Well, you can tell we’re approaching the end of the church year. At this time of the year, we always get stories about the eschaton, the end: "the end of the world is coming."

But this year, it seems a little more poignant. The events of the last few months have seemed like the end of the world. Things have happened to us that we could not have imagined. Even if we thought about them, we couldn’t really imagine that such things could really happen. Now we all live with the haunting images of the symbols of our society being attacked and destroyed: the planes hitting the towers, the Pentagon ablaze, the towers collapsing, government buildings contaminated with Anthrax. It has been, to say the least, upsetting, and disconcerting, and deeply disturbing.

So I think we have gotten a taste, just a taste, of how upsetting and disconcerting and disturbing it was when Jesus hears people admiring the Temple, and he responds by saying that "the day will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down."

The Temple was at the center of the city which was the most holy place on earth. Jerusalem was believed to be God’s own city, the place where God lived. Now, the World Trade Center Towers were built in the 1960’s; they had been there for less than 40 years. The Pentagon was built in the 1940’s; it has been there for about sixty years. In Israel, the Temple had held great significance and power for a thousand years. A thousand years. The Statue of Liberty is 117 years old. The White House is 201 years old. Our country is 225 years old. The Temple had been a pivotal part of Jewish life for a thousand years. It was central to all Hebrew culture. It was the seat and symbol of God’s presence among God’s chosen people.

What was being admired in Jesus’ time was the third Temple to be erected on that holy site. The first had been built by Solomon, and had stood for four hundred years before being destroyed in 587 BC by the Babylonians. The second was erected after the Babylonian Exile. It stood for almost five hundred years before being defiled by the Greeks in 167 BC. In 20 BC, King Herod, the Roman puppet king of Judea, began rebuilding the Temple to be twice as large as the previous structure.

It was a massive undertaking. Ten thousand people worked on it for ten years. A thousand priests were trained as masons so they could labor within the most sacred precincts of the Temple. Finishing work continued for many decades and was not completed in Jesus’ lifetime. The Temple inspired a sense of awe and reverence and, no doubt, pride.

And it was at the center of both religious and economic Jewish life. All major worship services were held there. Sacrifices were made there. Jewish religious life was held together there. And it spawned whole industries of craftsman who made ritual objects, and incense makers, and those who provided thousands and thousands of animals for sacrifice. People made their living providing food and lodging for pilgrims. (The Temple made Jerusalem into something of a "convention town.") Bankers and currency exchangers worked there because almost everyone in Jerusalem deposited their money there.

For a thousand years, the Temple had been part National Cathedral, part Statue of Liberty, part White House, part Supreme Court building, part Federal Reserve Bank, part Capitol dome, part Pentagon, part World Trade Center. With its massive stone blocks, it underpinned the entire culture. And Jesus said, "You will see, the day will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down." It was, to say the least, upsetting, and disconcerting, and deeply disturbing.

He was right in a physical sense; the Temple was physically destroyed. In 66 AD, Israel rebelled against the Roman Empire and, after a promising start, was slaughtered. The Temple was destroyed as a symbolic gesture of conquest. All that remains now is the ancient foundation, which we know as the Wailing Wall.

So Jesus was right about the physical destruction of the Temple. I wonder what he meant metaphorically?

On our web site’s home page, we have a picture of the outside of the church, and on other pages we have some pictures of the inside. It’s good marketing. This is a beautiful church. I feel fortunate to serve in such an aesthetically pleasing place. I like the wood and the color in the windows, and I like to know that so much has happened here, so many lives changed, so many important moments have touched people right here.

But as wonderful as having a beautiful place is, it’s also dangerous. Maintaining these buildings takes an incredible amount of time and energy and money. (You know, nature doesn’t like buildings; nature wants everything to be sand on a beach.) We are constantly maintaining and repairing and replacing. The bell tower steps have just been completely rebuilt. And, of course, the bell ringer broke on All Saints’ Sunday. This morning, when Martha McLeod opened one of the doors, the knob came off in her hand.

In your Eagle Notes, you’ve seen a long list of projects that John Musser has overseen for us, and more are on the way. Over the last three and a half years, after receiving yet another in a seemingly endless string of reports about leaks or clogs or breaks, I’ve been heard many times to say, "Now I know why Jesus never built anything."

It’s very easy for us, bit by bit, to slip into becoming slaves to this church.

Of course, that’s not right. It’s true that we have to be careful not to become slaves to this beautiful building, but it is not true that this building is the church. We don’t really have a picture of the church on our web site. I remember talking to a priest in Tennessee who was starting a new parish which didn’t have a building. The bishop wanted pictures of all the churches in the diocese to go in the diocesan offices. Pictures of buildings flooded in. But not from the priest I had spoken to; he sent what looked like a class photo, a picture of a group of people. "Here’s our church," he said.

To these people whom Jesus has just shaken badly by telling them that the Temple would be destroyed, Jesus says: "There will be hard times ahead. Wars and disasters and betrayals and persecutions and dreadful things. And you will not have the Temple. It will not be left. But here is what will be left. You will be left. And these dreadful things will be an opportunity for you to testify. My wisdom and your words will be powerful. Some of you will be put to death, but not a hair of your head will parish, because you will gain your souls."

Jesus was right that the Temple would physically be destroyed. But he meant more than that. He meant that in a time of disruption, heartache, pain, there would be a new order, a new Temple. And he said to them, "You will be it. Your words, not carefully crafted and precisely planned, but your heartfelt words about the Prince of Peace will be the new Temple, standing as a symbol against kings and governors and nations and destruction and betrayal and sin."

And as they looked at the massive stones which would be flung aside, Jesus’ followers must have thought that their words, their heartfelt, but simple, unarmed words could do nothing against anything powerful enough to tear down this Temple.

"I will give you wisdom and words," Jesus said, "that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict." Clearly, they would not be a quick fix — people would be persecuted; people would be killed. But Jesus says, "Trust in me — they will work. Your simple message will be more powerful than empires." That must have been hard for them to believe.

I tend to avoid conversations about when the end of the world will come. I don’t know, and history has shown that discussions of that sort bring out a lot of craziness in people. But there’s another reason I don’t want to spend too much time and energy on predictions like that: I think we ought to be too busy. In a time of hatred and terrorism and revenge and war and violence here and violence abroad, we should be too busy, too busy being the Church, being the new Temple, being the Body of Christ, being the firm stones upon which Christ’s revolutionary new order can stand.

With what? With what can we fight empires that could dismantle something as great as the Temple, or hatred that could bring down the towers? With words that our Lord will give us, words that are only — heartfelt?

That is hard for us to believe. That sounds so helpless, so hopeless, so impotent. We are really supposed to oppose the kind of hatred, evil, sin, that could bring down the Temple, the towers, that underpin racism and classism and misogyny and homophobia , and all the evils that befall us, are we really to oppose them with — heartfelt words about Christ and love?

Seems ridiculous.

At least, it did to the Romans.