Scripture Haggai 2:1-9
In the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai, saying: “Speak now to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people, and say: Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing? Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the Lord; take courage, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; 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. For thus says the Lord of hosts: Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land, and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts. The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts, and in this place, I will give prosperity, says the Lord of hosts.”
Sermon
I have a question for you. Who among you saw this house, Union Presbyterian Church, in its former glory? In the 50’s or 60’s or 70’s, when the sanctuary overflowed with members, from tiny babies to the elders in both wisdom and age? Who among you remember the time before the Covid pandemic hit, and the folks who were in the sanctuary numbered between 90 and 100 on a regular basis? What is it like now, compared to times that seemed more abundant?
This is the question the prophet is asking today, except the question is addressed to returning exiles, and the house of which he is speaks is the Temple in Jerusalem. For the Jews of that time, the Temple was the holiest place on earth.
But let’s go back to the beginning, when it all started. Can you imagine what it must be like, to be taken from your home and sent away—far away, to a place you’ve never been before? The people of ancient Jerusalem knew what that felt like. The Babylonian deportation occurred in two stages. First, in the year 598 BCE, King Jehoiakin was deposed by Babylonian forces, and he and his family were exiled to Babylon along with thousands of workers. Then, in the year 587, Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed, razed to the ground, and the vast majority of remainder of the population was taken into exile.[i]
The Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, was particularly brutal during that second stage. He murdered people for reasons ranging from their likelihood of inheriting the throne, to their being Temple priests trying to escape, to their being, in his mind, too beautiful. As the Jews arrived in Babylon, he humiliated them by forcing them to walk naked along the riverbank, chained together. If they were among the elites, he forced to sew bags out of the desecrated Torah scrolls, fill them with sand, and carry them on their backs.[ii]
Out of this experience came Psalm 137:
By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down, and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
~Psalm 137:1
Still, the people were resilient. They were strong. According to one account,
…they maintained their national spirit and religious identity. Elders supervised the Jewish communities, and Ezekiel was one of several prophets who kept alive the hope of one day returning home. [This may have been] the period when synagogues were first established, for the Jews observed the Sabbath and religious holidays, practiced circumcision, and substituted prayers for former ritual sacrifices in the Temple.[iii]
In time, Nebuchadnezzar was defeated by Cyrus II, known as Cyrus the Great, King of Persia. Almost immediately, Cyrus relaxed the harsh restrictions his predecessor had imposed on the Jews. He encouraged their worship. He even sent some back to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple, and permitted others who wished to return to do so. Jewish gratitude toward him was so enormous, the prophet Isaiah calls him “Messiah,” God’s anointed (Isaiah 45:1).
Now, imagine yourself returning home after at least 49 years away. Some of you may have experiences of this in your own lives—not because of exile, but because we Americans are so mobile that many of us live far from our birthplaces and first homes. What would be the same? What would be different? What would thrill you? What would horrify you?
The prophet Haggai is speaking to such people. They have returned home. For some of them, they have tried to return to the houses they left and found there were other people inhabiting them. For everyone, Jerusalem is a shock—remember, it was razed to the ground, and rebuilding has only just begun.
But the city streets are nothing in comparison to their response when they see the newly rebuilt temple. Some of them weep, especially priests, and Levites, and those who are old enough to remember what it once was. It is nothing like Solomon’s glorious structure. It is downright shabby by comparison.
Haggai is speaking to two VIP’s among the returnees, Zerubbabel (the governor; Cyrus the Great retains the title of King) and Joshua, the high priest. The prophet is also speaking to “the remnant,” a group much smaller than those who left. Some, possibly those who were born in Babylon, elected to stay; this is when the Jewish Diaspora, their scattering around the world, was begun. In Jerusalem, gazing at the Temple, we find a remnant.
Haggai addresses the issue straight on. He asks, how many of you remember the former Temple? It sounds as if he’s looking for a show of hands. This would likely be a tiny number—some will have died, others may have been too young to remember. And then, the painful truth:
How does it look to you now? Doesn’t it look awful? Like, nothing?
