Next to Obadiah’s prophetic work, Haggai is the shortest book in the Old Testament, and clearly, for Jews the ramifications of the book’s teachings are of major consequence. Actually, some scholars even will estimate that the delivery of Haggai’s message was between August 29 and December 18, 520 years Before the Common Era (or BCE).
The context for the delivery of this message is quite simple, and rather political. About 50,000 Jews returned to their homeland from Babylon where they had been held as exiles by the Babylonian Empire since 587 BCE. That empire was crushed during the rise of the Persian Empire and in 538 BCE Cyrus, the king, issued a declaration that allowed the Jews to return to the Promised Land where they would seek to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. We find in the Scriptures that 2 years later the people were wildly celebrating the successful completion of the foundation of the temple, but this is right where the story gets political.
The implications of a restored Jewish state and temple particularly caused fear and trembling among the Samaritans and Israel’s other neighbours and so they opposed the rebuilding of this temple so vigorously, in fact, that construction was halted. In the Book of Ezra we find out a little bit more about what was going on in regard to the opposition to rebuilding the temple. Here’s what the priest Ezra says:
When the enemies of [the Israelite tribes of] Judah and Benjamin heard that the [Israelite] exiles were building a temple for [YHWH], the God of Israel, they came to Zerubbabel and to the heads of the families and said, “Let us help you build because, like you, we seek your God and have been sacrificing to him since the time of Esarhaddon king of Assyria, who brought us here.
But Zerubbabel, Jeshua and the rest of the heads of the families of Israel answered, “You have no part with us in building a temple to our God. We alone will build it for YHWH, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the King of Persia, commanded us.
Then the peoples around them set out to discourage the people of Judah and make them afraid to go on building. They hired counsellors to work against them and frustrate their plans during the entire reign of Cyrus king of Persia and down to the reign of Darius king of Persia. (Ezra 4:1-5)
So along came Darius who was intrigued by the religions of his Empire, and along with that came permission and encouragement for the Jews to continue the work they stopped 16 years before. In fact, Haggai didn’t see the political lobbying of the Samaritans as the reason for why the work stoppage had begun in the first place – no, Haggai sees it as disobedience to God’s commands and so we end up coming across in the beginning of our text:
This is what YHWH the Almighty says: “These people say, ‘The time has not yet come for YHWH’s house to be built.’” (Haggai 1:2)
And then, oddly, the word of YHWH comes to Haggai who asks:
“Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your panelled houses, while this house remains a ruin?” (v. 3)
There is deep accusation in the word that has come upon Haggai from God – “panelled houses” is a reference to royal dwellings, fancy mansions, nice upscale homes – and while some Israelites were living large in beautiful $700,000 homes YHWH had no place to lay his head. Remember the teacher of the law who came to Jesus and said, “Rabbi, I will follow you wherever you go.” How did Jesus respond? He said,
Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.
YHWH was looking for a temple – for a home to lay his head, but you were too busy to remember the One who has authored the very life which you are living.
The real meaning of today’s Scripture is offered beneath the text where only few will sojourn to find God. The real meaning of today’s text really has to do with who you are, and whose you are. It’s about whom you belong to.
I see a small child alone in the middle of a busy Winners department store crying – tears rolling down her cheeks – because she cannot find her mother. A store clerk runs over and asks, “Little girl who do you belong to?” Of course the child tells the mother’s name and seconds later an announcement is run over the store’s PA system – “Would Mrs. Brown please come to customer service, we’ve got a gift for you, so please pick it up as soon as possible.” The mother comes running from aisle 9 and you can see the tears staining her cheeks and she immediately smothers her daughter in a sweet embrace. I found out who that little girl belonged to.
I say that this text is about whom the Jews belong to because when we realize who we belong to we find ourselves attempting to live life in response to who we are living for. If you are a Jew living for YHWH and your God wants a nice place to call home what do you do? You build him a house, and you build it magnificently. Whose are you? Who do you belong to?
For Christians there is a different temple that is being built. Let me spend some time helping you journey to that temple. At the beginning of the last week of his life Jesus was mounted on an ass as king of the asses and people saw him as, perhaps, the one who would remove Caesar and his Roman military from Israel by force. As Jesus came to the road that heads down the Mount of Olives a great crowd of people gathered round calling out:
Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! (Luke 19:38)
Of course the Pharisees end up heading over to Jesus to say, “Rabbi, tell ‘em to stop. Jesus says, “Sorry folks, if I make ‘em stop the stones will cry out.” (v. 40)
And as he looked down upon Jerusalem he was overcome with sorrow for the City of Peace because he wept and prayed:
If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.
