11 November 2007
Haggai 1:15b-2:9
It was the year 520 that Haggai the prophet spoke to Judah. That’s 520 years before Jesus walked the earth. But more importantly, it’s about 50 plus years after the fall of Jerusalem. Haggai doesn’t take up much room in the Bible; it’s the 2nd shortest book in the Hebrew Bible. It doesn’t even fill 2 pages in my Bible. There are only five sections to the whole book. What we heard this morning is the bridge section between the first two and the last two.
Haggai was prophesying to the community of Jerusalem after they had started to return from their 50-year exile. In fact it was about 18 years after the exiles had started to return. So there had been some time for things to start to take shape and the road the exiles would be traveling would be evident.
We’re used to the prophets speaking out before the big exiles. Isaiah and Jeremiah, the prophets we probably would usually think of, were warning of the fall of the two kingdoms before they happened. They warned that the people had strayed from God and would be punished.
But Haggai was speaking after the exile. What’s the point, we might think? Why bother prophesying to the people after the time of exile? Well, there is something in noting that God speaks to the people at any time. There doesn’t have to be trouble ahead for God to have a message. God speaks in the midst of trouble and beyond it.
And God did have a message for Haggai to give. He gave it to Zerubbabel, who was the Governor of Judah under King Darius of Persia and to Judah, the high priest and to “the remnant of the people.”
God, Haggai said, had looked around Jerusalem and saw all the exiles paying attention to their own homes. They had returned and found things in ruins almost 2 decades earlier. Many of the former exiles probably wondered why they left the comfort and cosmopolitan atmosphere of Babylon in the first place. There they were, in the land promised to their ancestors centuries before, which lay in ruin from the overthrow of their kingdom some 60 years earlier.
They took care of themselves first, apparently. They built and rebuilt their homes of paneled wood, we’re told in an earlier section of the book of Haggai.
But wait, the Temple, the center of worship for the Jews, had been decimated. The Temple, which Solomon built almost 500 years earlier, lay wasted—its treasures looted and the building itself in ruins. God’s very house was a pile of rocks, as far from its former glory as it could be.
And it stayed like that: unrebuilt and unusable. And that was God’s message through Haggai those few months in 520 b.c.e. Why are your houses nice and cozy while mine is untouched? Why have you rebuilt your own homes over the past 2 decades and left mine in ruins? Is not the Temple worthy of your attention? Does not my home deserve to be rebuilt?
Yes, this new Temple couldn’t be as grand as the first Temple was. Resources just weren’t available to rebuild it to its former glory, it was clear. But God’s house is God’s house. Attention must be paid!
Now what can the struggles of a small band, a remnant as they are called, of God’s people some 2,500 years ago mean to us, a small band, a remnant one might say, of God’s people now? What do the prophesies of one man whose only claim to history is a page and a quarter in a holy book say to us, Chalice Christian Church, today?
I think there’s a lot of things to be said to us by Haggai. In fact, if he were with us today, he might be struck by the similarities between these two small remnants of people.
For one thing I think about our personal stances. Do we take care of everything else in our lives before we attend to our spirituality? Do we build our houses before we build God’s house in our own lives?
It’s very easy to neglect our spiritual natures. No bills come for it. No one is after us to clean up our spiritual selves. No one nags us regarding it. We only have God’s voice speaking softly to us that guides us towards caring for ourselves spiritually. And how often do we and how easy is it for us to ignore that still-small voice?
Not attending to our own spirituality while seeing to everything else in our lives is much like those Israelites who built their nice houses after the exile but ignored the temple. Both parties are forgetting the importance of God in their lives; our lives.
But I believe there is another way that Haggai relates to us today and that is corporately, as a congregation. Those ancient Israelites knew that the temple they could build would be nothing as grand as the previous one. They were living on past dreams and hoping that things would turn out better for them. But they knew they wouldn’t and couldn’t. They were realizing that things can’t be as they have been in the past.
In a few moments our board will consider a budget for next year in the midst of a realization that our finances are in a difficult state. How like the Israelites are we going to be, dreaming of past days of splendor and allowing that reverie to freeze us into inaction?
We have a choice when it comes to our actions today and everyday. We can accept what God gives us and do what we can. We must make sure though that we are not building beautiful grand houses while neglecting God’s house. We must ensure that we are building God’s house, bringing about God’s realm now and here with the resources that we have; faithfully following God’s call to us to be God’s people.
Haggai had plenty to say to his folks around him at the time. Would he have as much to say to us? I think his words are still worth listening to.
