Union Church

November 8, 2009. Mark 12: 41-13:2.

Jesus is in the Temple.
His attention goes to a parade of wealthy patrons dropping their tithes into the Temple Treasury box.
A poor, destitute, out of place, widow arrives at the box and drops in 2 copper coins. A pittance in comparison to the wealthy patrons but all she has to live on.
Jesus draws attention to this situation. He praises the widow for her commitment.

Then there is a chapter break which obscures the rest of the teaching moment. The regular lectionary reading for today ends right there.

But in the very next verse as Jesus goes to leave the Temple, one of the disciples points out the permanence of the huge stone edifice. Jesus then says, “There won’t be one stone left here upon another, all will be thrown down.”

How can Jesus praise this woman who puts every last cent she has to live on into the Temple Treasury and then, in the next breath say this is all a lost cause?

What is going on here?

Is Jesus selling false securities in some kind of a Ponsi scheme or is there something more profound going on here?

In Quebec, we like our stone buildings.
We like the permanence they imply.
The foundational and enduring qualities they suggest.
Humanity has been building stone Temples for thousands of years.

It is easy to understand the widow going all in, supporting the granite grandeur of the Temple but then we hear that it is soon going to be cast down.
By the time Mark’s gospel is written the Temple has indeed been reduced to rubble.

So what’s going on here?

Well, today’s passage encompasses two different concepts which at first seem contradictory.
However, they form two poles of lived experience: Two necessary aspects of God’s creation.

The first is about being all in:
It is about participating fully in life, in projects, in commitments, in relationships.
It is about living God’s Dream in the present moment.
We can’t live life fully from the sidelines.
The abundant living that Jesus calls us to is an all in activity.

The second aspect of our passage is that whether we like it or not, accept it or not, believe it or not, permanence is an illusion.
Whatever we are participating in changes, evolves, and finally ceases to exist.
Everyone eventually dies.
Even Jesus didn’t get out of this life alive.
In fact, at the Temple he is only days away from the cross.

Remember, Jesus was all in, teaching and engaging right to the very last moment.
All in to his final words on the cross.

Going all in, in the present moment and the utter impermanence of the future go together like north and south, like the poles that make a magnet.
They are the forces that move the evolutionary process forward.

The problem is that we fight this reality.
We wage an inner war to try to resolve it.
We want only north when there must also be a south.
We want only life when there must also be death.
If we are going to go all in on something, we want a strong guaranteed future.
We want a guaranteed outcome before we will commit to being all in, in the present moment.
We don’t want to accept an uncontrolled, and impermanent future.
It doesn’t seem reasonable to invest everything in something that may not last, let alone something that will not last.

The fact is, the future is impermanent and uncontrollable and yet what we do now casts a long shadow into what the future might become.

What Jesus did two thousand years ago still casts a long shadow even now in 2009.

On this Remembrance Sunday, we need to recognize that it is hard to hope for peace in the future if we are not doing all we can to be peaceful today.

The thing about peace is that you have to be all in,
in the present moment and you have to be open and flexible to where the future will take it.
If not , you begin the battle all over and over and over again.

The thing about God’s Dream is that you have to be all in, in the present and trust the future to the Dreamer.

Application for Today:

With Jesus, we can be all in today and all open to what tomorrow brings.

This is the only way Resurrection works.