Made to Last
WEEK OF THE TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
PROPER 28C
Isaiah 49:1-7 • 1 Corinthians 1:1-9 • John 1:29-42
In San Diego, California—where I grew up—there are some buildings still standing that were only built to last a year. (I’ve heard this story many times on guided tours of the city with people visiting from out of town.) In 1915, San Diego hosted a World’s Fair, and civic leaders hired an architect who designed structures in the Mission Revival Style. The city built a new bridge, an organ pavilion, and buildings with domes, arches, mosaics, towers, and lots of flourishes.
But by 1916, after the World’s Fair was over, the city worried over what to do with the buildings. They were impressive to look at, but not built to last. They were crumbling. They were taking up space that might better be used for gardens. They were fire hazards that put at risk all the art collections and artifacts held inside of them.
In the end, though, the city decided to keep repairing, restoring, and strengthening these structures. And now, they’ve passed the hundred-year mark.
The authors of the New Testament faced a similar problem. Some of Jesus’s most riveting sayings seemed like those buildings in San Diego—whipped up in the moment for a major occasion. For Jesus, that occasion was the kingdom of God breaking into this world.
But what to do with these words when that kingdom didn’t materialize the way Jesus’s followers expected?
Jesus’s strongest proclamations that this kingdom is coming, that this kingdom is here, come from the gospel of Mark. In the face of this kingdom, nothing else we’ve built will last for long. Not one stone of the temple will be left on another. Wars, earthquakes, and famines are the beginning of the end. The disciples will be beaten and put on trial. Brothers, parents, and children will betray each other—even to death.
But the kingdom preached by Jesus took longer to appear than these words suggested. Jesus’s alternative, deeply spiritual, non-violent approach to overthrowing or converting this world’s powers didn’t really work. At least not right away.
And so early Christians, and the architects of the gospels, had to decide: Let these teachings crumble? Or patch them up long enough to last another day?
Our reading today shows that Luke’s gospel decided to patch these words up rather than let their promise fall apart completely. Luke’s version makes a few adjustments that are pretty subtle, but they seem to stretch the time frame for the kingdom’s full arrival just a little bit longer. Instead of Jesus proclaiming confidently, “Not one stone will be left here upon another,” Luke’s Jesus says just a touch more ambiguously, “the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another.”
Mark’s Jesus tells his disiples that wars are the beginning of the end, but Luke’s Jesus clarifies that after these wars, “the end will not follow immediately.” (There might be a delay.)
The only signs that Mark’s Jesus told his disciples to watch for were wars, earthquakes, and famines. But Luke’s Jesus adds to this list plagues and also “dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.” Waiting for signs like these pushes the horizon much further. Wars, earthquakes, and famines we’ve had a plenty. We might be waiting for these heavenly signs a longer time.
But even though these adjustments in Luke’s gospel imply that we’ll be waiting for the end longer than originally expected, by and large they still leave the heart of Jesus’s message intact. It seems like we’re still supposed to expect that religious institutions will fall apart, and maybe we shouldn’t invest in their maintenance. We’re still supposed to modulate our terror at violence and natural disaster. We’re still supposed to expect persecution and trial, but not really to plan accordingly. And betrayal by our loved ones shouldn’t surprise us.
Another adjustment in Luke’s version of this teaching starts to challenge the spirit of Mark’s version. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus throws in some words of reassurance. Immediately after telling his disciples that some of them might be put to death, he tells them, “not a hair of your head will perish.” Jesus in Mark never made promises quite like that.
Maybe these words come from an editor who wanted Jesus to sound more reassuring. Or maybe from an editor who wanted to suggest that you could still be a disciple or a fully saved person even without beatings, trials, betrayals, or other forms of persecution.
Or maybe these words come from Jesus himself—right from that infuriating tendency he has to tell us not to worry, not to save anything for the future, to give to anyone who asks, and, if things don’t work out right now, to just look forward to the day when we’ll receive our consolation.
It’s days like this when I ask myself, “Why am I taking spiritual and life advice from a man who made no provision to live much into his thirties? Why do I listen to a man who had very strong opinions on marriage, but who never built a family of his own? Why do I follow a man whose response to war, earthquake, and famine seems to be that we just . . . chill out?”
I wonder, was the teaching of Jesus really something made to last? Is it something we can patch, restore, scaffold, and strengthen for yet another hundred years?
One last adjustment to these words of Jesus gives me hope. In Mark, Jesus warns his disciples that they’ll be betrayed, beaten—maybe even executed, and hated by all. His only reassuring words are that “the one who endures to the end will be saved.” Maybe he means that those who survive their persecution will be rescued. Or, maybe he means that only those who persist in their faith and don’t turn cowardly will be worthy of salvation. Either way, Jesus seems to be steeling his disciples for a short but intense trial. It sounds like a pep talk for interval training: you’ll want to die, but it’ll be over soon.
But in Luke, instead of pushing his disciples just to “endure to the end” (Mk 13:13) where some kind of rescue awaits those who make it that far, Jesus tells them, maybe a little more broadly, “by your endurance you will gain your souls” (Lk 21:19).
It turned out for generations of Christ-followers that a life of faithfulness to the kingdom was an endurance test, not a sprint to the finish line.
Maybe Jesus’s disciples missed this teaching about endurance and had to adjust to it later. Or maybe they adapted Jesus’s short-term words to the life of long-term endurance because the story and teaching of Jesus was just too spectacular not to preserve.
In either case, I believe that what divides the earthly ministry of Jesus from the risen life of Christ is the realization that reaching the kingdom isn’t a sprint, but an endurance race. That Christian life isn’t a quick sprint to personal salvation, but a contribution to things that endure. To love. To justice. To the wholeness and dignity of every human being.
And it seems that what the risen Christ ultimately promises is not to save the few who make it, but to endure long enough for more and more to join this visionary kingdom and all the life it promises.
© 2020 The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas