B, Post Pentecost 26 Proper 28 - Mark 13 "Final Day Failure to See Failure"
The greatest fears
were confirmed as video from the media was broadcast to the US nation,
unbeknown to mission control in Houston, who were still trying to reestablish
contact with Columbia.
A chunk of foam,
not unlike the expander foam you can buy at a hardware store, just twenty-one
to twenty-seven inches long by twelve to eighteen inches wide, that’s about
half to three-quarters of a metre by thirty to forty-five centimetres. It broke off the large propellant tank
strapped under the shuttle, just eighty or so seconds after launch, smashing
into the reinforced carbon-carbon covering the left wing of the orbiter.
There were
concerns over the incident by some at NASA, but it was dismissed because it was
unbelievable that foam could damage, let alone, destroy reinforced carbon-carbon
on the wing of the Columbia.
The scientific
mission of Columbia was ended, ironically,
by a scientific impossibility, as some believed. However, in the aftermath of the disaster, it
was shown through experiment that foam could destroy reinforced carbon-carbon,
when it’s travelling at high speed.
The fracturing of
foam was known to NASA. Yet people at NASA control still kept sending astronauts
into orbit knowing brittle bits of foam were being dislodged. Some of which earlier had caused damage to
one of the Atlantis shuttle’s solid fuel rockets without catastrophe, since
these are ejected after launch, not needed for re-entry.
However, the
damage to the Columbia space shuttle orbiter proved fatal on re-entry, due to
catastrophic destruction of the left wing’s protection from the foam collision
on take-off. Therefore, without this
protection, the super heating that occurs on re-entry, opened the vehicle for
destruction, and the crew was lost.
The great pleasure
in NASA, and the accomplishment of a
successful mission dissolved into NASA’s and the United States’ realisation of
their greatest fears. What they had marvelled over as their greatest
achievement brought about their greatest fears, destruction and death!
The disciples
marvelled at the stones and the buildings of the Jerusalem temple, to which
Jesus replied, “Do you see these great buildings? There will
not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
(Mark 13:2 ESV)
This was not the
first temple but the second. Solomon’s
temple had long been sacked, and in its wake, Herod set about to construct the
second temple. Last week we heard in
Solomon’s Psalm one hundred and twenty-seven, “Unless the Lord builds the
house, those who build it labour in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the
city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil.” (Psalm 127:1–2a
ESV)
However, the Jews
didn’t take heed of God’s Word, nor the four hundred years of events that led
to Jesus’ coming. Rather, they vainly trusted
in themselves and their deeds, forgetting what led to Israel’s and Judah’s
destruction and desolation. Hear the unbelief
of the people when God sought to call their vanity to account through Jeremiah…
“Thus
says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and
I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words:
‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the
Lord.’ Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal,
murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after
other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this
house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on
doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name,
become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares
the Lord.” (Jeremiah 7:3-4, 8–11
ESV)
From Mark’s Gospel
we hear Jesus prophesy the reality of Jerusalem and its temple in the end
times. After the destruction and desolation,
that saw their forefathers exiled to Babylon and beyond, having not remained
under the warnings from God in his Word, they continued refusing to listen to
Jesus, the Son of God, and sought their own desires causing desolation and
destruction.
In these last
days, in which we have been since Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, the church
continues to test God with its opposition to his Word, and fails to heed its
warnings, as it seeks to place its trust in culture and the authority of the mob.
Our General
Pastors’ Conference and General Convention of Synod, like NASA, like the Jews,
has not listened to God and his Word, nor the advice of previous synods, nor
two thousand years of Christ sustaining his church from desolation and
destruction.
At best, what is
done has occurred through apathy, as a deception of the “abomination
of desolation standing where here ought not be” (Mark 13:14) That is, evil in the place of Christ, masked
as an angel of light, working through mischief to lead the apathetic into a
unity of ignorance that’s false and leads to destruction.
At worst, like
those who lead others into deception, some are acting with deliberate
disobedience before God and his Word, by placing themselves over the Word of
God in seeking to conform the church to the catastrophic cultural corruption all
around us.
So, like NASA and
the pressure upon it to be popular and positive, the church is led into
negatives that lead to the worst.
