Mark 13:14-23

I was at work on Tuesday morning a couple years ago around nine o’clock when I ran into James, one of our assistant managers. James had his cup of coffee like always, but something about him wasn’t right. When I asked him what was us up he said, “Somebody just flew a plane into the World Trade Center.” And I’m thinking it’s one of those little four-seaters that crash all the time and oh boy, did that pilot get lost. James said no, it was a big passenger jet. He said it was all over television, so I went back to one of the offices where they always had CNN on and sure enough, there’s one of the twin towers smoking with a big hole in it. And as I’m standing there with Robin and Laura watching this live footage--still thinking it was some sort of accident--here comes another plane into the other tower. And none of us knew what to think. It was becoming clear that this wasn’t an accident and the whole thing was so surreal that I remember actually expecting Bruce Willis to show up and start rescuing people. It didn’t seem real. Later when told Art (who’d been in the Navy for twenty years) that the Pentagon had also been hit he asked me, “Which Pentagon?” As if there’s more than one. It was that hard to believe.

It didn’t take long that morning for people to play out all of the worst-case scenarios and turn the whole think into World War III (which I guess could still happen). Nothing like that had ever happened here before; we didn’t know what to do with it. So I went to LaRosa’s with Lee Morgan and his brother Maurice and then I went home. Weird day.

Let’s look at our text. The lectionary has us at Mark 13:14-23 today, but we’re going to have to back up a little to understand what’s going on. So back up to the beginning of chapter thirteen. Jesus has been teaching in the Temple. Actually he’s been debating there with various groups of people, all of whom, he knows, would like to see him dead. In fact, Passover is just a couple days away and I think it’s likely that Jesus knows by now that his death will happen in conjunction with Passover. He doesn’t have much time left. And as they’re on their way out of the Temple somebody says to Jesus, “Wow! Look at those stones! Can you believe these buildings!” That seems innocent enough. They’re from out of town. Ruthie and I have traveled some and it’s not uncommon for one of us to say something like that. “What magnificent buildings!” Well the Temple alone was incredible. It took 10,000 workers eight years to complete. Nine of its gates were overlaid with silver and gold, and one of them was solid brass. The historian Josephus tells us that some of these stones were 37 feet long, 12 feet high and 18 feet wide. That’s impressive!

And Jesus hears this seemingly innocuous comment, looks around and drops a time-bomb. Listen to him in verse two. “Do you see all these great buildings? Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” And he doesn’t seize the teachable moment, and he doesn’t elaborate. He just keeps walking. And the disciples must’ve wondered, “What’s with him?”

To answer that question we’re going to have to back up a little farther, into chapter twelve. Jesus is worn out from the mind games they’ve been playing with him in the Temple. All these religious, respectable people have been trying to trap him into saying something they could kill him for. (Soon they’ll give that up and just kill him anyway.) First the Pharisees and the Herodians (who didn’t normally play nice together) come to him with some cooked-up question about taxes, which he sees through easily. Then the Sadducees try this made-for-television question about brothers and widows and children and Jesus handles that too. And the questions keep coming until he’s answered them all so well that Mark tells us that “from then on no one dared ask him any more.” They finally got smart.

And when he finally gets a chance to sit down he sees many of these same wealthy people, whose questions had just revealed their hearts to anyone who was paying attention, putting large amounts of money into the Temple treasury. And he notices one poor widow giving two tiny coins--all she had. And he calls his disciples together and points her out. I can imagine him putting his arm around her tiny, widowed little shoulder when he say, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others.” And she’s as astonished as the rest of them are. “They gave out of their wealth,” he says, “But she, out of her poverty, put in everything--all she had to live on.” And there are tears in her eyes as she leaves, and this lady who came in with nothing and gave anyway leaves with some dignity and with the kind of grin that you take to your grave.

And now it’s finally time to leave. And as they’re going at least one of the disciples is so oblivious to everything that has gone on that day that he’s distracted by the architecture. And Jesus tells him it’s all coming down.

