Home Inspection in Antiquity

1 Samuel 1:4-20, Heb 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25, Mark 13:1-8
Holy Trinity/La Santisima Trinidad
11/15/2009

My husband Matt is a house inspector in Berkeley. My first thought was that the beginning of this passage reminds me of nothing so much as his descriptions of the leaning stone chimneys and brick foundations of some grand house in the Berkeley Hills. The temple was, after all, only a building. But that was not how it was seen in the eyes of the disciples and their fellow first century Jews. It was the Beth El- the one house of God. And so this house of God was of necessity an unimaginably grand and gigantic structure. The temple of Herod was so vast and in fact so impressive that the disciples could not help but turn around and gawk up at it as they left its huge courts.

According to the Talmud, the second temple, or the temple of Solomon had thirteen gates, and an Ezrat Nashim (a large Women's Court) to the east and vast main area to the west. The roof and capitals were covered with gold, and the whole structure was gleaming white. The massive stones that survive in the Western wall are proof of the awe-inspiring scope of this temple. This great temple replaced the original first temple, the Temple of Solomon that was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC.

Imagine, then the horror of the disciples when Jesus calmly predicted that the glorious temple of God would be destroyed for a second time. Jesus is predicting the Siege of Jerusalem in the year 70 AD. The Roman army, led by the future Emperor Titus, conquered the city of Jerusalem, and the city and the Temple were utterly destroyed- barely a stone was left upon another.

This devastating change, these great birth pangs, gave birth to rabbinical Judaism. It was no longer possible to worship and make sacrifice in the great temple. There had to be a way to believe that God dwelled, not in only one place, but in the Word- in scripture, which could be taught by these newly elevated men (of course it was only men) of God.

But all this was in the future as the dazzled disciples gawked at the huge edifice of gleaming stone and gold. They could not image God living anywhere else. And even though Jesus had just taught the disciples about the relative worthlessness of wealth, unfavorably comparing the rich people in the temple with the impoverished widow, the disciples were awed by this grand and enormous complex. “Look, teacher, what large stones and what great buildings!” They say.

Soon after this James and John, always clueless, will ask Jesus to place them at his right and left hands when he comes into his glory. He advises them that they will not want to drink the cup that he must drink, but they don’t get it. The disciples still squabble over their status with Jesus, their place in the hierarchy that they imagine exists with him.

We continue our narrated gospel tour with Jesus and the disciples retreating to the Mount of Olives after their comments about the temple, to a place which overlooks Jerusalem so that they can still admire it. The disciples who Jesus first called, Peter, James, John and Andrew, begin to ask Jesus for the signs that will precede the falling of the temple.

First Jesus warns them of false prophets- those who will come in his name, leading them astray. With the vast multiplicity of interpretation of Christianity in our own day, we modern readers might well listen to that warning.

Then Jesus lists the signs: wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, and famines. But there is a positive note- this apocalypse leads to a birth- he describes all these disasters as merely the beginnings of the birth pangs.

We are blessed this morning with another story that speaks of birth pangs- the beautiful story of Hannah, whose first birth pangs were the grief and mourning she experienced before her prayers were answered. A barren woman was an object of great shame in those days. So the story of Hannah is one more that celebrates the lifting up, the victory of the lowly. Hannah, beloved wife of Elkhannah, is so desperate for a son that, after an apparently boozy feast with her husband, loses her mind with grief and weeps bitterly, as she staggers to the local tent-shrine to pray.

This tent-shrine is called a temple, but this was in Shiloh, not Jerusalem and she prayed her fervent prayers in a glorified tent, not a gleaming white and gold temple. She insists to the scandalized priest attendant Eli (as drunk people often do) that she is NOT drunk, but desperate for a son. She makes a vow to consecrate her much hoped for son to God, and Eli tells her that God will grant her wish. She goes back to her husband, they eat and drink even more, and then she conceives a child. The real birth pangs must have been more than bearable for Hannah, because her deepest prayers have been answered.

And in our beautiful psalm today, we hear Hannah’s prayer of thanksgiving, on which the Magnificat of Mary is based. There is a litany describing the falling of the mighty, like the great stones of the temple, and the rising up of the lowly, like the barren woman who finds she is with child.

We live every day every day in a culture, which like the Old Testament times of Hannah and the New Testament times of Jesus, values grandeur, real estate, gold and status over almost everything. And so, of course, we are tempted, like the disciples to forget the constant teachings of Jesus, who would probably favor Hannah’s tent shrine in Shiloh over the vast property that was the second temple of Jerusalem. Who would probably prefers Hannah’s drunken pleas over the pretentiously long prayers of the Jerusalem scribes. Over and over again Jesus reminds the disciples who has an easier time entering the kingdom of heaven, and who does not. We forget that God does not dwell exclusively in the very best addresses,.

It is not small thing to try to follow in the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a counter-cultural, counter-intuitive, counter-survivalist, revolutionary way to live. Not to gawk at the gleaming stones and gold this culture holds out to us. To actually have as our priority the familiar things that Jesus spoke of time and again. Letting go of grandeur, lifting up the lowly, opening our hearts, even and especially to the unlikely. And to see that we ourselves are the lowly temples of God, everyday feeling the birth pangs that precede our inevitable, slow, lowly and miraculous transformation.

Amen.