11-12-24 - Built To Last

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Don’t go sightseeing with Jesus – as a tour guide, he’d be a bit of a downer. When his disciples, coming out of the great Jerusalem temple, marveled at the size and solidity of its construction, Jesus told them not to get too attached: As Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

What a grand edifice the Jerusalem Temple must have been, rivaling Greek and Roman architecture, as impressive as the great cathedrals of the European Middle Ages or the magnificent temples of the Cambodian jungle. And this was more than a great complex – this was where the holiness of God was said to dwell on earth, the permanent home built by Solomon to replace the tents of meeting and shrines that dotted the Samarian and Judean countryside. It had been standing for some 500 years by the time Jesus and his followers met in its courts, and still it inspired awe.

What must the disciples have thought hearing Jesus’ words. A structure like this, destroyed? Imagine Washington’s National Cathedral crumbled to dust. In 70 BCE, some forty years after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, his words came to pass, as the Romans destroyed the great temple and desecrated its grounds. But I don’t think Jesus was predicting the future. He was redirecting their gaze to the spiritual movements underlying visible ones.

Great buildings invite us to marvel at the human vision and ingenuity and determination (and often exploitation) which brought them into being. They command our focus, even as they make space for the holy. Jesus was inviting his followers, and us, not to mistake the temporal for the eternal. He urged them, and us, to marvel at the spiritual reality coming into being, the new order being birthed out of the old. The human power that brought about the grandeur of the Jerusalem temple is nothing compared to the power of God to create, and again restore that creation to wholeness.

Human structures, whether buildings, governing systems, nations or movements, will always be vulnerable to destruction. Even the Church, and certainly churches, will pass away. The only thing truly built to last is the new creation we become and are becoming in Christ. Our flesh may be as frail and impermanent as a crumbled cathedral. Our spirit, united to God’s Spirit, will live forever, a place for God to dwell, bringing new life into view, until the end of time.

© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.