Iconic

Mark 11:12-14, 20-24

¹² On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. ¹³ Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. ¹⁴ He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.

²⁰ In the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. ²¹ Then Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.” ²² Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God.^[a] 23 Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. ²⁴ So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received^[b] it, and it will be yours.

I am so grateful for Kimberly Weir stepping up last week. I let her know that I owe her at least a half dozen favors… we are so lucky, as a church, to have someone with her gifts as a part of our community.

We were in NYC for a wedding for one of my oldest friends. In 5th grade, I walked out onto the playground during recess wearing an Orlando Magic shirt, which led Daniel to calling me “Magic boy,” and well, 25 years later, we’ve been in each others wedding.

Getting to spend a week in NYC is always a gift. For those of you who don’t know, Amanda’s sister lives in the city, along with her husband and their three daughters, so we do spend a lot of time there. But not matter how often you’re there, it is always a breathtaking place. From the skyscrapers to the museums and libraries, to the people sharing the streets, from different cultures and backgrounds… just walking around is an experience.

During this trip, we did something we hadn’t done before: we went to the Bronx, the only borough I hadn’t been to. And then led to a view on the way home that I’m still thinking about. Coming off of the tri-borough bridge, we made a turn, and suddenly, we could see, lined up, the three Crown Jewels of the manhattan skyline- The Chrysler building, the Empire State Building, and One World Trade Center, now the tallest of the three.

These buildings are iconic. Almost immediately, you recognize them. And it got me thinking about what that even means: what does it mean to be iconic? These buildings represent something beyond themselves… after all, do you even know what happens inside of these buildings? Turns out, there are over a thousand companies that rent space in the Empire State Building alone. These include familiar firms like Walgreens, LinkedIn, and Expedia, but also others, like Qatar airlines, and Workday that I had barely ever heard of.

But when you think about this building, you’re not immediately thinking about the actually work that is done in it. You’re thinking about what this building represents. And in NYC, that’s the culture of the city. You see the building, and you think about the city- the diversity, the languages spoke, the movies you've seen set in New York, if you're from a certain age you think about Alicia Keys singing about the city in Empire State of Mind. And vice versa; you think about the city, and you can’t separate it from the buildings, the skylines, the views.

This week, as we continue our stewardship series, we’re going to talk about our building. Which isn’t as recognizable as the Empire State Building…and yet, I do wonder: how do we ensure that our building represents the unconditional, inclusive love of Jesus to our neighbors? Because the point of having a building as a church is to make sure that it becomes a symbol for God’s love lived out in community. That it is a tool for witnessing to the word what we know to be true about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

But of course, like all physical structures, that means keeping it up, being good stewards of the property.

But before we get to that, I want to talk more about what it means to be symbol.

Interpretation

In our scene today, Jesus is approaching the temple in Jerusalem. He’s been journeying for a while, and is making his way into the city for the festival of Passover, and what will be his last acts before the crucifixion. This parable involving a fig tree often comes, in other gospels, around pronouncements about the temple. Some, including those in Luke and Matthew, even have Jesus predicting the destruction of the temple- saying things like every stone will be tossed into the valley below.

Of course, scholars believe that Mark was written before 70ce, which is important, because that was the year the Romans did sack the city, and did, indeed, destroy the temple, probably even tossing the stones into the valley below. Matthew and Luke would have been written after that point...so the authors knew that was going to happen. So you should ask yourself, did Jesus actually say that the temple would be destroyed, or did those later writers know that event was to come, and so put the words into Jesus’ mouth to add some credibility to his teachings? I mean, let's be honest, there is no way to know. But whether it did happen or not exactly as it’s written isn’t really the point. What does it mean? And what does it say about our lives, as followers of Jesus?

And the point, for me, anyways, lies in this event with the fig tree. All trees have a life. They provide fruit for a time. But, after a while, they cease producing fruit, and at that point, they’re really just ornamental. They may look good, but the point of a fruit tree is to produce fruit.

Buildings and structures and even institutions are the same way. We may look at a physical structure and think that it will last for a long time, if not forever. But that’s simply not the case. All things are impermanent. They are there to serve a purpose for a time, but they are also passing away. A church leader I know used to say that Paul was the greatest church planter in the history of Christianity; he planted churches across the known world. And today, none of those churches exist anymore. Nothing lasts forever.

But for a time, all churches exist as symbols of something greater. They all, if they are truly the possessions of the Church of Jesus Christ, point to God’s presence in our world. The sermons that are preached from within these buildings, the youth programming, the small groups and bible studies, all point to the same reality: that God loves this world, and everything in it. There may be growth that needs to happen as we all try to live into that message, because we are, of course, humans, trying to live our best, with plenty of room for growth. But we can call that growth something like fruit.

A church building is not just a building like any other building. It exists for a purpose. It points beyond itself. It is meant to be a symbol for something beyond.

