Out of The Rubble

“...the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”
Luke 21:6

 I was watching the Weather Channel Storm Stories the other day and saw this story. 

A family heard the tornado warning on the radio. They turned on the television and the radar map showed the storm was headed for their town. The wind picked up and the windows began to rattle. The sky became dark.

They went out on their front porch and looked at the sky. And then they saw it: a funnel cloud swaying along the ground like an elephant's trunk sucking up everything in its path.

They made a run for it and dove into a nearby ditch - father, mother and two small children. They heard the roar.  Rain came in torrents. Tree limbs rained down. They heard a loud crashing noise. The father dared to raise his head and look up. To his dismay, he saw the roof of their house fly over the ditch and plunge into a grove of trees.

In what seemed like an eternity, but was only a few minutes, the storm passed, the wind died down, the rain stopped, the sky began to clear, and an eerie silence settled around the huddled family. Slowly they climbed out of the ditch. They were shaken and soaking wet but relatively unhurt.

"Where is the house?" six-year-old Amy asked.

In place of the house there was a desolate empty space against the sky. All the family could see was a pile of bricks with not one brick left upon another. Wooden beams were piled helter-skelter like so many oversized matchsticks. Pieces of clothing hung at half-mast from trees left standing but stripped bare of their smaller branches.

"It is nothing but a pile of rubble," mumbled the father.

The family huddled together, hugged each other and cried.

"Where are we going to live? Where is all our stuff? This makes no sense," shrieked ten-year-old Andy.

Nobody offered an answer. Slowly they moved toward the wreckage of their home. Despair and disbelief crept across their faces. For a while they simply stood there. They had no words.

Then Amy cried out, "Where is Kitty Cat? I've got to find Kitty Cat!" Amy began to pick up small pieces of debris. She turned over broken boards. All the while calling, "Kitty Cat! Kitty Cat! Kitty Cat." Her mother watched sadly and thought to herself, "She will never find that cat. It is either crushed under all this rubble or it has been blown away. Amy loved the cat.  She will be devastated."

Just then Amy heard the faintest little meow coming from among the rubble. And then Kitty Cat, wet,  bedraggled and wounded, but alive came struggling out from under a broken board which was resting on some bricks. The board and the bricks had formed a little shelter which protected the kitten from being crushed or blown away. Amy was ecstatic. She picked up the dripping kitten and cradled it in her arms. Amy's tears turned to joy. There was good news among the rubble. A living being which she cherished had survived the destruction of the terrible disaster.

The entire family shared Amy's joy. In fact, the father suggested: "Why don't we give that cat a real name?  Let’s name her 'Hope’."

Jesus was standing near the great and awesome temple in Jerusalem. For over four hundred years (400 years, that’s hard for us to imagine; our nation is only 228 years old) that temple had stood on that very spot as the center of the Jewish faith; a tangible reminder of the ultimate identity of the people of Israel; a visible symbol of God’s unshakable covenant with the people of Israel.  Through thick and thin; good times and bad; war and peace; famine and bounty; submission and insurrection that temple had stood.  The temple was the foundation, the bedrock, the underpinning, the very identity of the nation of Israel.  Because of temple and all that it symbolized they barely even recognized the occupation of their land by their Roman oppressors.

 To most of the people standing around Jesus that day it was inconceivable, unacceptable and even blasphemous to talk about the temple’s destruction.  But Jesus’ words eventually did come to fulfillment - his words came true.  Several decades later in 70 A.D. the unthinkable happened when the armies of Caesar surrounded and then pushed into Jerusalem and destroyed the city - including the temple reducing it to a pile of rubble.  

 The only thing left of the temple was an outer courtyard wall that remains to this very day that we know as the Western Wall or (Wailing Wall) which is still the most sacred of all Jewish shrines. 

 I stood at that wall and I prayed some 8 years ago now.  A friend and fellow traveler snapped a photo of me praying at that wall and later surprised me with it.  At the time I didn’t know he took it.   I remember, as I stood there, thinking about these very words of Jesus in our Gospel, and I also thought about the fact that given the way the world is, whatever our sacred temples are, they are going to fall and be reduced to rubble.  A time is coming when our resources will fail and we will be empty.   It matters not what you temple is: health, wealth, security, family, even nation - it will eventually be reduced to rubble.

