What Wonderful Buildings

Mark 13:1-8

 Sounds just like tourists. Jesus and his disciples come out of the Temple and one of the disciples says, "Wow, look at that all that polished marble, look at the intricate brick work on those doors. what wonderful buildings." They have just come out of Herod's great political gift to the Jewish people. Herod in his strategy to be able to control the Jewish population agreed to build them a temple, and he built them a beautiful building. Commentators say it was probably the most imposing edifice of contemporary civilization. Wow, say the rural fishermen just come to the big city, wow, what wonderful buildings.

Most of us as human beings have this fascination with buildings. The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis suggest that no sooner did we become civilized and skilled than we started building ourselves buildings and towers to reach the heavens so that we could urbanize heaven. Let somebody get a few extra dollars and they want a building named for them on some college campus. Buildings are something we can see. Something tangible. Buildings are something we can point to and say we did that.

If I were asked what I thought was my most lasting contribution to Bethel Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh I would be very tempted to say the work of having their sanctuary remodeled. Because if clothes make the man, then buildings say a lot about the institutions and the organizations. Buildings have a way of representing our memories and our values. We come to love our

buildings the way the Jews loved their temple.

They had had a world famous architect design the church, St. Paul's Episcopal Church, and the people loved that building. So when things became rough in downtown Pittsburgh and people were moving out to the suburbs the congregation decided to move the church. Pick it up and move it piece by piece. They loved their building and they were not going to leave it. So they took it apart, labeled each piece and put it on a truck and moved it out to the new location out in the new fashionable area around the University of Pittsburgh, and put it back together. So it looked exactly the same. They did have a small crisis when some of the pieces fell off the truck on the way and got lost. But they ran ads in the news paper and offered high rewards and the lost pieces were found and returned. What a wonderful building.

The people who came from distant locations to come to the Stovall and Roberts wedding all said the same thing to me, what a beautiful sanctuary and I swelled with pride on your behalf. What wonderful buildings these temples of our.

But Jesus keeps on walking simply saying that buildings do not last. "There will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down." Jesus, who has come to Jerusalem, not as a tourist, but as a servant of God to be obedient to his work, keep pushing his disciples to look at life from the perspective of our relationship with God. Jesus says that buildings are useful necessities but they do not have permanence, they do not last forever, our treasures are better kept in heaven where moth and rust and corruption cannot come. Jesus has read the story of God in the Old Testament and knows that God has always been a God who wanted no pictures, no images, no statues of him made, he shuns that kind of publicity and piety. God had no desire for a permanent residence, he preferred to live in the Tent of Meetings, to be worshipped in a mobile home which could move and which could symbolize that God was Lord over all creation and no ground was more holy than other. Jesus message of the Kingdom of God is that God was more interested in obedience and worship than in ritual and liturgy done correctly. When the prophet said that all God wanted from his people was to love justice and to do mercy and to walk humbly with Him, Jesus said the prophet had it right. When they scolded Jesus for picking corn on the Sabbath, Jesus says don't you get it, The Sabbath was give to humanity so humanity would have some time to worship God and glorify Him and to serve Him, and not the humanity made for keeping a bunch of Sabbath Blue Laws. Jesus says the Kingdom is wherever two or three are gathered in the name of grace who are seeking to be a community of faith, hope, love and service and not just in particular buildings.

The God whom Jesus reveals is the God who desires ministry and love to the poor, the hungry, the sick, the marginalized, the oppressed and not Tiffany stain glass windows and walnut paneled wedding chapels. Jesus says God is one who is glorified by the communion of love and grace rather than the insistence that each group of Christians stay in their own place, staying in their own building, because of their race.

Jesus said it might be an impressive building, but it won't last very long and that kind of building won't make much different in the eternal scheme of things. It is pretty building but soon there won't even be two stones on top of each other to remind you where it was. During the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 the Roman soldiers set fire to the temple. It wasn't a very hard decision. It was a simple military decision. The temple was subsequently demolished together with the rest of the city. What wonderful buildings.

They loved St. Paul's Episcopal Church and moved it in the 1920's out to the University. They loved it so much that they didn't want anything to happen to it, so they did not allow students to come and use it. They loved it so much that they did not want it to get dirty or broken or messed up and so they did not bring in the neighborhood people and they did not have activities in the church. Yet those who loved it grew older and died, and in 1990 there was nobody there to love it, the community of Christ had died long ago, so they sold the building to the Hospitals that were growing up in that area and the wrecking crane came and smashed it to the ground and they did not leave one stone upon another.

Jesus' response of an eternal perspective on the beauty of the buildings evokes from the disciples some questions about when all this destruction will take place. And Jesus begins to talk about the future, about the difficulties which will come to those who attempt to live as God's people in the midst of this world, about the persecution, about the suffering, about the pain that will be theirs simply as they look at the hurt of others and wish it could be different. That the great place of the kingdom of God will not be in the buildings, but in the impact of the body of believers who choose weakness instead of force, who live out sacrifice instead of accumulation, the Kingdom's place in the world is to be the place of mercy and compassion wherever we are like Sister Teresa and not to places of prestige and power like Trump Tower.

Jesus talks about the eternal significance of the suffering and the endurance during that suffering that will be the eternal marks of grace and love for the Kingdom of God. It is not in our buildings that our importance is seen. It is in how often we pick up a cross of service, sacrifice and love that the kingdom is made visible.

Clarence Jordan was a minister and New Testament scholar in rural Georgia who began a farm co-op called Koinonia. While he worked on the farm he also translated the New Testament from Greek and published that translation as THE COTTON PATCH VERSION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. He was a powerful speaker and used to be invited on Preaching Mission to challenge Christians to get out of their buildings and to get into a life of ministry and mission. To discover that God's grace and blessings will take care of his people, give them the power of endurance, where they have picked up the cross of sacrifice and have chosen weakness and love instead of power and domination.

He was being shown around a brand new beautiful building and the people where really proud of their new building. They loved their new church like the people loved St. Paul's. These people who had been on the building committee took Clarence into the Sanctuary and there high above the Communion Table suspended by invisible piano wires was this beautifully crafted sterling silver Cross. The people were so impressed and pleased with themselves and they told Clarence that that Cross had cost them half a million dollars by itself. Clarence just look at it and shook his head slowly. He turned and started walking back up the aisle, and said, "You know, there was a time in the life of God's people, when Christians could get their crosses for free. Now they have to pay for them."

What wonderful buildings. The stones won't even be two on top of another in a few years Jesus says. The building won't make a bit of difference if it hasn't been the place where Christian men and women of all race are invited in, in order to be encouraged, equipped, strengthened and inspired to go out and pick up a Cross of love and mercy, to speak the truth, to do justice and to embrace each other as human beings.

Rick Brand