Be a Hold Out
It would have been hard not to be impressed by the temple Herod built in Jerusalem. It was built to impress. Some of you have had the opportunity to travel in Europe, where there are many impressive, ancient places of worship. Those cathedrals are staggering testimonies to the ingenuity of their builders. Many of those places still stand, many have fallen into ruin, whether through natural disaster or the disasters that come from the hand—I guess I should say the disasters that come from the heart—of man.
Like that ancient temple that left Jesus’ disciples in awe, those ancient cathedrals were built to in some way reflect the builders’ notions of God, of the place where God dwells with saints and angels. The disciples seem to be marveling at the works and accomplishments of men. I would rather they be impressed by the God who blesses such a building with His holy presence.
Jesus has been criticizing all along this missing the mark, especially in his pointed criticisms of Pharisees and the teachers of the law, who had made the law a matter of human accomplishment, rather than God’s grace, their punctilious works, rather than God’s bountiful love. So soon as we direct our awe and thanks to the creature and his works in place of the Creator, we have missed the mark. The lesson of the Tower of Babel has not been learned. Man seeks still to glorify himself. Herod’s temple, blazingly, glaringly magnificent in gold and white stone, was meant to convey a message about Herod, as much as a message about God.
Where is that temple, now? Where is Herod? And where is God? Jesus tells them the place that has them stumbling around in gape-jawed wonder would be thrown down, not one stone left on another (13:2), and so it happened, some forty years later. Jesus was not only foretelling the ravages of man; he was also revealing the will and way of God. If the temple was an obstacle, a distraction, a stumbling block between God and man, God would remove the stumbling block: not one stone left upon another, all thrown down. God means to clear the way between us. Is Christ not evidence of this?
When Jesus and his disciples then walk out and up the Mount of Olives, they go to a place of rich associations. This is the way by which Jesus had entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Here he and his disciples would stay, every night, during their time at Jerusalem (Lk 21:37). Here was Gethsemane, the garden of prayer and betrayal. And this mount, as the prophet Zechariah foretold centuries before, would be the place where the Messiah’s feet would stand, on that day when he comes, comes again (Zech 14:4).
So, Jesus speaks with them about that time, because they ask. Beloved, there is nothing that we cannot ask Jesus. Have faith, listen attentively, be alert, and the Spirit will bring an answer—I really believe that, and I pray that you will, too. There are Christians who wonder about the time. How will we know when the last days are upon us? Entire bands of believers have come and gone because of their disappointed expectation of the arrival of that day. It seems some learned pastor is always predicting the precise day. So far, all have been wrong.
My father became interested in the end times when he came back to faith in the ‘70s. Hal Lindsey, an evangelical pastor and student of end-time prophecy, wrote two very influential books in those years. My father was familiar with both. More recently, my father would watch Lindsey’s weekly cable program, along with fellow end-time prophecy student and pastor Irvin Baxter’s weekly program. In the ‘90s, there was a sort of renewed fervor in end-time studies. Baxter wrote Understanding the End Time (1995). Lindsey wrote The Apocalypse Code (1997). These disciples are well-meaning, yet I can’t help but feel that their occupation with dissecting a book such as Revelation is misguided.
Yet that expectation is still there: the end will come any time now; we are at the end of days. A fellow pastor in Illinois spoke with conviction that Jesus was just about to return. Whenever he spoke this way, the local Catholic priest would sort of grimace and squirm in his seat. God help me, like that priest, it’s not my sense that we are at the end of days. Yet we have been waiting a long time! It seems as if two thousand years might be, ought to be, long enough. Different scholars, attempting to derive the age of the earth from Scripture, have proposed spans of four thousand years, six thousand, as many as fifty thousand. The geological and fossil records suggest a much older date, but the point is, if the earth had to wait two, four, or even forty-eight thousand years for the arrival of Jesus, would it not be reasonable to entertain the possibility that we will have to wait another two, four, or even forty-eight thousand years until his return? Peter speaks to this matter, very wisely: “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (2 Pet 3:8-9).
Only, consider all the disasters, natural and human, now taking place! Floods and hurricanes, typhoons and wildfires, unseasonably cold weather, plagues of mosquitoes. Look around the world: resurgent militarism in China and Russia (fifty years ago it was the Soviet Union—antichrist—remember them?), famine, civil war, ethnic cleansing, mass shootings, school shootings, sex trafficking, radical Islam. We don’t fret much now about nuclear annihilation, or “nuclear winter” (anybody besides me remember “nuclear winter”?), yet Russia has more nuclear weapons than we do, China has them, and Israel, and Pakistan, and North Korea, and so on. We live in unstable, insecure times. Beloved, ask your parents, your grandparents, do a little delving into history, and I suspect you will find that there has often been a sense, stronger or more subdued, of living in unstable, insecure times.
