XXV Pentecost – November 14, 2010 – Year C – Proper 28 (RCL)
“Some things never change.”
All of us have probably heard someone make a statement like that—or maybe even said it ourselves—at one time or another.
“Some things never change.”
At least it seems that some things never change.
“Never” is, of course, a relative term which signifies, most likely, “at least not in my lifetime” and is, therefore, a highly subjective term at best.
But think for a moment about all the things that many of us thought were permanent, things we thought would never change, but which have changed in just the last twenty years—things we thought would last for ever that don’t exist anymore.
At the end of the 1980’s the United States was waging what we called “the Cold War” with what seemed to be a practically invincible political monolith, Soviet Communism, which dominated all of Eastern Europe and much of Asia.
There was no reason not to believe that the principles of communism, as one political historian phrased it, were “solidly entrenched”, and would be “a major influence in the world for at least a few centuries to come.”
Most of you know that I have been to Berlin several times over the years.
I remember well the grim look of the Berlin Wall, the brutal intrusion of totalitarian communism into the sphere of the free world—a snake of concrete and barbed wire that carved up streets and wound its way mercilessly through the middle of abandoned houses, when I was a student in Germany in the early 1960’s, and I remember what it looked like thirty-five years later, when I returned, this time with Lucy and Lanie, to a no longer divided city deep in the throes of rebuilding itself; there wasn’t much of the Wall left standing at all—just a few hundred feet covered with brightly colored murals boldly proclaiming the end of tyranny, preserved as a kind of memorial; yes, the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall are history, in more ways than one.
Of course, it has not taken that long for us to find a new adversary—some would say “for a new adversary to find us”—in Islamic extremist elements that have vowed to destroy what they consider to be our decadent Western culture; whatever fears and apprehensions may have remained at the end of the Cold War have transferred themselves easily to waging a global war on terrorism.
And the Israelis, of all people, have built a new wall, only this wall snakes its way through Palestine, of all places.
(Thankfully, at least the so-called “virtual wall”, the electronic barrier that the Department of Homeland Security set out to build along our southwestern border with Mexico, has come to naught after an outlay of hundreds of thousands of dollars that surely could have been more sensibly spent.)
Confronting the truth that there is very little that is permanent in this world can be both exciting and disturbing.
We may effectively say “Good riddance” with regard to international communism, even as we deplore the political chaos and economic instability which continue to plague what is left of the Soviet empire, but the possibility of change in institutions that we ourselves may have come to hold dear can fill us with alarm; we may feel that we are heading toward certain disaster.
Surely that is how the people in today’s Gospel lesson from Luke must have felt when Jesus announced that not one stone of their magnificent temple would be left standing upon another.
The temple in Jerusalem, though it was not the first, had stood for hundreds of years.
It seemed that nothing less than the end of the world could turn it into rubble.
Yet, as we know, though it probably did feel like the end of the world, all it took to destroy the temple, the central symbol of Judaism that had lasted for centuries, was the invasion of the Roman army.
Hardly the end of the world.
Just a reminder that almost nothing is permanent.
A reminder that almost everything changes.
Even if it feels like the end of the world, it isn’t.
No wonder Jesus warned the people not to jump to conclusions!
“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified,” Jesus told them, “for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.”
They were not to assume that political upheaval and natural disasters necessarily foreshadowed the end of all things.
Political upheaval and natural disasters were merely signs that things they might like to think would never change were going to change after all.
Only one thing, Jesus in effect told his listeners, would truly never change: the truth of God’s love.
“…not a hair of your head will perish,” Jesus told them. “By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
It’s comforting to know that God’s love will always remain, even when everything else threatens to come unstuck.
Jesus’ commentary on the impermanence of the Jewish temple and the never-failing love of God is both comforting and challenging.
Jesus’ words reassure us that what counts, God’s love, will never be taken from us; at the same time, if we substitute “Church” for “temple” Jesus can be seen to be cautioning us that we may not always be able to count on the institution of the Church as we know it for the experience of that love.
After all, the destruction of the temple was not the end of Judaism; Judaism was able to endure—endure quite well—with no temple.
