Thomas Kleinert
Those who saw the temple in Jerusalem say it was a magnificent structure. Newly rebuilt under Herod the Great, and still under construction during Jesus’ lifetime, it occupied a platform twice as large as the Roman Forum with its many temples and four times the size of the Acropolis in Athens with the famous Parthenon. The massive retaining walls that supported the complex, including the famous Western wall that remains today, were built with enormous blocks of stone, some of them 40 feet long. The front of the temple itself was a square of sculpted rock, 150 feet by 150 feet, much of it decorated with silver and gold. First-century historian Josephus wrote that the gold “effected so fierce a blaze of fire that those who tried to look at it were forced to turn away. Jerusalem and the temple seemed in the distance like a mountain covered in snow, for any part not covered in gold was dazzling white.” The combination of the temple mount, the platform of huge retaining stones, and the large building of the temple itself raised the temple complex to a height that could be seen from miles away, and in bright sunlight, it shone like a luminous city come down from heaven. This was the House of God – this was, in the minds of many, the center of the world. This was the very presence of God with God’s people, the ancient promise rendered in stone. It was holy ground, a sanctuary where rituals of atonement and purification along with festivals of liberation and thanksgiving sustained a people seeking to live faithfully with their God. The temple was an essential institution of Jewish life.
Jesus had come to the temple every day since he came to Jerusalem, and tensions between him and the temple leadership had been growing. Now he and the disciples are leaving, and one of them says, perhaps with his fingers tracing the seam between two of the colossal blocks, “Look, teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” He is dazzled, but he doesn’t see what Jesus sees. I wonder if he actually saw what Jesus wanted us to see just moments ago when he drew our attention to the poor widow putting her last little coin in the temple treasury – if this disciple saw her, she didn’t leave a lasting impression; not like the massive walls. “Not one stone will be left here upon another,” Jesus tells the stunned disciple. “All will be thrown down.” Nothing suggests he meant it as a threat; just a simple announcement. The words sound very matter-of-fact, spoken in passing. The beauty would fade, the majesty fall, the power crumble and collapse.
In the next scene, Jesus and four of the disciples are sitting on the Mount of Olives with its spectacular view of the Temple Mount, and they ask him some follow-up questions about all will be thrown down. They’re not curious as to why or how, only when this would be — as though the why were a given and the how irrelevant, and everything now was just a matter of time. In the apocalyptic imagination, the announcement that “not one stone will be left here upon another” is a given — the burning question is, when will the present age crumble under the weight of evil and give way to the kingdom of God? When will this be and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?
The Gospel of Mark was composed and first heard in a time of great uncertainty. In the 60’s of the first century, the weight of Roman occupation of Judea became too much to bear. Mob violence was disrupting life in Jerusalem. Assassins attacked and murdered people, including one high priest, in broad daylight, and kidnapped officials who collaborated with Rome. Gangs of roaming robbers burned and looted villages.[1] Prophets delivered oracles of doom, and daily the news seemed to confirm their words. Jerusalem was a tinderbox in those tumultuous years, with revolutionary sentiments mounting and finally catapulting Judea into open rebellion against Rome. “Deceivers and impostors, under the pretense of divine inspiration, fostering revolutionary changes,” wrote the historian Josephus, “they persuaded the masses to act like madmen and led them out into the desert in the belief that God would give them signs of deliverance.”[2] Insurgents took control of the city, but not for long. Roman troops under the command of Titus laid siege to Jerusalem, and in the summer of the year 70, the city fell and the temple was destroyed — only seven years after construction had finally been completed.
The Gospel of Mark was composed and first heard in a time of wars and rumors of wars. There were Christian prophets whose words were honored by the assemblies of believers as the words of the risen Lord, and some of those prophets were certain that the catastrophic events unfolding in Jerusalem could only mean that the return of Jesus in power and glory was imminent.
In Mark’s community, however, the words of the living Lord were words of caution and encouragement. “Beware that no one leads you astray.” To the prophets, teachers, and preachers of Mark’s community, the bewilderment, the desolation, and the chaos so many of us are experiencing — Simon Dein calls it the “paralyzing anxiety that the world is dissolving”[3] — was familiar territory. It’s from those depths that they proclaim to us a message of resilient hope. Beware that no one leads you astray, says the Lord. Beware that no one leads you astray, when truth is shaken, when nations make war and people flee in terror, when the silent tsunami of famine inundates the devastated land, when impostors preach alluring sermons of fear, resentment, and weaponized grievance. Don’t despair. Beware. Resist the pull of cynicism. Cultivate hope. Cultivate wonder. Cultivate gratitude. Practice faithful commitment. Be alert. Stay awake. Laugh. Live the love that is the way of Jesus.