Without addressing the issue that was the worst, the worst occurred at
NASA. Nothing was learnt from the “sins
of the past”. Nothing was done about the
foam breakage issues, until it was too late.
The greatest fear
in front of us in God’s church, is that we become lost to our baptismal
salvation, like the crew and vehicle of Columbia. In ignorance, we trust in the word of others,
rather than God’s Word, and tempt finding ourselves on the wrong side of God’s
judgement.
We can lose
control and burn up so close to salvation, through apathy and deception, or
active wilful disobedience.
Don’t let what
others say, “is a harmless little piece of foam”, when it can destroy your
baptismal faith! Don’t allow your faith
to become a piece of foam that destroys you.
Don’t let that which is meant to protect you become dislodged so that it
destroys you! If you think this can’t
happen to you, I invite you to open God’s Word and allow the Holy Spirit to
show you that it can, and has, to God’s chosen people, who had “the temple of
the Lord”, that ultimately, he allowed to be destroyed in 70AD.
Speaking of NASA
and the disaster, a shuttle chief engineer said, “I feel
ashamed! So, who’s guilty? I’m not just
going to say the program managers are. We’re all guilty. If you don’t speak up
for your own system and you’re victims of this environment, we’re guilty too!”
(Rodney Rocha – NASA Shuttle Chief Engineer, Series 1 Episode 3, The
Space Shuttle That Fell To Earth, ABC Television)
How do we
galvanise ourselves against our greatest fear, eternal death and destruction? On judgement day it’s no good saying to God, “I
believed in Pastor Heath! I believed in the
bishops! I believed in the LCANZ! I believed in what I felt, in what “I”
thought about God. We have to believe “the
Word of God”! To open it! Read it! Pray for understanding, worked in you by the
Holy Spirit, so you stand in submission under Jesus Christ and his Word! God calls you to “work
out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you,
both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12–13 ESV)
Jesus says to you
who desire to fear and love God, who fear eternal death over earthly death, “See
that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he!’ and
they will lead many astray.” (Mark 13:5–6 ESV)
The seemingly
harmless pleasures, “the pieces of foam”, within each of us, within our
congregation, parish, district, and synod, can destroy us and bring eternal
desolation. Therefore, be strengthened
in the Word of God to be on guard against your sinful self; the evil
within. Be strengthened against the
cultures of chaos working through others; the evil from without! Be strengthened against the abomination of
desolation standing where he ought not be; that is, the devil, the evil one,
inside and outside the church!
Since Christ
ascended into heaven, the commonwealth of God’s holy church has always been
tempted into becoming common by losing the holiness of its wealth. Two thousand years into the end times, some
have lost sight of what makes us holy, that sets us apart from the world, as
God’s children, as his commonwealth.
This commonwealth
community of God is a republic of repentance.
Our eternal wealth is built on the knowledge of our failures having been
forgiven. The Holy Spirit leads us as a
republic of repentant sinners constantly being forgiven in Jesus Christ. The fragility that fractures this faith, is your
human spirited apathy or wilful disobedience to participate in the Holy
Spirit’s republic of repentance. We’re being made one as the Holy Spirit works
common repentance, reviving us as God’s renewed public property, a holy
commonwealth in Christ.
Your fear of
failure needs you to understand your weakness and ability to fail! If you don’t, you will place your faith in yourself;
the very thing that causes your failure.
Failure to repent, to know you need to repent, is catastrophic!
An accident
investigator of the Columbia tragedy said, “This was a known failure.
But I think failure to imagine being wrong, the failure to imagine the
consequences of failure, are catastrophic.
And I think it’s this whole notion of the failure, to imagine failure.”
(Patrick Goodman – Accident Investigator, Series 1 Episode 3, The
Space Shuttle That Fell To Earth, ABC Television)
Like NASA, the
Jews failed to recognise their failure to follow God’s Law and their failure by
trusting in the temple the Lord gave them, rather than his Word. When we fail to recognise our failure and the
forgiveness offered because of our failure, and place faith in what fails us,
we become like those who believe in the temple, rather than God who gave the
temple. And like those who believed a
cheap piece of foam couldn’t harm reinforced carbon-carbon.
The only safe ship
that will deliver you through the atmosphere of failure and death into eternity,
is the eternally enduring coverings of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh! Amen.