As one of the world’s major religions Judaism has advanced well beyond the need for anything like the Temple and is probably much better off without one.
But we need to pose, at least for the sake of argument, a jarring question: “What will Christianity look like when it can no longer express itself in the context of the Church as we now know it?
I say “…the Church as we now know it” because there is some reason to believe that the Church in some form will exist until God has decided that it is no longer needed.
What form the Church will eventually take is another matter entirely.
Think what major changes have taken place in our own branch of the Church in a very short time.
A little more than thirty years ago the Episcopal Church in this country began to ordain women as priests; it took our senior partner, so to speak, in the Anglican Communion another fifteen years to follow suit; now women are ordained to the priesthood in the Church of England, though not yet to the episcopate.
Cate, our bishop, has attended the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops held in Canterbury twice in her thirteen-year tenure, though, as she would be the first to point out, on neither occasion was she eligible to participate in ordinations or confirmations there the way she has participated in ordinations and confirmations in parts of South America and Africa; in other words, in England she is still only allowed to function as a priest, not as a bishop.
But even that may change; this year for the first time by a slim majority the Church of England meeting in synod (similar to our General Convention) voted in principle to allow women to be ordained bishops; if a majority of the individual dioceses concur, a second and final vote by the Synod next year could clear the way for women to be bishops (and our own Cate to be treated as a bishop) in the Church of England by the year 2014.
Of course, every significant development in the life of the Church has had its doomsayers, who have warned of, if not the end of the world, then at least the end of the Church as we know it.
In fact, it is hard not to see the growing acceptance worldwide of the ordination of women as a sign of a revitalized Church.
But changes likely in the offing for the Church are hardly limited to when or where the next woman bishop, not to mention archbishop, will be ordained.
A little over a year ago several of us from the Diocese attended “Start up, Start Over”, a weeklong conference in Asheville, North Carolina, sponsored by the national Church that focused on the challenges that the Church, in particular the Episcopal Church, finds itself facing now that we have entered, not all that confidently and, I’m afraid, a bit reluctantly, the twenty-first century.
It was mostly all video and Power Point, even a lot of the liturgy; about the only things that week that were real, not virtual, were breakfast, lunch and dinner, and Holy Communion.
The experience reminded me that more than one futurist scholar has predicted that it won’t be long before the average congregation, no matter which denomination, will likely be watching a carefully wrought video production on Sunday morning rather than listening to a preacher deliver a sermon.
No longer is the predominant means of transmitting and receiving information in our culture the printed word or even the spoken word.
Transmitting and receiving information in our culture is now predominantly done through multi-sensory, audio-visual experiences provided by television and computers.
Presenter after presenter at the “Start up, Start over” conference characterized the Church as being woefully behind in understanding the power that the electronic media already wield in our culture, often mistaking media as tools to assist us rather than as a way of experiencing life itself.
The truth of that diagnosis was brought home to me in a real way this past summer when the bulk of our Sunday worship at Lucy’s annual family reunion turned out to be watching a video of a congregation watching a video in an enormous auditorium in Louisville, sort of a light-show about the wonders of God’s universe, narrated by a televangelist who knew how to pull out all the stops.
It was hard not to be blown away with the audience we were watching—who were obviously being blown away by the experience.
It was powerful, but it wasn’t church—at least not for me.
Still, am I as troubled to learn that a projection screen might eventually replace the pulpit in the Church of the future as the people of Jerusalem were to hear that their beloved temple would be reduced to rubble—troubled enough to try to stave it off?
No, I think I would just as soon help carry the pulpit out of the church, when the time comes, than be carried out with it, though at my age I probably don’t need to worry.
Some things never change—except that they do!
However zealously we work to preserve the temples of one kind or another that we build—many of them raised in tribute to our own egos—they all eventually crumble, and we are brought face to face with that which alone endures: God’s love.
That is the lesson that our experience teaches—our experience of a Church that is willing to reshape itself to meet the needs of future generations, our experience of a world whose political tides are ultimately unpredictable.
And this is the lesson that Jesus’ ruminations on the fate of the temple teaches.
The Church, the world as we know it—it may all come to an end, but God’s love never ends.
Thanks be to God!
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