As Jesus approaches the temple, what begins to be clear to him is that the property at the center of the Judaism of his time, of the religion that brought him up, the religion that is the cornerstone of his own beliefs and teachings, is not pointing beyond itself to God. In fact, in this passage in Mark, the part we didn’t read involves Jesus going into the entry area of the temple and casting out the money changers.

Jesus is being critical not of Judaism itself, but of the practitioners of his day who have lost sight of their greater purpose. Which, to be fair, is something that happens to all religious community. If we’re not careful, we start to worry about the wrong things: that processes are being followed, or that the decorum is the way it ought to be. Those things have their place, but they’re not ever the most important thing we do here. Proclaiming the love of God in Jesus Christ will always be the most important thing we can do as a church.

Think about it more from our building. If I told you that our property, our church building, on the corner of Cherry and Riverside avenue was a beautiful building, That it had historic significance in this neighborhood, that it kept people cool on Sunday morning because of a good hvac system, you might all nod along. All of those things are true.

But none of those things are why this building is important.

So let’s flip the script. This is the building that hosts youth and children’s program that ensures that the young people in our community know God loves them. And it hosts art classes and drama classes offered to students at local elementary schools so that those students get the gift of creativity and a safe place to be after school. We have Sunday school classes that create places for people to have deep conversations in this building, where people can ask questions knowing that their faith is not threatened by doubt, but strengthened by it. Or that there have been fellowship gatherings in this building where people are introduced to one another, where they form connections with one another. Where they do life together, including the parts that are hard, that demand we have community around us.

Ask anyone in the neighborhood where our church is, and they’ll probably say “oh, the one with the playground!” And how great is it that we have a place where the community is invited to gather, as they are, and enjoy the world around them? All of these uses of the building try to point beyond, to the central message of our reason for being here together: God loves this world, and all that is in it.

Every time we march in the Jax pride parade, every time we say that “you are welcome here, no matter who you are,” every time we teach about the unconditional love of God in Jesus Christ, that welcomes all people to the table each week, every time we host an ICARE meetings of collect goods for DESC... we become more than simply a building. We work to build this place, this brick structure on the corner of cherry and riverside, into a symbol for God’s love.

Call

There was this book that came out last year called “Gone for Good." The Author, Mark Eldon argues that over the next several decades, upwards of 100,000 church buildings will be sold in the US. And I don’t think this is always a bad thing. Buildings have the trouble of getting in the way of ministry, in part because they require resources to operate. It costs money to keep up a building, and so as churches struggle with limited resources, suddenly the building itself becomes the focus of ministry. It happens to churches all the time.

And part of the reason I am saying this, and I hope you get this from this message, is that I do not think that is the place where are at. I look around at the ministries in this church, at the way we open ourselves to community organizations and events, at the ways in which we continue to see ourselves as a symbol and representation of God’s love in this world, and I think: thank God we have a building. Thank God we have a place to display our message. Would the community be better off if there were a Starbucks on this corner? Or another set of luxury condominiums?

No! This community is better off because we are here. If we are a fig tree, we’re still producing fruit. I wont lie, that may not always be the case. No church last forever. But right now, at this moment, and into the foreseeable future, it’s beyond true.

Conclusion

Of course, we’re talking about this during stewardship. We’re talking about this during the season when we ask each person gathered here to think about their financial contribution in the coming year. And honestly, we’re not just talking about this next year. If you were here a year ago, you know we had a major expense. The HVAC system stopped working in this building, and for several months, if it was cold outside, it was cold in here, and maybe more importantly, if it was hot outside, it was hot in here. And our property folks, Ray and Tony, and others, worked hard figuring out a solution, and a new well was dug, and a new system put in place. And it cost a lot more than we thought we were going to be spending.

And then other systems went out. And those cost more money. If it was something benign, something that didn’t matter to the day to day functioning of the church, I bet we would have let some of it go. But y’all, it was the HVAC system, and this is Florida. So the church paid for it.

And right now we have a little bit of a gap in our budget this year. We are hoping that the membership of this church will be able to step up, and if you can, make an extra donation this year. Because it would go a long way to ensuring our ministry in this place continues to grow into the future.

And of course, please consider this in your gift for next year. None of us can guess what will happen in 2026 regarding our building…and I’m not going to jinx it by guessing. But there will always be costs associated with owning historic property.

And please continue to be present with us in this place, continue to connect with our ministries and those beyond, continue to be agents of God’s kingdom in this place, not just inside these walls, but beyond, into the greater Jacksonville area.

I never want us to fall prey to the supporting property for the sake of supporting property. Jesus knew: even structures that looked like they would last forever, would one day come to an end. I never want to be the fig tree that Jesus walks by, and curses for not producing fruit. Let this building, let this structure, let this congregation represent God’s love in all that we do.

Amen.