Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 16, 2003

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

You’ve all heard it said that the only things that are certain are death and taxes. That may be a joke about the unavoidability of taxes; but it reflects, I think, a universal human longing, a longing for permanence. We know that, really, nothing in this world lasts, but we don’t like it. We want to believe, or at least to pretend, that our lives in fact are not transitory, that what we have and who we are last forever. That longing shows up in popular culture all the time. I imagine you all know the great old song by George and Ira Gershwin "Our Love is Here to Stay":

It’s very clear
Our love is here to stay.
Not for a year,
Forever and a day....
In time the Rockies may crumble,
Gibraltar may tumble,
They’re only made of clay.
But, our love is here to stay.

This human longing for permanence is reflected in this morning’s Gospel lesson. In that lesson Jesus has been teaching in the Temple. He has just made his remarks about the widow’s offering to the Temple treasury that we talked about last week. He and the Disciples are coming out of the Temple; and one of the disciples is overwhelmed by the massiveness of the Temple complex. He says: "Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" To the world’s way of thinking, anything as massive and impressive as the Jerusalem Temple must have been indeed had an air of permanence as well as size about it; but in this case there’s even more than the building’s size to give a sense of permanence. This is the Temple, after all. For devout Jews of the time this building wasn’t just a building. It was the very dwelling place of God, who was said to be uniquely present in the Holy of Holies, the secret inner sanctum at the heart of the Temple. Surely this building of all buildings would last forever.

Jesus, however, was having none of it. Being profoundly intuitive-he seems to have been the ultimate N on the Myers-Briggs scale, for those of you who are familiar with that psychological tool-he had no doubt that this disciple was thinking not just of the size of the Temple edifice but of what he took to be its permanence. We know that because Jesus’ response to the man’s statement wasn’t about the building’s size but about its permanence, or rather its lack thereof. He said: "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." Mark 13:2 And indeed, we know that within about 40 years of Jesus’ death the Romans did in fact destroy the Jerusalem Temple. Today, only the western wall, known as the Wailing Wall, remains. Now, scholars can debate all they want over whether these lines from Mark were written before or after the destruction of the Temple, and they do. For our purposes, however, it doesn’t matter. Either way, the Gospel is telling us: Nothing made by human hands lasts. Nothing created is permanent. It will all come to an end. Build as big as you like. Ascribe as much divine significance to your creation as you like. It doesn’t matter. It will all come to an end. In the end you can’t rely on it. In the end anything finite will fail you and pass away. Nothing that is a creation of this world lasts. Nothing created is really here to stay.

And there is a profound implication in that lesson. Mark doesn’t spell it out here. He doesn’t have to. When you think about it, the implication is pretty obvious though. Nothing created lasts, but that doesn’t mean that nothing does. God the Creator (Who isn’t a thing, of course) lasts. Creation ends, but God is eternal. Nothing created by human hands is here to stay. Not even physical creation itself is here to stay. God, and God alone is here to stay. Nothing finite can give us eternal peace and security because nothing finite is eternal. Nothing finite lasts forever.. Only God can give us eternal peace and security because only God is forever. That’s the lesson behind the lesson of Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the Temple.

The Psalmist of Psalm 16 knew this truth. He, or she, knew that only in God is there true security. The Psalmist says: "Protect me, O God, for in you I take refuge." And: "I keep the Lord always before me...; I shall not be moved." He says that in God his soul rejoices and his body rests secure. The Psalm ends with the beautiful lines: "You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore." "Forevermore." Whoever the person of faith was who wrote this Psalm, he or she knew what was permanent. This writer knew where eternal peace and security could be found. They are found in God alone, because only God is forever.

Think about it for a minute. Has anything in your life, other than God, lasted for your entire life? Unless you are very, very young, I doubt it. Virtually as soon as we are born, we begin to experience loss. When you’re real little, a year seems like forever. When I was five, my family spent one year away from our home in Oregon, living in California. We knew we were coming back, so we left our dog with friends. It never occurred to me that I’d never see that dog again. I loved that dog, and I suppose I just assumed without thinking about it much that the dog would be with me forever. But while we were gone, someone poisoned our dog and the dog of the friends he was staying with. It was one of my earliest experiences of loss. Loss has been my constant companion ever since-loss of other pets, loss of old homes, loss of grandparents and aunts to death, loss of friends, loss of jobs, loss even of my earlier professional identities. as scholar and attorney. And of course, the biggest loss of all, the loss last year of my wife Francie to cancer. I’m not fishing for sympathy here. I’m just using myself as an example of what I know must be true of all of you too. The things of our lives don’t last. We may live as though they, and we, will last forever; but they, and we, don’t.

Except for one thing. A great professor of mine at Seattle University, Father Mike Raschko, has just published a book on Mark. He begins it by quoting this bit of dialogue from the movie City Slickers:

Curly: None of you get it. Do you know what the secret of life is?
Mitch: No. What?
Curly: (Holds up his right index finger.)
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing, just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean ________.
Mitch: That’s great, but what’s the one thing?
Curly: That’s what you’ve gotta figure out.

Think about it. Hasn’t the love of God always been there for you when you needed it? It has been for me. I haven’t always been aware that it was there for me, but it always has been. It was there through all those losses. It was even there in my grief over Francie’s death at way too young an age, and I have even managed at times to feel it in that grief. And I’m here to tell you this morning that that one thing, God’s unfailing, unconditional love for each and every one of us is here to stay.

not for a year,
forever and a day.
In time the Rockies will crumble,
Gibraltar will tumble.
They’re only made of clay.
But, God’s love is here to stay.