The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
November 17, 2024
In the name of God: Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Amen.
What are your Saturday mornings like? Do you go out for coffee and breakfast? Tie up some loose ends from the week? Begin your weekend chores?
My Saturday mornings usually involve some time with the dogs, some time with laundry, some time with the Wordle and NYTimes puzzles, and a general procrastination for the work that the rest of the day brings. Replying to emails. Finishing the sermon. Making sure everything is set up for Sunday.
Yesterday was a little different, however. Yesterday, this past Saturday, I got a text message from an observant vestry member. She said, “Someone is cutting some wires that go into a box on the side of the church building at Elm and Park streets. She says she was told to cut the wires.” And sure enough, the vestry member sent me a photo of the box, and the wires, and they were cut. It was a phone box, with phone wires that ran into the church. The wires, I was afraid, that connected the dialer for the fire alarm in the undercroft.
Now thankfully, because this vestry member gave me some really good information, I was able to find the spot – and I was able to trace down the wires that had been cut into the undercroft—and I was able to realize that they in fact were not active. They weren’t attached to anything any longer. They were old, unused, obsolete wires that had been replaced decades ago. Thanks be to God! Everything was still connected and running as it should be. Our life safety systems were still in place. The mischief our neighborhood friend had been “told” to cause was just mere mischief, and it had no effect in the grand scheme of things.
If this sounds unusual to you, perhaps you don’t live downtown. This was just another Saturday in the life of downtown New Haven—pretty unremarkable if definitely odd. Always vigilant, and always amused, those of us who live on the close are astonished every day at the ingenuity of God’s beloved people—and the strangeness that we encounter—along with the beauty, the transcendent, and the sublime. That’s the mix that is the world we live in. It’s wonderful and wild, just like West Virginia’s state motto.
You might be forgiven with all the weirdness going on around us for thinking that the end is drawing nigh! A supermoon these past few days with the highest tides I’ve seen. A drought across our state. Wildfires in Connecticut and New York—even in Prospect Park and Inwood. Wars and rumors of wars. And you may have been surprised in the last election to realize how divided our country is. How angry people are on both sides of the aisle. Perhaps you’re feeling unmoored, anxious, even frightened.
Things were just the same in Jesus’s day. Factions fought, blood ran in the streets, Josephus says. Jerusalem was occupied by Roman armies and its government a puppet to the Roman governor. People were anxious. They were worried. They were afraid.
It felt like everything was falling apart.
And I want to suggest to you that that’s probably okay. That everything is actually always falling apart. And that that’s not the end of the story.
This morning’s gospel is an uncomfortable look at entropy. At change. At destruction, really. What does Jesus have to teach us in this moment of discomfort?
In this passage from Mark Jesus has been in the temple in Jerusalem, and as he walks out of that magnificent building, one of his disciples exclaims, "Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!"
You’d think Jesus would agree. After all, Jesus shows up in synagogues and in the Temple. I’ll bet if he were traveling he’d even join via livestream from wherever he was for prayers. Jesus is a faithful churchgoer. I’m a faithful churchgoer. And I like beautiful church buildings! In fact, whenever someone remarks on the beauty of the church building here at Christ Church, I usually reply in agreement and then ramble on a little about the history of the building, the architect Henry Vaughan's pedigree, or the remarkable CE Kempe glass in our windows--the largest collection of Kempe outside of England. It's a beautiful building and a real resource for ministry.
But Jesus doesn’t have any kind words for the building. In fact, his reply isn't to praise the buildings at all; he’s clearly not in the middle of a capital campaign! What he says instead is shocking: "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down."
Jesus is, of course, right. The Temple was destroyed once before when the Babylonians took Jerusalem by siege and dragged the ruling class of Judea off to Babylon. This second Temple, rebuilt by Cyrus of Persia, was a grand thing, greatly enlarged, a tremendous space, that Jesus would have known—on whose steps Jesus was standing. And within forty years of Jesus's words on the steps of that building, the Romans would in fact desecrate and destroy this second Temple, pulling it down.
Physics and history teach us that nothing in our world that seems permanent really is; everything is always changing. And sometimes that change can look like decay--maybe even disaster.
But God's perspective is longer than our own.
In these shorter, darker days of autumn, one might be understandably concerned about change, about disruption, about loss and decay. After all, we're still in the end days of a worldwide pandemic, a plague, that's taken over five million lives worldwide. Our country is torn apart by political disagreement, anger, and sometimes even hatred. Human lives are broken by greed, addiction, racism, violence, and even illness--here in our city, in our own families, in our own homes.
