11 April 2014 - Jesus rocks

Reading:
Mark 13

In 2009, Mel and I had the privilege to visit the ancient city of Segovia, about an hour or so into the mountains north of Madrid in Spain. The most famous feature of Segovia is its beautiful aqueduct, built more or less in the time when Jesus lived in Israel. We've also been to the Pont du Gard (Mel swam under it) - probably the world's most famous aqueduct - in France. The Pont du Gard is a massive, heavy colossal structure. The one in Segovia is by contrast rather slender; elegant rather than imposing. It transported water for 32 km's before entering the city, and stands just under thirty meters high in it's tallest place. It has 167 arches after entering Segovia. This magnificent monument has been standing for 2000 years. For me, the most bewildering fact about it is that it was built without the use of mortar. Its carefully shaped granite blocks just basically balance on top of one another, thirty metres up into the sky - for two thousand years!

Some of Jesus' disciples seemed to have had an appreciation for architecture as well. The temple in Jerusalem was most probably a contemporary to Segovia's aqueduct, but the scale was substantially different. The biggest stone blocks in the temple weighed approximately 600 tons. Most were 'small' by comparison - only 28 tons or so. It would be natural have thought of the temple as a fairly permanent installation, but it was not to be. Forty years later it was gone, and the spoils from the temple were used to fund the building of the Colosseum in Rome. I cannot help but be struck by the irony. The longevity of the mammoth temple and the spindly aqueduct is reversed. The spider-leggy structure looks like it would be hard-pressed to resist a decent gale, where destroying an edifice made out of 100 ton blocks sounds like very hard work.

When his disciples expressed their admiration for the (unfinished) wonder of their day, Jesus came across as a bit dismissive. He spoke of the temple in more or less the same terms as the unfortunate fig tree of Matthew 21, which is surprising, taken into account that the temple represented the centre of human worship of God on earth. God was heading elsewhere though. A new era had come. He was interested in a new, altogether original kind of temple, one built with something substantially different and on a cornerstone that makes a 600 ton monster seem positively diminutive.

As you come to him, the living Stone - rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him - you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood ..

1 Pet 2:4-5