Looking in All the Right Places

​For the last year, most of our Gospel readings have come from the Gospel of Mark. That ends today, with the reading we just heard. Next Sunday we’ll hear from the Gospel of John, and the following Sunday we’ll begin a new Christian year during which our readings will mostly come from Luke.
 
Our final reading from Mark, at least for a couple of years, is another challenging one. It continues the story we have heard over the last couple of weeks. As you may recall, Jesus has had a tough day in the Temple, battling with different opponents. Now Jesus and his disciples are heading to Bethany, where they will spend the night.
 
On the way out of town, a disciple comments on how impressive he finds the whole Temple complex. “What stones and what large buildings!” He was right. A small part of the complex survives as the “Wailing Wall” in Jerusalem, so we can still see just how big the stones were and begin to imagine what the whole must have looked like. This week, I spoke with Jim Munroe, who has been there and touched some of those very stones. He confirms that they are impressive.
 
But Jesus was not impressed. Jesus warns his disciples that the day is coming when the Temple buildings will be utterly destroyed. That destruction happened a few decades later, leaving the Wailing Wall as the sole surviving part of the complex that so impressed the disciple.
 
Jesus’ disciples were shocked at the idea that the Temple might be destroyed, and understandably so. I lived in New York City in the late 1980s. If someone had told me then that the World Trade Center would be destroyed by a hostile attack within twenty years, I wouldn’t have believed them. And the Temple loomed much larger in the minds of first-century Jews than the World Trade Center did in my mind. Jesus was telling his disciples that everything that seemed most solid in their world was going to come crashing down.
 
The disciples want to know when it will happen. But Jesus doesn’t answer that question. Jesus is more worried about how they will respond whenever it happens. So Jesus gives them another warning. When it happens, when everything collapses, false messiahs will come, offering false solutions. Jesus warns his disciples to “Beware that no one leads you astray.”
 
When we are anxious, when our world seems threatened in some way, it is natural to grasp after any possible relief, without always discerning as carefully as we should. That’s the problem raised in our Gospel reading.
 
Today there is no one magnificent Temple building for all Christians. And at this point, we are not likely to be deceived by a literal false messiah. But we all know what it is like to be afraid. And we all have felt the temptation, in those moments, to look for easy but deceptive answers to our problems.
 
As a kind of silly example, I think about times when I am tired. My go-to response is to take a nap. And sometimes, if I haven’t been sleeping well or enough, a nap is exactly what I need.
 
But sometimes I don’t need a nap. If dehydration is what’s making me tired, I need a glass of water. A nap doesn’t help. Other times, especially if I have been sitting at my computer for too long, I need to move my body. Then a nap is the opposite of what I need.
 
So, when I am tired, I shouldn’t just do the first thing that comes to mind. I need to be wiser than that.
 
The same is true for us as a community. A lot is going well, here at Saint David’s. Still, I sometimes worry about our future, and I worry about the future of the Episcopal Church.
 
In that I am not alone. At clergy gatherings, we often have guest speakers who tell us what is going wrong in our Church and what we need to do about it. The speakers are often wise, and have all kinds of good ideas.
 
But these outside experts sometimes sound like the false messiahs in our reading. They sometimes talk as if there is a magic bullet that could solve all our problems. They imply that, if we could phrase our stewardship appeals in just the right way, then the dollars would flow in. Or if we could communicate what we are doing in just the right way, then the people would flow in. Or if we could structure our children’s ministries in just the right way, the kids would flow in.
 
I learn what I can from these sessions. We all do. Every priest wants to do what is most effective. And we know that we need help from people who devote their lives to studying what is most effective.
 
But, unfortunately, magic bullets don’t exist.
 
I think back to when I was a new parent. Carrie and I knew nothing. We had to learn how to feed baby Benjamin, how to hold him without breaking his neck, how to change his diaper, how to get him to sleep. But we did, and when he cried, we sprang into action.
 
But sometimes, Benjamin kept crying even after we had done everything. We were mystified. Until someone explained to us the problem of gas. We were told, pump his little legs, give him a squeeze, and force out the gas.
 
The next time Benjamin cried, we did the whole pumping-legs thing, releasing a very satisfying set of toots, and Benjamin returned to his sweet self.
 
And I thought to myself in triumph, “Now I’ve got it. Now I am an expert parent.”
 
As any parent knows, that feeling never lasts more than about an hour. Things keep coming up, and you keep responding as best you can, and you keep learning new tricks, and you never really get it right, but somehow you muddle through.  
 
As best I can tell, that’s all we can do when faced with most real problems: in our lives, in our parish, in our nation, wherever. There is no magic bullet to any real problem. If someone implies that there is, we should be cautious. There is no substitute for discerning as best we can, with God’s help, and then responding as best we can, also with God’s help.
 
But there is one thing that we should always do, if our world seems to totter: pray.
 
I love our reading from Hebrews. I hear this long sentence as all about prayer: “Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us… and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith.”
 
I’ll say that again in my own words. Thanks to Christ, we can enter into God’s presence, we can approach God with our prayers, with full assurance of faith.
 
We don’t need people who say, “I am he!” We don’t need magic bullets. We need prayer.
 
Prayer itself solves a lot of problems. But even when prayer does not itself solve our problems, prayer forms us into the kind of people who can meet whatever challenges come our way with wisdom and courage and faithfulness.
 
And so, I ask God to help us be wise and discerning people of prayer. And I ask that in Christ’s name. Amen.