I’ve been thinking a lot how things look for the past three weeks. As many of you know I had two cataract surgeries, both successful, which I realize is somewhat of a roll of the dice. But I am amazed at the brightness, at the richness of color. It’s truly amazing. It feels like a miracle.
This has made me think about other kinds of seeing… how we see our lives, for instance, including the ups and downs, the absolute gifts from the universe and the blows that knock us to our knees. The times we revel and celebrate, and the times we don’t want to get out of bed and face a day that we know will bring only anguish.
Haggai tries to help the returnees to see things through a different lens than their sorrow and disappointment. Take courage, he says. He says it to each VIP in turn—Take courage, Zerubbabel, take courage, Joshua—and then he says it to the people. Take courage, and if things aren’t as you want them, get to work. Here’s why you can do that.
The Lord says, I am with you.
I am with you, just as I have been since the day you walked out of Egypt and into freedom.
I am with you, just as I have been through the trials and the hardships, through the grief and the loss.
I am with you, just as I have been since I made the covenant with you in the wilderness.
My spirit abides among you. Do not fear, for I am with you.
So get to work.
I want to stay with this message for a bit. As we go on in the passage, the Lord through Haggai reassures the people that God will bring riches to them from all over the known world—the treasure of all nations, the splendor of their riches. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord. And, on this last day of our Stewardship campaign, it’s tempting to stay with that line of thinking. Your money problems will be solved! God has said so! Don’t worry! Be happy!
And that may be. It was so for God’s covenant people. Through the centuries following this moment, each leader strived to add to and improve the temple, until Herod the Great finally achieved what many believed was, finally, on a par with the temple’s original glory, a 46-year-long construction project that was not done during Jesus’ lifetime on this earth. God’s promise of a more glorious Temple came to pass.
But I want us to focus on the beginning of that message: I am with you. We have an indissoluble covenant. My spirit will always abide with you, so have no fear.
These words of God, my friends, are the real riches. The wonderful Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney put it this way:
God was with the Judeans and Jerusalemites when the Babylonian war machine leveled their temple and obliterated their government. God went with the Judean Israelites into exile and remained with the poorest people of the land who were left behind. And God was with those who ran the other way and found themselves self-exiled in Egypt. God was with each river of returnees streaming back into Jerusalem and Judah.
And in the days to come, God’s presence will be marked not by mere prosperity… but by shalom—peace, well-being, security, wholeness, and restoration.[iv]
I know that each of us can conjure moments when we stood in the midst of devastation—a broken life, a fractured marriage, a diagnosis; losing a job, losing a home, losing a parent; feeling failure, feeling rejection, feeling lost. Each of us can recall the bodily experience of grief, disbelief, and dread that come with those moments. But each of us can also understand—now, if we didn’t then—that God was with us. We felt God’s presence in a card we received, or a phone call, or an unexpected moment of peace. We were shown God’s presence through the love of friends, the caring of community, the counsel of someone we trusted. And even if we didn’t experience those things in that way, later we understand. God was with me, we think. God must have been, otherwise… we’re not sure we’d be here now.
And so is God with us, in this very moment, in this, our entirely loving, astonishingly generous, and ever-joyful community of faith. We are still and always a part of God’s beloved community, whatever has happened in the past and whatever God has in store for us in the future. We still worship a God who urges us to remember those words, “I am here!” any time we are feeling dismayed or disoriented or dispirited.
So, let’s get to work. We don’t know what the future holds for UPC. But we do know this: God is with us. God promises us, not necessarily material wealth, but the only wealth that matters: God’s shalom—peace, well-being, security, wholeness, and restoration. That is the true blessing, the true source of joy, the true treasure.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “The Babylonian Captivity,” Jewish History, The Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/event/Babylonian-Captivity.
[ii] Avrohom Bergstein, “The Story of Nebuchadnezzar in the Bible,” Jewish History, Personalities of the Bible, Chabad.org, https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/4451665/jewish/The-Story-of-Nebuchadnezzar-in-the-Bible.htm.
[iii] Op. cit., Britannica.
[iv] Wil Gafney, “Commentary on Haggai 1:15b-2:9: The people have come face-to-face with a reality that does not live up to their dreams,” Working Preacher, November 7, 2010. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-32-3/commentary-on-haggai-115b-29-6.