What Must Be Destroyed?

Haggai 2:1-9; Rev 3:1-6; Matt 24:1-14

What a profoundly rude thing it would be seen as for someone to come up to you and say, “You look great, but, boy, do you stink!” Such was the prophecy, though, to the church in Sardis. “You have a name [a reputation] for being alive, but [in reality] you are dead,” John wrote (Rev 3:2). This indictment, leveled at a singular church, was also expressed to the church at large, for each of the ‘letters’ ends with an admonition for all to listen to what is written to the churches, plural. In this there is the intent that we, today, don’t just single out ourselves (or other churches for that matter) as being this or that church. The challenge is for us in humility to listen to the admonitions given to all.

This indictment has been, unfortunately, true of the church for 2000 years. Our promotion has been that we are alive, yet we so often have failed to ‘prove’ that life through the way we have lived. We have not loved our neighbors as we have loved ourselves. Throughout its history, though, there have been reformers, men and women, who have sought to draw the churches attention back to the simplicity of the gospel message…for God so loved the world that he submitted to humanities wickedness in its most grotesque form, and forgave them. “Go and do likewise,” is the call to the believer. Not to defend ourselves, not to promote ourselves as somehow morally superior or better, for we have proven ourselves to be no better on the whole.

Jesus’ proclamation that not a stone on the temple would remain standing points to dichotomy of the church’s life. We believe Jesus to be the new temple and know that can never fall. Additionally, we know that the temple of Jerusalem has fallen, several times in history in fact. Where we become blind is that we continue to build temples, as soon as the Christ breaks down one wall of fallacy, we start building another. We’re terrible stone masons, using fragile rubble to construct earthly dwellings for God when he has given himself, a temple both of flesh and blood, and of spirit. It is in both our co-habitation with the Spirit and the actions thereof that we are called to live out. We as a church are, thank the Lord, living in the profound grace of God, who will continue to knock down our earthly structures of legalism and falseness, and draw us by his Spirit into his present kingdom, which is now and yet to come. No earthly structure can contain this kingdom, nor can it keep it out. This is what we proclaim as the victory of the Lord.

Christmas is fast approaching, and so many of the daily readings we explore during Advent have looked toward the end of ages, and the destruction of all false pretense. Yet, we know we celebrate a new beginning. We, too, celebrate the destruction of false assumptions and pieties, as we eagerly await in faith, hope, peace, and love the long-awaited Messiah and his kingdom.