There is change and decay all around us.
Where, then, do we find hope? Why do we even try? Why do we bother to gather here on Sunday, to stream in virtually, to put new roofs on buildings or go to work or cook dinner or visit with friends or family? How can any of it have meaning in the face of such decay—such despair?
Immediately following Jesus's words, he continues to predict chaos and disorder: "Nation will rise against nation... there will be earthquakes...[and] famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs."
This prediction of chaos, of destruction, seems like disaster from the perspective of the moment. If the Temple falls, how can there still be a covenant with God? How can God's people be in relationship with God with no place to pray?
Are we seeing chaos and destruction in the world around us? In the Church even? Will there be enough to sustain the mission and ministry we share with God in this place? Will there ever be peace? Will there ever be justice? Will things ever get back to normal?
I'm reminded that, every time the Temple was sacked or desecrated, every time God's chosen people wandered away from God or were dragged into exile or sent out into the wilderness, each and every time God came to them again--reached out in relationship and love. They couldn't escape God's love.
God reaches out to us coming in the human and divine incarnate one, Jesus Christ, son of Mary, walking with us, suffering, loving, feeding, and healing. God is with us even in the midst of what seems like chaos and destruction.
What if chaos, what if destruction, was not an end but rather a waypoint? What if, instead of destruction, we are experiencing change?
What if, rather than hatred, we're feeling the last gasp of a dying dragon thrown down by St Michael and his warrior angels? What if our political life and our global affairs are teaching us something about good and evil? About how we can live in the face of evil—and how we can work for the good?
What if God is doing something--reconciling creation even now in the midst of what seems like disorder?!
Because friends, that's what I believe is happening.
Hope is a uniquely Christian virtue. Expecting the Kingdom of God is a uniquely Christian command. Jesus invites us to be unafraid, to see change as the beginning of new birth, of reconciliation, of wholeness.
And Jesus asks us to invite one another into this moment of hope. As the writer of the letter to the Hebrews says, “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together…but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
God is faithful. We are invited to PROVOKE one another to love and good deeds. To encourage one another. To meet together in love, in the fullness of the sacraments. To walk with Jesus in hope.
The truth is that there is lots of destruction, lots of decay. Lots of change. Because there is lots of evil. And it will be burned away.
But there is lots and lots of good, and God’s love will prevail.
Look around you. Look around at this little glimpse of the breaking in of the kingdom of God that is this part of the Body of Christ.
We’ve celebrated baptisms of new Christians together. We keep praying the daily office, and praying the mass together—mostly with young folks in their 20’s and 30’s. We’ve buried two good and faithful priests together. We’ve celebrated families and children and visited folks who can’t get out of their homes in person and on livestream. We’ve fed people—75,000 meals this calendar year. And if you were at the Soup Kitchen benefit Thursday evening you felt the joy present in that community as folks come together to help one another and celebrate God’s love made present.
If you're feeling the chaos and confusion of the present time, you are not alone. History is with you. Commentators are writing about it. I am feeling it with you. God is there with you.
But in the midst of all of it, God is working. Sometimes change feels like chaos, and that's ok. God didn't abandon God's people. Christ has not left the Church, which is his Body.
And that's why we're gathering. And going to work. And fighting against war and violence. Why we move forward even in the midst of change. Because God is there. Because the kingdom of God is breaking in. And people are longing for God, even as God is drawing the whole world to God’s own self.
I'm profoundly hopeful about what God is doing here at Christ Church. And I’d submit to you that this is the most important thing—being a part of the Body of Christ—that we can do with our lives, with all that God has given us.
At the end of mass I and the Consecration Sunday task force will ask you to consider how you will participate spiritually with all that God has given you—with the financial blessings God has bestowed on you—in the work and witness and ministry we share in God’s name in this place.
Pray about what you will give. Pray about how this will be a spiritual discipline in you own life. See if, as Alinda Stanley invited us to, you can take one step up—another percentage. And give joyfully, with hope, as a spiritual practice – part of your relationship with God.
This is but the beginning. But it's birthpangs, not pains of death. God is faithful. God is good. And the kingdom of God will prevail. Let’s have hope. Let’s join in that good work. Let’s look for the coming of the kingdom of God.