And after he ends up in Jerusalem we are told that Jesus “entered the temple area and began driving out those who were selling. He said to them:
“It is written, ‘My house will be a house of prayer’, but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
And every day Jesus was teaching in the temple. In fact, one of those days Jesus looked around to see the rich people putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He then saw “a poor widow put in two very small copper coins” and said to the people gathered around, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow here has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” (Luke 21:3) Remember whose you are!
That same day the disciples were gathered and were saying, “Oh this is wonderful. Look at all the jewels and gold and silver that cover the temple. Isn’t it just fantastic how our temple memorial fund has adorned our place of worship with wondrous and stupendous beauty?”
But Jesus said to them, “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”
Here’s what I’m getting at today folks. In Haggai we hear this urgent command to the Israelites to build YHWH’s temple, while the Gospels have Jesus predicting the destruction of the temple, and it’s all about whom we belong to. In ancient Israel, 500 years before Jesus began preaching and teaching in Galilee and later the temple in Jerusalem belonging to the Trinity meant rebuilding the central place for worship, social life, and politics. In Jesus’ teaching, however, belonging to the Trinity in an Israel where Caesar dominated worship, social life, and politics meant something else. There were handfuls upon handfuls of people in Jesus’ day who were proclaimed as Messiahs (or kings), and yet Jesus was the sole Messiah who proclaimed nonviolence as the way for autonomy for the state of Israel.
Jesus wept over Jerusalem because he knew that if the nation insisted on provoking its overlords that it would end in destruction – and in the year 70 of the Common Era (or CE – known by Christians as Anno Domini – in the Year of Our Lord) Jerusalem and its temple were eradicated – wiped off the face of the earth during the Roman siege of Jerusalem.
In the first century there were many popular prophetic movements that attempted to address the socioeconomic crisis of double taxation – where people not only were forced to pay a temple tax, but also a tax to the Romans, and therefore the household became enslaved to “the social forces of economic exploitation and imperial domination.” (Chidester – Christianity: A Global History, pg. 9). This system actually cost people their livelihoods. David Chidester, author of Christianity: A Global History puts it this way:
Under the pressure of double taxation, members of any household were increasingly at risk of going into debt and losing their ancestral land to large estates run by stewards on behalf of absentee landlords. In the religion of the village, land was regarded as sacred on the grounds that it was ultimately owned by God. Increasingly, however, ancestral lands were being lost through conquest or expropriation. Under these conditions, many entered wage labor, tenant farming, or debt slavery. This socioeconomic situation marked a profound crisis in the religious life of the village. (Chidester, pg. 9)
One of the stories of these popular prophetic movements actually happened in Sepphoris, just a few kilometres from Nazareth in Galilee – where Jesus bar Joseph grew up. In 4 BCE a leader named Judas, the son of the brigand chief Hezekiah, inspired the people of his village Sepphoris to revolt against the double tax and proclaim him as their king. The Romans had other plans. They conquered the town, which ravaged the surrounding area, and then sold the citizens into slavery. Many others of these movements were suppressed by the Romans.
In 66 CE probably the most devastating exercise of Roman might occurred in response to a vast revolt initially led by an alternative religious group called the Zealots. The rebellion eventually involved groups based at the temple and groups based in the villages of Israel and finally, after over 1 million Jews were killed the Roman general Vespasian destroyed the temple and looted Jerusalem. Actually the main part of the revolt was overcome in 70, but at one of the garrisons, Masada, the resistance lasted till about 73 CE where the revolutionaries chose to die by suicide rather than surrender. With the destruction of Jerusalem came the truth of Jesus’ statement about the temple, “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”
And so we ask Jesus, “What of the temple and its meaning in our lives?”
And Jesus says to us the same thing he said to that Samaritan woman at the well, while his disciples were in town getting some fast food.
“A time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:23-24)
Well, we don’t know what that means for those among us who only understand what they can see and touch...
“Well,” Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple.”
Well, preacher, you’re saying to yourself, you’ve given us a whole variety of Scriptures, but what the heck is the point to what you’re saying? I mean, Jesus doesn’t really mean “hate your father and mother – heck it’s Father’s day...”
Folks, I know I’m crazy and have a very flighty imagination, but bear with me. My point is about belonging. That Scripture is hyperbole – a wild provocation so that you might not miss the point. If you want Jesus you gotta love him more than your money, than your family unit, than your car, your house, your job, your dreams, your hopes, your aspirations. If you want Jesus you gotta give up your very life. I mean that literally.
Jesus is here looking for some disciples; looking for a temple to be built for God that is our daily lives. Jesus wept over Jerusalem because he knew that we don’t know how to serve God without being blinded by the things the world calls valuable. I mean, to get even more blunt I must ask you, “Why are you here? Has it made any difference in your life? Does pretending to follow Jesus because you show up on Sunday really mean anything at all? As I just said, Jesus wept over Jerusalem because he knew that we don’t know how to serve God without being blinded by the things the world calls valuable. That’s what worship means – to give worth to something; to deem something valuable. If we really value Jesus and consider his teachings to be worthy then we really have to ask how it shows? Does my Jesus only appear on Sunday, or is there a 7 day a week thing going on with you and Jesus? Because Jesus foresaw the destruction of the temple that Haggai was urging the Israelites to rebuild after lollygagging for 16 years. Who do you belong to?
