Rock Solid Savior: Mark 13:1-8 - Fifth Sunday of Lent

Elizabeth was cleaning out our pantry the other day when she came across two glass bottles of hand sanitizer. This was the sanitizer produced by the Faber Liquor company at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, back when regular hand sanitizer was nowhere to be found on store shelves, along with toilet paper, butter, and ketchup.

I bought these bottles thinking that it was my only opportunity to have something my family desperately needed. Four years later, however, I never opened them. Worse, I have an entire case of these bottles in the storage room at First Lutheran. We will probably throw them away, because many of the hand sanitizers manufactured during the pandemic contain dangerous levels of wood alcohol, which is toxic.

There were a lot of things I bought that I still have not used: disinfectant sprays, sanitizing wipes, and even more hand sanitizer. We can laugh about it now, but when the world shut down, it felt like the end of the world. It felt like we were living through the Book of Revelation in real time.

Yet, the pandemic pales in comparison with the calamities Jesus prophesies in our Gospel reading for today.

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Jesus warns his disciples of wars and rumors of wars. Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes and famines in various places. 

These prophecies, while dreadful, wouldn’t have caused any more alarm in the disciples than they cause us. We know to expect them.

But one prophecy definitely stunned them: that the mighty Jerusalem Temple would be destroyed. “Not one stone will be left here upon another,” Jesus says. “All will be thrown down.”

Prayer in Crack of the Wailing Wall by Janine on Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED

For Jews living in Jesus’s day, this was never supposed to happen. This was God’s dwelling place. Yes, it happened before, and it was the biggest disaster the Israelites suffered since Egypt. But it couldn’t happen again! That would be like saying that God is going to die.

That, and the fact that the temple was massive beyond description. The entire complex spanned 36 acres. The largest of its foundation stones weigh over 600 tons. It was “too big to fail,” just like God was too big to fail.

But that’s exactly what happens about 36 years after Jesus’s death and resurrection. The Roman armies invaded Jerusalem and destroyed everything, including the temple. Over one million Jews are said to have died, with tens of thousands of survivors enslaved. Persecutions soon broke out against Jews and Christians.

But first, Jesus will be arrested and crucified. 

From the disciples, we learn what fear and uncertainty can do to faith. When Jesus initially speaks of his death and resurrection, they’re distracted by which one of them is the greatest. When Jesus presses the issue, they don’t believe it will happen. Then, when Jesus is arrested, they are defiant. Remember how Peter cut off the ear the high priest’s slave? Quickly, they realized that resistance was futile. Peter denied Jesus three times to save his own skin. Then they ran off and hid. 

Thankfully, we’re not living in a time and place where Christians are persecuted. But that’s not to say that the world is any less dangerous. 

Will nuclear war break out? Will there be another pandemic? Are we on the brink of another Great Depression or a second U.S. Civil War? Will we still be a church ten years from now? 

When fear takes the place of faith, you become self-centered. Our panic-buying habits from the pandemic tell us a lot: we grab onto whatever we can, and we fiercely guard what we have. We’re downright fanatical in how hard we try to keep things under our control. 

If you’re afraid the economy is going to tank or you may lose your job, you won’t be motivated to give. You’re not going to help your neighbor if you think your neighbor is a threat.

In the years leading up to Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem, God’s people divided themselves into warring factions. Rome saw this and used it to their advantage. A house divided against itself will not stand.

At no point did Jesus ever promise us a safe, secure existence. Nations will rise against nations. There will be earthquakes, wars, and famines. Temples and churches will crumble and fall. 

The good news is that your destiny is not bound to the fate of a building, an institution, an economy, or a country. Your identity is not bound to how secure you are in your job or how much money you have. You can lose your life but not your soul, because you’re a child of God. 

Do you know what is the secret strength of the people of God? It is in our relationships. It’s in the ties that bind our hearts in Christian love. It’s the assurance that all will be well in the end because God is faithful. 

As awful as the pandemic was, God was good to us. And we did a lot of good for each other. I have a greater appreciation for the strength of love than I did before. The Spirit has shaped us into a Body that cares for all its members, so that no individual or family must face the unthinkable alone. 

God has taken your prayers for me and my family and transformed them into the grace we need to care for my dad through his illness. 

As we move forward into this new ministry partnership, I am excited to think of the possibilities that will become realities because we are people of faith, hope, and love. 

Hard times are coming. But these are the birth pangs of the life of the world to come.

As long as there is love, there is hope. As long as two or more will gather in Jesus’s name, there will always be a Church. As long as life endures, there is God.