I.

If you’ve never done it, one of the best experiences in our area is to go to Weehawken and just look across the river at the city. It is a beautiful and awe-inspiring sight. There is probably no better view of what human beings are capable of in terms of creativity, industry, ingenuity, hope, and hard work, than the New York City skyline.

Like the disciples gazing at Jerusalem, we too say, when we look at New York, "What huge stones! What fine buildings!"

And Jesus replies, "You see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another; they will all be thrown down." And so we might also think regarding New York, especially if our imagination has been conditioned by disaster movies.

How many times has New York been destroyed in the movies? It always amazes me that whenever the film industry wants to show a really catastrophic disaster, it doesn’t happen to Pittsburgh or Atlanta or San Diego, and it certainly doesn’t happen in Montana or Siberia or in the middle of the Pacific. Whether it is Godzilla, or asteroids, or aliens, or a hydrogen bomb, or an earthquake, or a tidal wave, these events always seem to target New York.

The parallel here between Jesus’ view of Jerusalem and our view of New York, is significant. I think people have an inherent, unconscious fear, and simultaneous love, of death which gets projected into dark fantasies of destruction.

When I was a kid I used to love blizzards and hurricanes, not just because they caused school to be canceled, although that was certainly part of the attraction. But these kinds of events totally disrupted the boring, routines of everyday normality. These circumstances showed that grown-ups were not in charge of anything and even their best efforts could not prevent being reduced to a total mess by mother nature. Nature puts us in our place and sends us scurrying like ants rebuilding their anthill after a small boy destroys it.

It is as if we derive some kind of solace from the knowledge that we are small, temporary, insignificant, and subject to having our greatest creations rubbed out in the blink of an eye. Somehow that means that we are under the control of a larger set of powers — nature, geopolitics, intragalactic power struggles — and we are absolved of responsibility.

These disasters free us from the chains and prisons of our own making. We know that disasters, no matter how horrendous, also have the effect of bringing us together, creating community, and engendering mutual helpfulness like nothing else.

Disaster movies tell us: this is really great, all these buildings, projects, achievements, and plans... but don’t depend on them. The earth, the universe, is a much bigger place and it could all get kicked away in an instant. Our life hangs by a thread, it depends on a very fragile balance of natural and human forces. And that’s actually okay because, deep down, maybe we’d rather have nature in charge than ourselves or our leaders.

II.

Stevie Wonder once had a hit song called "Living for the City." Near the end of the song we hear the voice of a visitor to New York for the first time. He looks around and says, "New York, just like I pictured it; skyscrapers and everything!" But then we hear him caught up in a crime as a bystander; but in the confusion he is arrested and carted away, a victim of the capricious city.

In a world where you can spend the rest of your life in prison for merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time, who is going to complain when such a world gets wiped out by a wayward asteroid? In a world where parents can lock a child in a cold basement until he dies of exposure and heart-failure, who will grieve when such a place crumbles in an earthquake? In a world where innocent girls are sold into abject slavery in the brothels of Bangkok, who will defend such a place from alien extermination?

Part of the appeal of disaster movies is that we know we deserve it. And maybe, like with the biblical Flood, the world will be better after the catastrophic destruction of our civilization. Maybe we’ll learn our lesson and be wiser. Maybe God would do better to start over again with apes, or reptiles, or bugs. So bring on the new ice age, it may be time to reboot the whole system.

Jesus as well predicts a disaster for Jerusalem, and for the world. "Be on your guard and let no one mislead you. Many will come claiming my name, and saying ‘I am he;’ and many will be misled by them. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things are bound to happen; but the end is still to come. For nation will go to war against nation, kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in many places; there will be famines."

Hollywood could make a few movies with little more to go on than these words. Depicting the end of the world would give them great opportunities for special effects. But in the movies, the final disaster is almost always averted. Bruce Willis, or Will Smith, or some other hero, invariably saves the day, and the planet. The human spirit, not to mention American guts and ingenuity, always wins in the end.

Perhaps the disciples were burdened with this same idea. Perhaps they thought of Jesus as the hero who would reestablish "truth, justice, and the American way," so to speak. "‘Tell us when this will happen,’" they say excitedly as schoolchildren watching the weatherman point out this blizzard coming up the coast. "‘What will be the sign that all of these things are about to be fulfilled?’"

III.

But Jesus goes on to explain some of what is happening. After outlining a few future disasters, he says, "These are the first birth-pangs of the new age."

You see, the best thing Hollywood can offer is that we dodge the bullet and life can return to normal. This, of course, is because those who produce disaster movies don’t even want to think about the real end of the world. Because the end of the world would mean the end of the movie business. No. The status quo must be reestablished, the hero has to win, we have to get back to normal.

But Jesus’ point is that the normal is precisely the problem. The normal is what is in jeopardy, and that’s actually good news for those who continue to suffer and die from what is normal in society.

Something is coming, says Jesus, that is beyond normal. Something is coming that will leave normal in the dust. Something is coming that will make you forget normal quicker than you forgot the formulas of high school trigonometry.

A new age is coming, a new world, a new creation. A new Jerusalem is coming. And that city will be just like we pictured it: full of the glory of the Lord! Our vision will not be clouded and blocked by corruption and injustice.

After Bruce Willis and Will Smith save the world, everybody has a big party and goes back to the old world of minimum wage jobs and broken marriages, predatory oil prices and global warming.

But after Jesus Christ saves the world, things are very different. For Christ comes to bring the world, and all its people, back home to our truest, deepest, and best nature. He comes to unite us to each other, abolishing our antagonisms and competitions. He comes to unite us to the Earth, and restore us to our blessed place in the blessed creation. He comes to reconnect us to our own true selves, giving us back the lives we had lost and rejected. And he comes to reconcile us to God, our Maker, the One "who is everywhere and who fills all things," from whom comes all good, the Source of life, and the dispenser of all blessing. He comes to be our life and the life of the whole world.

For remember that when Jesus looks at the grand and glorious Temple and predicts its destruction, he also refers to himself. In the next chapter of Mark’s gospel, Jesus is arrested. And he, the true Temple, is executed. That’s the Temple that gets destroyed before the Temple of stone and mortar.

But after three days Jesus rises again, and he becomes the Temple not made with human hands, always available to us in heaven, which is to say, everywhere. So that nothing in all creation now can ever separate us from God’s love in Jesus Christ.

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