Adrienne Maree Brown wrote in 2016, under the Black Lives Matter hashtag, “Things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered. We must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.”[4] A few years later, in the summer of 2022, she wrote,
I have to revise that. Things are getting worse for most of us, between mass shootings, climate catastrophe, regressive sociopolitical battles and an ongoing global pandemic. It’s an overwhelming, terrifying and grief-stricken time.
After naming several of the losses we haven’t had the time or the emotional capacity to fully process, she adds,
This palpable, active, ongoing grief is a non-negotiable part of this period of immense change. Grief is one of the most beautiful and difficult ways we love. As we grieve we feel our humanity and connection to each other.[5]
We are people called to live the love that is the way of Jesus, and this grief settling into our bones is part of it. We are called to lean forward into the promise of a world redeemed by the love of God.
“When you hear of wars and rumors of wars,” Jesus says, “do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come.” And then he speaks of birth pangs. For many of us it does feel like the end of the world when every day just seems to add layer upon layer of loss. Some of it is disillusionment, which is painful, but it frees us to see with greater clarity and live more honestly and truthfully — and certainly disillusionment is the kind of loss most of us would welcome as we hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.
But Jesus speaks to the whole messy experience of losses piling up and weighing us down — the tears, the worries, the bad dreams and the sleepless nights, the knot in the stomach, the shoulders that feel like they’ll never relax again. He sees our reality and he knows it; knows it and bears it. And he speaks of labor pains. He tells us that the world is in labor, and the suffering of creation will be healed and fulfilled in the joy of birth.
How long is this labor, we ask, of course we ask, how long must we wait? When will we laugh with tears in our eyes and cry no more?
He doesn’t know when. What he does know is that something is struggling to be born, and he calls us to lean into the promise, and breathe through the pain, and follow him on the way.
The English historian Eric Hobsbawm, born in 1917, grew up in Vienna and, after the death of his parents, with an aunt in Berlin. Berlin was not a good place to live for a Jewish teenager in those years. He was fifteen years old when one day in January 1933, as he was walking his little sister home from school, he saw the headline at a newsstand, “Adolph Hitler Appointed Chancellor of Germany.” Reflecting on those years Hobsbawm later wrote,
We were on the Titanic, and everyone knew it was hitting the iceberg. … It is difficult for those who have not experienced the ‘Age of Catastrophe’ of the twentieth century in central Europe to see what it meant to live in a world that was simply not expected to last, in something that could not really even be described as a world, but merely as a provisional waystation between a dead past and a future not yet born.[6]
Now it’s our turn to live in something that cannot really even be described as a world; it’s our turn to live in this in-between time, so hard to describe, so difficult to understand, so exhausting to navigate. Yet amid all the endings pointing to a non-world ruled by autocrats, something is struggling to be born, Jesus assures us: a world where God and creation are at home.
We believe that the Spirit of God is at work among us, unresting, unhasting, breathing with us through the pain, building a new temple, one that isn’t modeled on imperial architecture, but a living temple where God is at home in the world. A temple that isn’t overwhelming in its heavy, gold-plated magnitude, but one that shines with the glory of God. A temple made entirely of human beings who are fully alive and are finally one with the love that made us.[7]
[1] See Josephus, Jewish War, 2.254-56; Antiquities 20.185-88; 208-10
[2] Josephus, Jewish War, 2.258
[3] Cited by Amanda Brobst-Renaud https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-33-2/commentary-on-mark-131-8-5
[4] https://www.instagram.com/adriennemareebrown/p/BHqlZ57jbBT/
[5] https://adriennemareebrown.net/2022/06/07/an-emergent-strategy-response-to-mass-shootings/
[6] Tony Judt, Reappraisals: Reflections on the forgotten twentieth century (New York: Penguin, 2008), 117.
[7] My thanks to Debie Thomas whose writing and voice continue to help me say what I believe needs to be said, especially https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2010-not-one-stone