Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Now let's pray.
O God, tell us what we need to hear and show us what we ought to do to obey Jesus Christ.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: This morning's scripture is from the book of Haggai, chapter 1, verse 15b, and chapter 2, verses 1 through 9.
On the 24th day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the 21st day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai, saying, speak now to Zerubbabel son of Shittel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, son of Jehozad, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people and say, 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 yet. Now take courage, O Joshua, son of Jehozad, 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 and the dry land, and I will shake all the nations so that the treasure of all nations shall come.
And I will fill this house with splendor, says the LORD of hosts.
The silver is mine, 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.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Good morning, friends. It is such a gift to be back with you this morning as usual. And let's start with a word of prayer.
Heavenly Father, we just pray that you will speak to us this morning, speak to us afresh in your word. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear all that you are teaching us and speaking to us.
Pray all this in your mighty name. Amen.
It's great to be back with you, particularly at the start of this big season.
And you might say, hold on, it's very clearly Thanksgiving season before we even get to Christmas season. And I don't disagree.
What I think is there's actually a larger season.
There's this season that starts from November 1st, goes all the way through to January 1st. And it is this season of unreasonably high expectations.
Starting on November 1, we begin imagining the perfect holidays.
A turkey that Isn't dry.
Everyone in a good mood. Extravagant meals, family traditions that you definitely do every year. Stress free shopping, Christmas cards mailed out on time.
And photos, would you believe, where everyone is smiling. Normally we picture abundance in this season. Laughter, peace, gratitude and beauty.
It's not just the children who have visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads. We do too.
And then our visions of hope don't stop with Christmas. They keep going all the way through to January 1st. With the new year, it's the clean slate.
We tell ourselves January 1st will fix everything.
This year will be different.
This is the year things turn around.
And that what's hard about this season is that sometimes those hopes don't come to fruition.
In fact, sometimes they crash headfirst into the lives we actually live.
And this season isn't starting super well, is it?
Families are stretched thin. Grocery bills are rising while assistance shrinks.
Our government feels paralyzed. And our communities, families, and yes, even our churches feel more divided and uncertain than ever.
This season, from November to January, doesn't always bring the magical celebration and the fresh start we hoped for.
That's the tension of this season, isn't it?
That we live in the gap sometimes the chasm between what we hope for and what actually is.
Maybe for you this year, it's the holiday table that feels emptier, or the home that hasn't been rebuilt, or the version of your life that you thought for sure you would be living right now.
We all know what it is like to stand in the rubble, in the rubble of our own hopes and expectations.
And that is exactly where the people of Judah find themselves when we meet them in Haggai, standing in the rubble of their city, their faith, their home, their hope in what they thought God had promised them.
And so I want you to imagine for a moment that you are among the people of Judah.
Before we get to Heggai.
I want you to imagine that you are with them even before the exile, that you were there. Maybe you were a young kid, but you were there all the way back in the glory days, the days of Solomon's temple. That you can see it there, gleaming with gold.
The massive bronze pillars, its ornate carvings, all of it sang of God's glory and his promises.
The temple where God's presence dwelled among you, the meeting place of heaven and earth.
It was the heartbeat of your nation's life.
And you were there when it crumbled as Babylon invaded your city. You watched that once gleaming temple turn to rubble, your heart filled with fear and dread. As you and your people were cast out into a foreign land where there you lived in exile for 70 years.
You lost everything.
But even in exile, you weren't completely lost to despair.
You heard visions of hope sent from God.
Visions that were sent through prophets like Ezekiel, who saw dry bones rising to life, who told visions of a resurrected nation, visions of a new temple where God's presence would dwell months more.
Visions of a city that would be named the Lord is there.
You clung to every word.
Those visions were your lifeblood to hope in the midst of exile.
You prayed that you would live to see the day that the kingdom of Judah would return to its former glory, where your people would witness God's presence and promises once more.
So that glorious day when the Persian Empire conquered Babylon and Cyrus the Great said that your people could go home and rebuild the temple.
Decades of tension and loss released in that moment with that one mighty decree.
You made it.
The visions of hope were real.
You were going to be among those who could say, I was there.
I was there when God fulfilled his promises.
But then you actually returned home, and the reality hit harder than you imagined.
What you found wasn't glory.
It was rubble.
