we are called to be as children of God, even when others scoff.

These are the things now possible for us to hear and receive:

--Jesus' command to “Go and do likewise” as he tells us of the Good Samaritan's actions,

--Jesus' call to perseverance in prayer,

--Jesus' challenge to listen to the prophets,

--Jesus' announcement that the Father welcomes us prodigals into the great banquet.

--etc. throughout the stories from Luke.

See what large stones theseare, stones that will endure precisely because they are not stones of our making, but the foundation laid down by Jesus.

We are God's house of living stones,

Built as his own habitation.,

another hymn writer sings.[LBW 365]

And because of it,

we are called to a new life that is beginning to break in right now.

These are stones far more important than any in Herod's temple or in our own private little pile of accomplishments.

As we go about our work in this week, let us see and rejoice at what large and lasting stones they truly are. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.