Now you know they’re not all gonna just drop the whole thing and forget he ever said it, so later Peter, Andrew, James and John ask him privately, “How are we going to know when all this is going to happen?” Seems like a reasonable question. And for what must have seemed like one of the very few times Jesus gives them a straight answer. Look at what he tells them. “Nation will rise up against nation and kingdom against kingdom,” he says, but he also warns them that not every conflict or rumor is an indication that it’s time for Jerusalem to go down. He says there’ll be earthquakes and famines, and that they’re be arrested and put on trial on account of him. Families, he says, will betray one another, and “all men will hat you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.” He also tells them that when all of these indicators add up and they can see that the destruction is imminent, it’s time to get out of Dodge.

He says, literally, in verse fourteen, “head for the hills.” Get out of there. Don’t stick around and try to be a hero. In fact he tells them that if any of them are up on the roof when they see it coming that they should drop what they’re doing and run without even going back into the house to get anything. And in verse sixteen he says that if anyone is out working in the field and has taken his cloak off he shouldn’t even go back after it. This thing is gonna be bad.

So bad, in fact, that in verses 24-25 Jesus uses Old Testament prophetic language that makes it sound like the end of the world. Listen to this. “The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.” And down in verse thirty he says, “I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” Think he’s got their attention?

And guess what happened. Forty years later, give or take, the Roman army surrounded Jerusalem and laid siege to it for months. During the siege it got ugly inside the city walls. The Jewish persecution of Christians intensified. Families turned on one another. Children betrayed their parents. With the food supply cut off many people turned to cannibalism. And after several months of siege the Romans rolled into the city and burned it to the ground. One million, one hundred thousand men, women and children died. Nearly two hundred thousand were taken prisoner. The Romans Tore their buildings down block by block--including the Temple. And Josephus wrote, “the city was completely leveled to the ground as to leave future visitors to the spot no ground for believing that it had ever been inhabited.”

And when Jerusalem and the Temple went down it put the final nail in the coffin of biblical Judaism and of Israel as God’s chosen people. Destroyed along with the Temple were the family records of the Hebrew people going back for hundreds and hundreds of years. With those records gone there was no way to verify which men were Levites, and Levites were the only people allowed to be priests. Without any priests there couldn’t be any sacrifices made, and without sacrifices there could never again be the biblical Judaism that we see God institute in our Old Testament. As far as the Hebrew people were concerned this was the end of the world. Everything that they understood about themselves was tied to the way God related to them in the Temple, and when it was all destroyed they lost their identity in ways that we, as 21^st century Americans, will never be able to understand.

Think back to September 11, 2001. Now imagine the Pentagon not just damaged, but destroyed. And not just are the Twin Towers gone, but the entire island of Manhattan. Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty--gone. Now imagine that the White House has been blown up along with the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument. And Independence Hall in Philadelphia. And the Alamo. The entire city of Boston. Mt. Rushmore has been blown to bits and the Grand Canyon leveled. So has the Golden Gate Bridge and Yankee Stadium. The Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the Sears Tower in Chicago. All gone in a matter of days. We’re beginning to scratch the surface.

So what do you and I do with a story that took place a couple thousand years ago? Are there any lessons here? Let me suggest a couple. (You could probably come up with more on your way home.

Bad things are going to happen. We may all live to see times that feel like the end of the world to us individually and collectively. Knowing when this kind of trouble is coming isn’t as important as knowing what to do when it comes. The good news in AD 70 was that Christians, who had been warned, were ready and they escaped to live in a world forever free from Jewish persecution. Survival then hinged on staying obedient to Jesus, and that remains true. Crisis is not the time to stop being the person that God wants you to be.

And no one has ever spoken life to a world in pain like Jesus did. The same Jesus who treasured the generosity of a poor widow with two little coins and who took the time just days before his own death to give his disciples the warning that they needed to stay alive when the world came crashing down went to his cross to include you and me in the life that he wants his people to live. It’s hard here sometimes. But Jesus stands eager to take care of anyone who will let him.