A Voice Amidst the Noise

Scripture Lesson: Mark 13: 1-8

Dr. Matthew S. Brown

November 19, 2006

One of the first signs that you are becoming your parents is that moment when, without warning, the following words escape your lips: “Let’s go for a Sunday drive.” What would fuel the impulse to utter that suggestion? “Let’s go for a Sunday drive.” It’s like an out of body experience as you hear yourself suggest a leisurely family ride around town. You can almost hear a younger you uttering a deep guttural groan from the back and black vinyl seat of the Country Squire Wagon.

“Not again!” you would whine. “Can’t we just go home?” you would plead. The restaurant’s Sunday buffet was sitting heavy on your stomach and the hope of a neighborhood football game or a potential telephone call from a friend was weighing heavily on your mind as your dad slowed the lumbering station wagon to a crawl driving down every cul de sac, lane, drive, or circle court. “Look! The Smiths are putting in a swimming pool!” “Can you believe the Duvals actually painted their house purple?” “O, I think the Thomas’ house is my favorite one on this street. Have you seen the inside? She’s a marvelous decorator.” “Look at the new shutters in that bay window. That’s what I’d like to have.” Is there no end to your parent’s fascination with homes, lawns, and even lots that they would never buy in neighborhoods in which you would never live? “When will the suffering cease?” you would cry out from the rear of the car, your legs sticking to the hot vinyl like wet paper on pavement.

“Let’s go for a Sunday drive.” Yes, when you utter those words you know you have begun becoming your parents. Before long, you’ll experience a hankering for a hand of bridge.

In this Blackberried, soccer soaked, overscheduled world we live in here in suburbia, do people still go on Sunday drives? My particular vocation doesn’t allow much Sabbath time for it. Yet, I don’t know, maybe it’s the Metamucil, but I find myself yearning more and more for a slow drive through neighborhood streets.

You know you’ve got it bad when the holidays roll around and you cannot resist the urge to take your family on a tour of your hometown, pointing out all the places that are no more, but were significant or even sacred spots for you when you were a child.

You point with wistful sentimentality toward the spot where your best friend lived and where you spent many endless summer days. You remember the bare spots in the back yard that marked first, second and third base, the basement basketball court with the goal made out of a hanger and his mother’s yarn, the ball being this new product they called Nerf. You remember his family room and recall that his parents were the first ones in the neighborhood to get a princess phone. You remember that they always had Oreos in the pantry and butterscotch candies in a crystal dish in the hallway. You point to that spot wanting your spouse, your children to share in that sacred memory. But all your family sees is a CVS.

It is a stark reminder that while the earth spins, here and there things do come to an end. Seasons change and so do our lives. How did Joni Mitchell put it?

They paved paradise

And put up a parking lot

With a pink hotel, a boutique and a swinging hot spot.

Don't it always seem to go

That you don't know what you've got Till it's gone.

They paved paradise And put up a parking lot.

What is it that sustains us in the face of life’s changes, uncertainties, and endings? That is the question Jesus puts before the  nearest and dearest of his disciples as they stood in the shadows of the grand Temple in Jerusalem.

Whether they lived in the environs of Jerusalem or not, Jesus’ disciples had known this magnificent architectural wonder all of their lives. It was the point of destination for all the people of their culture, their faith tradition. Three times a year all Israelites were expected, instructed, called upon to make a pilgrimage to this place and offer a sacrifice to the Lord. As children, they played in the streets around this Temple. As youths, in the courts of the temple they experienced the nervousness and solemnity of one participating in the rites of the sacrifice, maybe for the first time.

This temple represented for them the strength, the power, the very presence of the Lord. Walking amidst its columns, feeling the cool and massive stone in its walls, there was a sense that their way of life, in spite of it’s uncertainties and shortcomings, was secure. The building itself communicated strength, security, immutability . It was an intentional message replicated by those who would design government buildings, bank buildings. There was a desire to communicate confidence in a way of life.

But 9/11 demonstrated for us that while a building may communicate confidence in a way of life, it cannot assure a way of life.

We want, we seek, we yearn for confidence in a way of life. You want to know that when you push the button, the computer screen will light up. You want your Starbucks to taste the way you expect it to taste. You want the child to come home. You want the grass to be green, the car to start, the plane to take off on time, the reservations to be honored, the bread to be fresh, the donuts to be warm, the paper to arrive. You want the job to endure, the paycheck to come and the checking account to balance. Even more than buildings, it is our routines and the meeting of our expectations that provide our sense that all is right with the world.

