Sam Bush & Marilu Thomas, “Solid Ground”

In the fall of 1755, an earthquake hit the city of Lisbon, Portugal that left tens of thousands of people dead. The city was in ruins, the economy devastated. On top of that, the earthquake had a major effect on the cultural consciousness of Europe. People were shaken not just geologically but philosophically. Not only were their lives destroyed but so was their sense of certainty. Lisbon was the fifth largest city in Europe at that time and it was reduced to rubble in a day. You can only imagine how that affected people’s sense of security. The French thinker Voltaire responded saying, “What a game of chance human life is!”

This apocalyptic scenario would have been relatable to the first century Jews who witnessed their temple being sacked by the Romans in 70 AD, a tragedy which Jesus ominously prophesies in this morning’s gospel reading. The temple was the center of everything for the Jewish community - their social life, their religious life, it represented their identity. As a result, many first-century Jews interpreted its destruction as God's failing to save his people. What they thought was a given in life was all of a sudden on shaky ground.

Of course, this isn’t a unique case in history. Kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall without exception. Most of you know that a group of 24 of us just took a two-week pilgrimage to Turkey and Greece, following the footsteps of the Apostle Paul. Most of the ancient churches we saw made Christ Church feel like a start-up church plant in comparison. 

One day, our group was walking around an ancient ruin in Smyrna, Turkey. Nearly everything from this prominent city center - the market, the court of law, the house of worship - had been laid to waste. People who had been prominent enough to have their name written on a building had long been forgotten. [Now, to their credit, the 2,000 year old cisterns still worked. You’ve really got to give the Romans credit for their cisterns.] But all the concerns of daily life for the people in that city were long gone. As we walked around those ruins, I asked our deacon Courtenay Evans, “Gosh, what am I taking for granted in my own life? What do I assume will last forever?” To which Courtenay, very sweetly, said, “Well…everything.” It says a lot that even Courtenay, the sweetest deacon ever, could not sugar coat the reality that everything I thought was a given in life will one day fade away.

It's true. Think of the dynasties of human history, from the British Empire (which, a hundred years ago, still controlled a quarter of the world) to the Chicago Bulls (who won six out of seven championships in the 90s but finished 11th place in their conference last year - poor guys). It's all a lesson in the great poem Ozymandius where a traveler comes across a statue half sunk in the sand, the inscription reading “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains.

You and I are no different. One way or another, we all crave legacy. We like to think that we will be remembered through our children or through our achievements or the things we’ve built over the course of our lives, but that is something we have very little control over. How many people know their great, great grandfather’s middle name? 

I don’t mean to sound callous or unfeeling. I’m in the same boat. I'm thinking of the words of the 18th century German, Nikolaus Ludwig, who said the role of the minister is this: “Preach the gospel, die and be forgotten.” At this moment, I’m hoping that I am one for three, but there will be a day when all three boxes are checked.

The only exception to the rule that comes to mind is George Harrison of the Beatles, who, when asked how he wanted to be remembered, said, “I don’t care. I don’t care if I’m remembered. Why would I want to be remembered?” He wasn’t being sarcastic. Deep down, he understood that immortality was beyond his grasp. 

Not one stone will be left upon another. All will be thrown down.

Now, maybe this message doesn't come across entirely as bad news, but as a relief. There is a profound comfort in realizing that the things we agonize over are not eternal, but temporal. From this past week’s election, to the housing market, to whatever is on your to-do list. Whatever empires you and I are building right now, they will one day be, as Johnny Cash said, an empire of dirt. Hopefully that takes the pressure off. 

But, the reality is that any fall from power rarely ends in a whimper. Nobody ever willingly surrenders. This Jewish temple was sacked, brutally. And, apparently, Jesus was the only one who was tipped off of its impending doom. So why didn't he stop it from happening? 

He says "When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place." He's actually pretty terrible at crisis management. He lists a litany of disasters - earthquakes, famines, plagues - all the while, you can imagine the disciples' eyes growing bigger and bigger. But he's slow on the social cues. He keeps going. They're going to be betrayed by relatives, many will be put to death...By this time, you expect the disciples have all crawled under their beds. 

But then Jesus says, “Not a hair of your head will perish.” How can he say that after saying that some of the disciples are going to die? Well, he's not seeing this coming disaster from a worldly perspective, but from an eternal landscape, where one’s death is not even the final chapter of one's being. He’s talking like someone who has read this book before and he knows how it ends.

It’s important that Jesus doesn't tell the disciples to build a bunker and avoid this disaster altogether. For him, disaster is not something that can be avoided.

Jesus knows something about impending doom. He's speaking from personal experience. In the very next chapter, he is arrested and condemned to die. But he doesn’t stop it from happening because God deemed it necessary for our salvation. In John’s Gospel, Jesus says, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up." Later, he describes himself as the stone that the builders rejected that became the chief cornerstone - the stone on which the foundation of the world will be built. Of course, that stone would only become the cornerstone after one stone was not left upon another, after all would be thrown down.

How does this relate to your own personal apocalypse? What in your own life feels like it’s on the verge of collapse? Where is your legacy being threatened with extinction?

Well, I can’t speak directly for you - at least, from the pulpit - but I can speak for Matthew Perry, known to all as Chandler Bing of the show Friends, one of the most celebrated sitcoms ever. His memoir came out a few weeks ago in which he details his history of addiction — 14 trips to rehab, 60 some odd detoxes, 15 stomach surgeries. He recounts a particular moment where he bottoms out. In the middle of a painful detox, unable to sleep, he overdoses on Xanax and calls an assistant who is en route with anti-seizure medication. While he waits, he describes his experience:

“I hated myself. This was a new bottom; I didn’t think you could get any lower than my previous bottom, but I had managed to do it….But hey, what’s this now? As I sat there looking into the kitchen, I noticed a crinkle in the atmosphere. Perhaps someone not at their bottom might have waved it away as nothing, but to me it was so compelling that I couldn’t look away….I frantically began to pray, ‘God, please help me. Show me that you are here. God, please help me.’ He says he notices the light begins to get bigger and bigger until it was so big that it encompassed the entire room. “It was like I was standing on the sun,” he says. “Why was I not terrified? The light was way bigger than me. My only choice was to surrender to it….For the first time in my life, I felt OK. I felt safe, taken care of. Decades of struggling with God, and wrestling with life, and sadness, all was being washed away, like a river of pain gone into oblivion. I had been in the presence of God. I was certain of it. And this time I had prayed for the right thing: help…I stayed sober for two years based solely on that moment. God has shown me a sliver of what life could be. He had saved me that day, and for all days, no matter what.”

Now, maybe you’ve heard one too many stories like this or maybe that sounds more like another psychotic episode. But here’s the point: Matthew Perry was hell-bent on self-destruction. In his own life, and to his fault, no stone had been left on stone. And yet God entered into the rubble and exuded grace in such a way that brought Matthew back to reality. Who knows? Maybe even the destruction Matthew Perry had issued forth in his own life was part of God’s salvation plan.

Whether you are building an empire or standing in the ruins of one, know that Jesus Christ is our only sure foundation in life. As the great hymn proclaims, “Human pride and earthly glory / sword and crown betray his trust / what with care and toil he buildeth / tower and temple, fall to dust / but God's power / hour by hour / is my temple and my tower." The love of God is often hiding in the ruins. While everything else may fall apart, it is unshakable. It is a center that will always hold. It is solid ground.