Abiding Spirit

Ordinary Time XXXII; November 11, 2007

Haggai 1:15b-2:9

This prophecy requires some historical context for you to make sense of it. Now, the preacher does this not because I think you need a history lesson, but because my passion is for you to understand the Scripture, and not just my sermon, and for you to be able to make some connections between the Scripture and our life. The sermon should help you, but should not replace your own insight.

Over the last several weeks you have heard Scriptures and preaching that took place during the last days of Judah before it was conquered by the Babylonians. Babylonian policy was to suppress any sense of autonomy and to punish all signs of resistance, and so the army destroyed the major cities and burned down the Temple, wiping out all signs of the traditional worship of the Lord. The government, priests and other leading citizens were taken to Babylon to live, where they remained in exile.

The Restoration came when the Persians conquered Babylon. Cyrus of Persia had a rather different policy with respect to conquered nations: he wished to win their loyalty by encouraging autonomy and regional traditions. So he allowed the exiles to return to Judah and he ordered that the Temple and the city of Jerusalem should be rebuilt and even invested some of his treasury in the project (sounds like the original pork-barrel politics). He ordered that the sacred vessels that had been looted from the Temple in Jerusalem and taken to Babylon for Belshazzar’s Feast (Daniel 5) and for the worship of Babylonian gods be returned to Jerusalem.

There was some regional jealousy at work that prevented work on the Temple in Jerusalem, however, so in order not to get in bad with their neighbors, the people of Jerusalem left off the rebuilding for quite some time. Instead, they put their efforts into rebuilding their homes. That’s when the Prophet Haggai burst onto the scene.

The first thing he says is to scold the people for putting all their efforts into paneling their living rooms and remodeling their kitchens, while allowing the Temple of the Lord to lie only partly finished. “Where are your priorities?” he asks. He even gets a little threatening. He says, “Why do you think things aren’t going so well for you? You work hard in your fields and take in a poor crop. There isn’t quite enough fiber to make sufficiently warm clothing for the winter. Why? Because you have your priorities all screwed up. So long as you are more interested in getting that marble tub for your bathroom than in getting the Lord’s House going again, things are going to go badly for you.”

Well, as I have said before, we don’t think that way anymore, but perhaps he has a point. I remember listening to a preacher’s sermon in which he talked about the attitudes of Christians toward their own possessions and toward the Church. He was Pastor of a Church that used a lot of high-tech devices, including flat-panel monitors located not only in the worship space but around the building. They were expensive. After service one day a man was scolding the minister for the Church having spent money on such good equipment. The preacher told him, “We have people who work hard at producing good digital art and these are the canvases to display their work.” The minister then asked him, “Do you have a TV set at home?” The man said yes, he had a new 52” flat-screen TV. “So,” the preacher asked him, “Why is it okay for you to have such nice equipment but the Church should not? If you can have such good things at home, why should the Church do it on the cheap?” The man said, “Well, that’s different.” The minister didn’t tell any more of the story, but I hope the man went home pondering his own hypocrisy.

Anyway, between the prophet’s threats and new orders from the Persian government (Ezra 6:6-12) the work on the Temple was resumed. But still, all was not well. Those working on the Temple still had to deal with threats from outside, and the building itself seemed rather small, particularly to the old-timers. Those who were old enough to remember the Temple of Solomon – the one the Babylonians had destroyed – looked at the new place and said, “This isn’t going to be as nice as the old one.”

So, the Prophet Haggai answers with two promises from God. It should come back to that, shouldn’t it? When we’re talking about a sacred place, about a place for people to pray and make sacrifices and sing songs of praise, is it not right that the prophet remind us of the promises of God?

The second promise – which, in my usual twisted way, I will talk about first – is the promise that the new house will in fact become more splendid than the old house had been. I’m fifty-one; I’m used to joining in the chorus of “Things just ain’t what they used to be!” Folks here who have been around for more than thirty years can identify with the people of Jerusalem: this Church building is really nice, but it isn’t as grand as the old one was. Yet God promises the people of Jerusalem and God promises us that “The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts.”

With respect to the Temple in Jerusalem, that turned out to be the case. Over the years the Temple was remodeled and expanded and accumulated a pretty good collection of silver and gold utensils. Herod the Great made the expansion and gilding of the Temple one of the priorities of his reign – about the time Jesus was born. He probably wasn’t doing it out of piety so much as out of a commitment to big and expensive public-works projects that would show how great he was.

That Temple eventually was also destroyed, so what does the promise of God mean now? Jesus described his own presence as being the new Temple of God. What need is there for a big and beautiful building when God himself is present in the Son of God?

Which suggests we pay even more attention to the first promise the prophet gives, namely: “My spirit abides among you; do not fear.” Do not be afraid of those who oppose the work you are doing, because my spirit abides among you. Do not be afraid that what you are doing may not be good enough, because my spirit abides among you. Do not be afraid that the current generation of my people may not be as good as previous generations, because my spirit abides among you.

Older folks like me, who remember the sixties and seventies, like to moan that things just are not what they used to be. And they aren’t: and maybe rather than moan about that we ought to give thanks. So many things are so much better than they used to be. But what difference does any of that make, anyway? “My spirit abides among you.”

I see two dimensions to that promise that I’m going to leave you with to chew on this week. The first dimension is the realization that the spirit we are talking about is the Holy Spirit of God:

            The Spirit that took hold of the prophets and gave them sacred words;

            The Spirit that came to Mary of Nazareth so she would become the Holy Mother;

            The Spirit that spoke to Jesus at his baptism, saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased;”

            The Spirit that baptized you, calling you a child of God, with whom God is pleased;

            The Spirit that swooshed among the Apostles, motivating them to shout aloud about the great works of God, in all sorts of languages;

            The Spirit that takes hold of us, so we can celebrate the great works of God;

            The Spirit that said to apostles and evangelists and missionaries and to church people for the last two thousand years: Go over there and heal that man. Give that woman something to drink. Give that child a pat on the back. Answer that neighbor’s question about Jesus.

“My spirit abides among you.”

The other dimension to that promise you should chew on is that the prophet says that the spirit of God is among us, meaning that the Holy Spirit has more to do about our being together than about our being on our own. The people of Jerusalem rebuilt the Temple as a place where they could gather. What makes our space special is not the building itself but that it is the place where the people of God gather to worship. The people of God have always known the word of God, the Spirit of God and the ways of God by being together, not by being on our own. We don’t need a building to be together, although it helps. The building is optional; the people of God being together is not optional. If you want a relationship with God, you will not have it on your own: the Spirit of God abides among the people of God.

Think about that and keep building.

Thank you, God, for giving us your Spirit. Thank you for the witness of the prophets and apostles and for the promise of the Spirit abiding among us. Amen.

Robert A. Keefer

Westminster Presbyterian Church

Clarinda, Iowa