Jesus discourages us, and the apostles likewise discourage us, from becoming fascinated with the times of the Apocalypse. If you have an Armageddon clock in your house, your study, or your heart, I hope you will consider packing it away. What Jesus repeatedly tells us to do, throughout the Gospel accounts and especially toward the conclusion of each of them, is to keep ready, to keep alert, to live as if Jesus was returning tomorrow. Our translation has Jesus telling his disciples, telling us, to “watch out” (13:9). Other versions say “beware” (NRSV), “take heed to yourselves” (RSV, Geneva Bible), “be on your guard” (ESV, NIV). Don’t live slack. Be aware of your surroundings. “Take heed to yourselves” sounds a bit old-fashioned, even clunky, but what it says is keep working out your salvation: pay more attention to your discipleship, your faithful walk, than to what television evangelists and Armageddon students are broadcasting, no matter how fascinatingly or marvelously: the work of their hands will fall down, too.
The test for us will be personal. Christians will be brought before the authorities for the “crime” of their faith: what their faith teaches and expects of them. I don’t think Christianity has ever been popular. It has been tolerated for many, many centuries, but let it cross wires with the powers of this world, its ways, purposes, and plans, and you see sparks fly.
The time will come in this life when your faith will be on trial before others. Maybe you’ve already experienced some of this: I have. Jesus says something worth remembering, worth pondering: when that time comes, it will be your opportunity to tell the world the Good News for the sake of Jesus (13:9). The destruction of the temple in Jerusalem was not just the work of the hands of men. In ways we do not and will not know in this life, that demolition of that magnificent tribute to the glory of Herod and Herod’s God was also providential: God was at work in that demolition. When your time of trial comes, it will not simply be the misfortune of having fallen into the power of human foes. In ways we do not and will not know in this life, God is there, too. There is a higher purpose at work in this challenge, this persecution.
We may never feel quite so persecuted as when we feel the importance of evangelizing and our entire worthlessness for it. And I hope, I pray, that each of you feels the importance of evangelizing! Disciples proclaim the Good News! We don’t do it in just the same way, nor do we have to, nor does God expect us to, in just the same way. God expects that we will proclaim, and the blessing and encouragement is this: God will be working in us, through us, to make His Word known.
We Presbyterians are really good at breaking out in a cold sweat and feeling faintly dizzy and slightly nauseous when we hear that word evangelism. "Oh! That’s not me! I couldn’t!" "Why, I became a Presbyterian just because then I wouldn’t have to!" Beloved, nothing worth doing comes to us full and complete, naturally. Anything worth doing requires practice, with patience, prayer, reflection, and correction. Jesus tells us, precisely to help ease our Presbyterian dread of speaking to another human being about Jesus Christ, that, when we speak, it will be the Holy Spirit who will guide us (13:11). We will make mistakes. We won’t and don’t have all the answers. You aren’t responsible for saving anyone. You can’t. You are responsible—I’d like to say you aren’t, but you are—we all are—we are responsible for proclaiming the Good News, for making Christ known, for inviting others into this blessed fellowship.
Jesus says the time will come when “everyone will hate you because of me” (13:13). That’s scary. We aren’t there. We aren’t there yet. We aren’t likely to be for quite some time, but I see it happening, bit by bit. It’s happening bit by bit in our own times. We have at least three choices: (1) we can walk away from the faith—the world is so very attractive, after all, and its many allurements call powerfully to our appetites and natural interests. (2) We can claim Christ and go the way of the world—that’s like the best of both worlds, right? That’s the politic way, to know which way the wind is blowing and to get on board. Many Christians, many in our own denomination, have weighed anchor and hoisted the colors high. William Barclay, pastor and biblical scholar, writing more than forty years ago, speaks of such as those “constructing doctrine to suit oneself.”[1] These are the disciples, acting in what they see as full faithfulness, who are “trying to produce a religion which will suit people, one which will be popular and attractive.”[2] “Jesus saw quite clearly that men would come who would twist and adulterate the Christian faith. It was bound to be so, for men are always inclined to listen to their own proud minds rather than to the voice of God.”[3] I would add, their own proud hearts, too.
The third choice is the hardest and demands the most of us: (3) hold out, endure. Nobody likes to be a hold out! It’s so unpopular! Yet Jesus says to those few, fearful disciples, hearing about the end, about disaster and unimaginable glory, that “whoever holds out to the end will be saved” (13:13). St. Paul likens our lives, our time, to a race, an endurance race. He urges you to “[r]un in such a way that you may win [the prize]” (1 Cor 9:24): like him, to “press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:8-14). We have a goal, a promise, in view: weathering the storms of resistance and even hostility, taking risks for the sake of Jesus, and always reaching out to him in hope is the way to run this race. Hold on to Christ, hold out Christ to others. Rejoice in your salvation. Give thanks that, in Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, our Father in heaven grants it to you to bring salvation to those around you: family, friends, co-workers, fellow students, neighbors.
And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.
[1] William Barclay. Gospel of Mark. Daily Study Bible Ser. Philadelphia: Westminster P, 1975. 314.
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