 To me this text today is all about expectations and hope in the face of great trouble and loss.

 What are your expectations of things in your life if you have faith in God and Jesus Christ?  Do you expect that If you only have enough faith will God protect you from danger and harm?  Do you expect that if I live a good and decent life and have faith God will reward you with blessing and comfort? 

 If we take this passage seriously we should expect no such protection and blessing.  Jesus paints a pretty grim and bleak picture for his followers.  “They will arrest you…persecute you… hand you over.  You will be betrayed by… parents... brothers… relatives and friends… some of you will be put to death… you will be hated.”

 Sometimes I think we live with the idea that faith is like a magical suit of armor that will protect us from anything that would harm us.  The reason I say that is because it’s been my experience that most of us are overwhelmingly shocked and surprised when something bad or tragic happens.  We say, “How could this happen to me?  What did I do to deserve this?  My life is over.  I have nothing to live for.”   

 Or we turn it completely around and conclude that whatever happens, no matter how dreadful there must “be a reason.”  Many times in my ministry I have heard some version of “If God allows bad things to happen then God must have a reason.”

 We human beings seem to have such a compelling need for our lives to have meaning we will settle for almost any kind of theology that frames our lives in a sense of purpose – even if it makes God into either a glorified Santa Claus or menacing monster.   

We do not seem to be able to accept that the real reasons many horrible things happen is first of all because of human sin and evil, and second simply because of the fact that the world is a fallen, broken and imperfect place.

 When Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple and the suffering of his disciples, he wasn’t looking into some divine crystal ball - he simply knew his history and he knew human nature all too well.  He knew it was inevitable.  

 He would say the same thing to you and me today.  What is your temple?  What are the sacred things in your life?  What do you put your trust in?  The Lord would say there will come a time when your temple just may be reduced to rubble.  Something will come along in this life: some disease, some terrible accident, some combination of factors, an evil thing, perhaps just bad luck and wrench it away from you.  Then where will you be?  Is it all just a part of God’s plan that we cannot understand so there “must be a reason?”  That’s easy to say when it happens to someone else, but cheap and shallow comfort when it happens to you.

 What are your expectations of things in your life if you have faith in God?  If you dare reflect on this passage at all they just might be reduced to rubble.  The expectations of those who were standing around Jesus that day when he first spoke these words most certainly were reduced to rubble.

 But I also said this passage is about hope.  I don’t believe that the hope of the Christian faith is that if I have enough faith God will keep me safe and comfortable and everything will turn out fine and dandy.  I also do not believe hope is found in resigning to the idea that when things fall apart “there must be a reason.”

 I believe the Christian hope is much deeper.  I believe the Christian hope is a more like the kitten that crawled out of the rubble.  The tornado was devastating, it destroyed everything the family had but for a kitten that crawled out of the rubble that bore the name of Hope. 

 The central truth of Christianity is that we don’t have a God who is aloof and removed sitting at some great control panel in the sky pressing buttons, orchestrating events and micro-managing our lives.  Rather we have a God who in and through His Son, Jesus Christ, fully enters into life right alongside of us. He subjects himself to the same pain and futility of things as you and me – even more so.  The cross tells us that he died a hideous death and in some unfathomable way took into himself your pain, despair and death as well.  But on the third day he appeared out of the rubble of a tomb that human sin, evil and death had put him in.  He’s back!  He’s alive!  He lives!  For you!  For me! 

 You may lose something precious and sacred, maybe even your life, but the promise is that out of the rubble will emerge a living being, a living Lord, bearing in His body your wounds and losses, your pain and despair, even your death offering His loving hand of companionship to lead you into the Hope of a new day.

 I don’t presume to know what that new day might look like for you in detail in this earthly life.  But I do know that his love, friendship and presence is so profound and so transforming that it can cause you to testify to His name even from the rubble of your former temple.  His love, friendship and presence is so profound and transforming that He can empower you to endure, and in so enduring you will gain your own soul – forever!