Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost
“The Spendor of This House” — Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (Haggai 1:15b-2:9/NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (Luke 20:27-38/NRSVUE)
Our first reading today came from the book of Haggai.
So, who the heck is this guy, Haggai?
Isn’t he the half-giant who was the groundskeeper at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter series? No, that’s Hagrid.
Then he’s that country musician who sang “Mama Tried” and “Okie from Muskogee” No, that’s Haggard, Merle Haggard.
Okay, I’ve got it. He’s the guy who replaced David Lee Roth as the lead singer of Van Halen. No, that’s Hagar, Sammy Hagar.
Ok, let’s just settle this once and for all: Haggai was a biblical prophet. And the book that bears his name is the tenth of twelve in the Hebrew Scriptures authored by the so-called “Minor Prophets” (which is a comment on the length of their works, not the quality of them). In a nutshell, these are all the books by any prophet not named Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel or Daniel.
And if you think you haven’t encountered anything from these books before, you probably have because the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. quoted from them all the time. For example, when he spoke about letting “justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream” that was from Amos; when he discussed sowing “the seeds of righteousness” and “reaping the harvest of love” that was from Hosea; and when he talked about the need “to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God,” that was from Micah.
If you feel inclined to look for Haggai’s contribution to the Bible, it’s located right between the works of Zephaniah and Zechariah. If your Bible doesn’t happen to have a table of contents, I wish you luck in finding it.
The truth is, because Haggai is only two chapters long and located amidst a bunch of other short books written by guys who’s names are often really difficult to spell and to pronounce (as Dianne learned last week when she read to us from Habakkuk), most people blow right past it (and the same could be said for the other Minor Prophets too).
The fact that Haggai is near the Old Testament’s finish line probably doesn’t help either — at this point, if you’re reading the Bible cover to cover, you might be growing weary of these minor prophets (and maybe the major ones too); you just want to try something little different so you jump a few pages ahead to Matthew’s Gospel, the first book of the New Testament instead. I’ll be honest, if they hadn’t made us read Haggai in seminary I likely would have skipped it too.
But, in retrospect, I’m really glad they did make us read Haggai in school because it’s become one of my favorite books in the whole Bible (and no, I’m not just saying that because it’s only like a page long). But you might be asking yourself what this obscure little text full of weird names (like Zerubbabel and Jehozadak – sorry again, Sarah) and lots of dates tucked away in the recesses of the Bible could possibly have to say to the church in the twenty-first century. As it turns out, though, the answer is “a lot.”
We don’t know much about Haggai — just his name really (which means “festival” in Hebrew). And yet some of the book’s other details are painstakingly clear; all of those names and dates may be challenging and, frankly, a little boring to read, buy they matter because they allow us to pin down the time about which Haggai writes to a specific period of less than four months over twenty-five hundred years ago. He says that the word of the God came to him, “In the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month.” This would have been October 17th, 520 BCE, which is about as precise as it gets.
On the Jewish calendar, this would have been the second to last day of the festival of Sukkot, during which people celebrated the fall harvest and God’s continuing care. It was also an occasion for remembering when King Solomon brought the Ark of the Covenant to the Temple to dedicate it, as well as a commemoration of the Israelites’ release from captivity in Egypt and their subsequent journey across the Sinai desert (that’s a lot to cram into one holiday). The point is there was always a lot going on at that time of year — kind of like the period from Thanksgiving through New Year’s nowadays. But Sukkot in 520 BCE was a particularly busy one.
For as long as anyone could remember, the Jews had lived in exile; this was true ever since the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple — the center of their community’s life — in the year 586. But a few decades later the Persians, under King Cyrus, overthrew the Babylonians.
Cyrus allowed the Jews to return home to rebuild their Temple, but those plans stalled under his successor. When Darius eventually became king of Persia in 522, the hopeful Israelites once again started making plans for their new Temple. Work finally started on August 29th of 520 — and we know this because Haggai says so in the opening lines of his book.
So, at the start of today’s text, the project has been underway for exactly forty-nine days; Now, I can’t imagine very much had been accomplished by that point — heck, there are buildings and streets in twenty-first century Salt Lake City that have been under construction for the entire five years that I’ve been here.