When our routines are disrupted or our expectations are not met, we are so easily, to use the old southern expression, “tore from the frame.” “What do you mean, you don’t carry this in a large?” “I’m sorry, the doctor’s running a bit behind today.” With the slightest disruption to our days, our “all is right with the world smiles” become the pained frowns of despair. The coffee is cold. The favorite restaurant closes. The friends divorce. The layoff notice arrives.

With a “gee whiz, ain’t life grand” sound to his voice as they were exiting Jerusalem’s temple, a disciple said to Jesus, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

It’s important to understand that Jesus is not just posing a “What if” here. Indeed, the first hearers of this text in Mark’s church would have just experienced what Jesus had predicted. The great temple was destroyed right around the time that the Gospel of Mark was written. About all that was left was the western “wailing” wall to which many faithful along with many tourists still make pilgrimage. At the same time, believers/followers of Jesus were either leaving or being kicked out of synagogues all over Palestine. That which people built their lives around was being radically altered if not destroyed.

Throughout his public ministry, Jesus prodded and prompted followers to shift the focus of faith from the Temple to him. In John, Jesus says, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” Quoting Isaiah, Jesus says, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” And here in our text Jesus challenges his disciples not to base their lives on the strength of the Temple.

Jesus wanted his followers to understand that the way of life represented by those massive stones could easily be altered or destroyed. But the way of life, established, sustained, and nurtured by, in, and through Christ not even death could destroy. As Paul proclaims, “nothing in all of creation will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”

We worship not buildings, Bibles, programs, denominations, institutions, or messengers. We worship God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As it says in our Brief Statement of Faith, “We trust in the one triune God, the Holy One of Israel, whom alone we worship and serve.”

What are you to do when that upon which you depend is destroyed? On what or upon whom shall our lives depend when our paradises are paved as parking lots, when our choices become train wrecks, when the diagnosis dismantles our plans, when the empty chair at the dinner table robs our appetite?

Jesus said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Jesus goes on to warn the disciples and us that other voices competing for air time and your attention will claim to speak in his name but utter nothing more than hot air. They will announce that the end is near and claim to know the flight schedule to heaven.

Again, the challenge for the disciple will be to listen for and focus on the voice of Christ amidst all the noise.

James Breech, in his book The Silence of Jesus, recalls going to hear W.H. Auden read some of his poetry at Princeton years ago. “The lecture hall was jammed, he says, with hundreds of people all chattering with excitement. When the old man finally came out on the stage to read, he read in a voice so soft that even the microphone did not help. People immediately began whispering to each other what they thought Auden had said until the poet himself could no longer be heard. His would-be interpreters had drowned him out.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, When God is Silent)

There are many voices, some actually seeking to be helpful, that accomplish nothing more than the drowning out of the voice of Christ. And so listening and discernment become so important in this world where listening is a lost art.

Our Disciple class this week had the wonderful opportunity to view a presentation by Dr. Zan Holmes who was focusing on God communicating with and issuing a call to Moses through the burning bush. He said he thought the real miracle here was not that God was speaking through a burning bush. Rather, to him the miracle was that Moses was open enough, sensitive and alert enough to listen.

Would that we would be so alert. Would that we would have the capacity to listen. Holmes suggested that ours is the age of the unfinished sentence. In our conversations we are so eager to insert our comments that we just can’t wait until the other person pauses. He says it’s as if we were driven by some compulsive vocal disease. If we could figure out how to speak while inhaling, conversation would cease altogether. A friend of his suggested that God must want us to listen twice as much as he wants us to speak because He gave us two ears and one mouth. (Dr. Zan Holmes, Disciple 2)

Listening in a noisy world is hard work, no doubt about it. Discerning the voice of Christ amidst all the noise in even more challenging. It takes practice. It takes prayer. It takes humility. And it also takes enough wisdom to know that if the voice is not a voice of grace, compassion, love, mercy, or peace that there is a good chance that its not the voice of Christ. It takes enough wisdom to know that if the voice prompts you to judge your neighbor instead of examining yourself, there is a good chance that it is not the voice of Christ.

When the world we know seems to be crumbling around us, there is a voice that can frame our days and sustain our lives. So be awake, be alert, and listen. A cross would not silence that voice. A tomb could not bury that voice. The voice lives, and because it does, so shall we. Amen.