I have two final reflections for you folks. The first is this. As the Church we have torn down all of the walls that previously divided us. The Apostle Paul puts it this way:
You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:26-29)
A few weeks ago I mentioned Mohandas K. Gandhi as one of Jesus’ inconvenient friends and a congregation member asked me a few days later, “Why would you add him as one of Jesus’ inconvenient friends? Wasn’t he Hindu?” I actually found that a difficult question to answer. But we did have a rich conversation. My response about Gandhi is this:
Gandhi saw the teachings of Jesus contained in the Sermon on the Mount. He said, “It is that Sermon which has endeared me to Jesus.” David Chidester puts it this way:
Many people who had never heard of Jesus Christ or had rejected organized Christianity, [Gandhi] insisted could be regarded as Christians based on their adherence to the divine truth of unconditional love and nonviolent resistance that Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount. (pg. 467).
Furthermore, one compelling statement Gandhi made to the Church was
I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. The materialism of affluent Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus Christ that says it's not possible to worship both Money and God at the same time.
So my response has very little to do with who Gandhi outwardly claims to be Lord, but rather who his actions claim to be Lord. Seeing Gandhi utilize the Sermon on the Mount to stand firm against the British Empire and ultimately reach independence for an India suppressed by the British mercantilism system where raw materials from India would be sent to Britain to be processed and then sold back to Indians at an inflated price that few could afford really had made me sit back and wonder – is a Christian one who makes a claim about Christ? Or is a Christian one who acts the way the Jesus commands? Is it both or is it none? Because, for me, Gandhi is more a Christian than most people I see who say, “I profess Jesus to be my Lord and Saviour” and yet if these same people were brought to the courts condemned of being Christian I strongly doubt there’d be enough evidence to prosecute them. Who do you belong to?
I do have one other comment to make. I was initially thinking about Paul’s comment:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”
Who do you belong to? Who is your biological family? If you follow Jesus Christ we won’t ever be talking about Church family and biological family. In Jesus Christ there is only One family – those people who do God’s will – so look around you – “you are all one in Christ Jesus” and, therefore, “you are Abraham’s seed” who is the father of our faith. What Paul is getting at is that literally when we are found in Jesus Christ we become genetically linked to Abraham’s faith and that his faith supersedes any other familial wall that we might construct. For us there is no other family than the Church that Jesus has called to gather. Who is your family? Who do you belong to?
Finally, a few months ago on a Wednesday I was looking for a friend of one of our oldest members at Pelham Community Church – Ivor McCarthy. Ivor’s friend is connected to our community and is 95 and, as any 95 year old might, has seen the hospital a good many times. I still don’t know why the man was in the hospital, but I just kinda figured, he’s 95. I remember that day I was going to head to the hospital when the bureaucracy there told me has was no longer in, so I went to his house. When I get to this man’s house Ivor greets me with tears in his eyes saying, “I just know that God has sent you!” How many of us get a greeting like that one? Ivor was filled with concern for his friend Dick, while I was absolutely shocked by this proclamation – so shocked, in fact, that I began acting like a pastor. This was, for me, a wakeup call from Jesus. This was one of those, “remember who you are, and remember whose you are” moments.
And so in the spirit of that very reflection I’d like you to offer your surrender to Jesus in the following silence.
[moment of silence]
As we continue in prayer I’d like for you to consider why you worship here on Sunday mornings and why you consider this your spiritual home. I’d also like for you to begin contemplating how you will become more involved in the life of this congregation in the coming month and in the coming year. And finally, I’d like for you to decide who owns you – is it Jesus or something else?
In the course of our prayer together I’ll give space so that you can offer your own surrender to Jesus in the stillness.
Let’s pray together – please repeat after me:
Jesus, take my life.
Jesus, let my life become yours.
Jesus, I am lost and need you as my compass.
Jesus, help me believe in you.
Without you I only know fear.
Without you I only know hatred.
Without you I only know sickness.
Without you I only know depression.
Without you I only know disease.
Without you I only know hard-heartedness.
With you I can often see the sunrise.
With you I can hear children singing.
With you often feel like I’m flying.
With you I feel cared for.
With you I know there’s mercy.
With you I know there is justice.
With you I know there is suffering.
With you I know there’s a Hallelujah!
With you I know there is everlasting!
With you I know there is resurrection.
Jesus, take my life.
Jesus, I want to be your disciple.
Jesus, take my life. Amen.
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