But even at this very early stage of work, some naysayers are already underwhelmed by the results, and they’re not shy about saying so; they’re complaining that the new temple is a complete dud compared to its predecessor, which is a little ridiculous because there’s very few of them who would actually remember the old one since it had been destroyed sixty-five years earlier.
As Haggai addresses the dissatisfied people, we can practically hear the frustration in his voice: “Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing?” Said differently, “What are you complaining about? It might not be as great as what we had before, but it’s nice enough. Besides, none of you ever even saw the old Temple!”
But this bygone place of worship and all that it represents loomed large in the people’s memory as a reminder of a past that seemed to be a whole lot better than the present. Good thing that never happens in the church these days, right?
These Israelites who had recently returned from exile weren’t doing all that great. They’d fled the Promised Land with very little and returned with even less; they were essentially reconstructing their entire lives — as individuals and as a community — from scratch. So, it stands to reason that most of them were more focused on just getting by in challenging times — on finding work, on securing homes and food for their families — than they were on rebuilding the Temple; their faith seemed to have taken a back seat to all of the other things going on in their busy lives. Good thing that never happens in church these days either.
In the previous chapter Haggai gives the people an earful about their priorities; he really wants that Temple rebuilt because, apparently, God really wants that Temple rebuilt. But why? Prophets like Amos and Micah and Jeremiah spoke passionately about the need for justice and righteousness in the world — even going so far as to say that the Temple itself really didn’t matter. Haggai, on the other hand, seems to be saying that proper worship in the proper location is exactly what the God ordered, that the world would be better off if everyone just came to church. Then again, maybe it wasn’t really about the building, maybe God just wanted them all to gather and to do something together.
But the new Temple probably did pale in comparison to the one that once was, in some respects. Even Haggai, despite his optimism, could see that. He needs to motivate these downtrodden folks to do what God wants them to do, to be what God wants them to be, and so he decides to give the Israelites a little pep talk to set them right.
“Take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear,” is what Haggai tells them.
He’s reminding them that God has been with them since the very beginning, though good times and bad — while they were enslaved, during the Exodus, in the glory days of the First Temple, throughout the exile and on their recent return home;
wherever they are, God is with them; God has always been with them, God will always be with them.
They really needed to hear that then. And maybe we need to hear that now too.
I mean yeah, God wanted them to rebuild the Temple, but not for it’s own sake; and God didn’t care one bit how awesome or awful that Temple looked.
Because that Temple meant nothing if they didn’t believe that God was still there with them, just like this temple means nothing if we don’t believe that God is still here with us.
This is what Haggai needs his people to understand: it’s not about proper worship in the proper place; it’s about remembering that God is among us wherever and whenever and however we gather to do God’s work. Our temples are never important in and of themselves; they only matter because they’re where we come together to celebrate the God who calls upon us to love our neighbor, they’re where we’re inspired to go into the world and do exactly that.
Haggai tells the people that the new Temple will surpass the old one in terms of its splendor someday, and that’s all well and good, I guess; but it’s God that makes it splendid: “I will fill this house with glory,” says the God.
Take a look around at this place. Look at this beautiful altar table. Behold the view of Mount Olympus and the colorful leaves on the trees right outside that magnificent window. And know that all of this means nothing without God.
If this place and the people in it don’t celebrate and honor the living God who continues to work in the world for the good of all people by also working in the world for the good of all people, it all means nothing.
Sure, this sanctuary isn’t as full as it was fifty years ago (or even twenty years ago);
sure, people come and go;
sure, volunteers to do stuff around here are increasingly tough to come by;
sure, money is tighter these days than it used to be;
sure, we need a new roof.
But this place is still pretty splendid, and it’s splendid because it’s where we continue to gather in the name of the God who has always been present among us.
Look, none of us really knows what this church will be like in twenty years’ time, but I guarantee you this: it will be different. Things change, that’s just the way it goes.
And we could just sit here lamenting the fact that things aren’t the way they used to be; we could worry about the way things are going to be;
Then again, maybe we could do what people have done here for seventy two years, what believers have done for thousands of years —
we could come together in the name of the God who is always present among us to go do God’s work in this mess of a world,
knowing that God will be with us,
and trusting in the word of God as revealed to the prophet Haggai:
“‘The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘And in this place I will grant peace.’”
May it be so. Thanks be to God.