It was the year 520 that Haggai the prophet spoke to Judah. That’s 520 years before Jesus walked the earth. But more importantly, it’s about 50 plus years after the fall of Jerusalem. Haggai doesn’t take up much room in the Bible; it’s the 2nd shortest book in the Hebrew Bible. It doesn’t even fill 2 pages in my Bible. There are only five sections to the whole book. What we heard this morning is the bridge section between the first two and the last two.
Haggai was prophesying to the community of Jerusalem after they had started to return from their 50-year exile. In fact it was about 18 years after the exiles had started to return. So there had been some time for things to start to take shape and the road the exiles would be traveling would be evident.
We’re used to the prophets speaking out before the big exiles. Isaiah and Jeremiah, the prophets we probably would usually think of, were warning of the fall of the two kingdoms before they happened. They warned that the people had strayed from God and would be punished.
But Haggai was speaking after the exile. What’s the point, we might think? Why bother prophesying to the people after the time of exile? Well, there is something in noting that God speaks to the people at any time. There doesn’t have to be trouble ahead for God to have a message. God speaks in the midst of trouble and beyond it.
And God did have a message for Haggai to give. He gave it to Zerubbabel, who was the Governor of Judah under King Darius of Persia and to Judah, the high priest and to “the remnant of the people.”
God, Haggai said, had looked around Jerusalem and saw all the exiles paying attention to their own homes. They had returned and found things in ruins almost 2 decades earlier. Many of the former exiles probably wondered why they left the comfort and cosmopolitan atmosphere of Babylon in the first place. There they were, in the land promised to their ancestors centuries before, which lay in ruin from the overthrow of their kingdom some 60 years earlier.
They took care of themselves first, apparently. They built and rebuilt their homes of paneled wood, we’re told in an earlier section of the book of Haggai.
But wait, the Temple, the center of worship for the Jews, had been decimated. The Temple, which Solomon built almost 500 years earlier, lay wasted—its treasures looted and the building itself in ruins. God’s very house was a pile of rocks, as far from its former glory as it could be.
And it stayed like that: unrebuilt and unusable. And that was God’s message through Haggai those few months in 520 b.c.e. Why are your houses nice and cozy while mine is untouched? Why have you rebuilt your own homes over the past 2 decades and left mine in ruins? Is not the Temple worthy of your attention? Does not my home deserve to be rebuilt?
Yes, this new Temple couldn’t be as grand as the first Temple was. Resources just weren’t available to rebuild it to its former glory, it was clear. But God’s house is God’s house. Attention must be paid!
Now what can the struggles of a small band, a remnant as they are called, of God’s people some 2,500 years ago mean to us, a small band, a remnant one might say, of God’s people now? What do the prophesies of one man whose only claim to history is a page and a quarter in a holy book say to us, Chalice Christian Church, today?
I think there’s a lot of things to be said to us by Haggai. In fact, if he were with us today, he might be struck by the similarities between these two small remnants of people.
For one thing I think about our personal stances. Do we take care of everything else in our lives before we attend to our spirituality? Do we build our houses before we build God’s house in our own lives?
It’s very easy to neglect our spiritual natures. No bills come for it. No one is after us to clean up our spiritual selves. No one nags us regarding it. We only have God’s voice speaking softly to us that guides us towards caring for ourselves spiritually. And how often do we and how easy is it for us to ignore that still-small voice?
Not attending to our own spirituality while seeing to everything else in our lives is much like those Israelites who built their nice houses after the exile but ignored the temple. Both parties are forgetting the importance of God in their lives; our lives.
But I believe there is another way that Haggai relates to us today and that is corporately, as a congregation. Those ancient Israelites knew that the temple they could build would be nothing as grand as the previous one. They were living on past dreams and hoping that things would turn out better for them. But they knew they wouldn’t and couldn’t. They were realizing that things can’t be as they have been in the past.
In a few moments our board will consider a budget for next year in the midst of a realization that our finances are in a difficult state. How like the Israelites are we going to be, dreaming of past days of splendor and allowing that reverie to freeze us into inaction?
We have a choice when it comes to our actions today and everyday. We can accept what God gives us and do what we can. We must make sure though that we are not building beautiful grand houses while neglecting God’s house. We must ensure that we are building God’s house, bringing about God’s realm now and here with the resources that we have; faithfully following God’s call to us to be God’s people.
Haggai had plenty to say to his folks around him at the time. Would he have as much to say to us? I think his words are still worth listening to.
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