Your nation wasn't really resurrected. It wasn't the independent kingdom of Judah.
Your people were home, but just under a new ruler, just a small province of the Persian Empire.
The economy was struggling.
Your neighbors and friends just wanted to rebuild their homes and try to reclaim their lives again.
All the while, that once glorious temple still sat in ruins.
That dwelling place of God was just a pile of rocks.
You tried to help rebuild it.
A part of you still believed in those visions of hope from the exile.
But as you stood looking at the foundations that your people had built, your heart sank.
You knew that this wouldn't ever be anything like Solomon's Temple. Your people didn't have the resources they once did.
At best, this temple would be small, unimpressive, disappointing.
How could this temple house the glory of God?
How could this city ever be called the Lord is there?
Without glory or prosperity, who would ever say the Lord is here?
Their story may be ancient, but their questions are not.
It isn't hard to feel their tension and hear our own voices in their questions.
Because we know what it feels like when reality doesn't look like what we hoped.
Can God still be here in the rubble?
That's a question I've asked myself many times.
And I found that sometimes God answers in ways we don't expect.
Not always with great sermons or deep theological books, but with quiet, simple Reminders of truth. And sometimes that's in children's stories.
One such book is the Invisible String by Patrisse Karst.
I love to read this story to my son because it's a story of two young siblings who get woken up by this awful storm, and they go running out to their mother, telling her they're scared.
And as every mother does, gently tries to send them back to bed, but they tell her they can't. They want to be close to her, because when they're close to her, the storm doesn't feel so scary. They feel safe.
And so the mother tells them about the invisible string.
She tells them that there's this string that connects you at all times with everybody that you love.
It's a string that can never be broken.
So that wherever you are in the world, or no matter how mischievous you might be, even if your parents are mad at you or there's something wrong or there's something broken, that string is never broken.
That string is constant.
Their mother teaches her children that no matter where they go, they are always connected by a love they cannot always see.
That is what God's presence is like, an invisible string of love and faithfulness that holds us even when we can't see it, even when we're in the midst of loss and rebuilding.
And that, I believe, is what God is saying through the prophet Haggai, reminding his people that even though their world looks broken, his presence, like that invisible string, has never left them.
God's presence is there in the prosperity, yes, but it's in the rubble, too.
And the good news is that God doesn't just tell us.
God shows us from beginning to end. There is a thread, an invisible string of God's presence with his people from prosperity to rubble.
To see it, we can start here with our passage in Hegai, because the passage starts by telling us that in the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the 21st day of the month, the word of the Lord comes by the prophet Haggai.
Now, typically, when I read things like that in scripture, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's get to the good part.
But friends, don't skip past this one, because these aren't just random dates.
They matter.
They tell us something about the invisible string of God's presence that is consistent and that is true.
Because decades before this all happened, when that glorious temple was first built, Solomon dedicated it also in the seventh month and said, the glory of the Lord filled this house.
And now again in the seventh month, when there is no temple for God's presence to dwell. God sent a message of hope for his people, saying, take courage, all you people of the land.
Work for I am with you.
My spirit abides among you. Do not fear.
The contrast may be stark between the radiance and the rubble of on the anniversary of the seventh month, but God's presence is consistent.
Let's trace this promise a little further.
The words I am with you are echoed throughout the history of God's people. In the wilderness, in the exile, in wars, God said, I am with you.
To Abraham, to Isaac, Moses, Joshua, Gideon.
God said, I am with you.
It's the same story whispered again and again.
God's story has always been one of presence.
Always God keeps showing his people and reminding them that his glory is not revealed by a building or by prosperity, but by God's presence.
Then, centuries later, that presence took on flesh when Jesus Christ was named Immanuel.
God with us.
That, my friends, is the great story we are preparing to celebrate. In just a few short weeks, the temple, the dwelling place of God, was no longer made of stone, but of skin and spirit.
And true to the promise that God made in Hagai, God did shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. He shook the nations and filled the house with splendor.
For at the moment Jesus, the new temple, took his last breath on the cross.
The old temple's curtain was torn in two and the earth shook and the rocks were split.
And when Jesus rose again three days later, there was a violent earthquake.
God shook up everything so that all of us, Jew and Gentile alike, would have full access to the presence of God, that all of us would have access to this promise that Christ made at the end of Matthew. I will be with you always till the end of time.
God shook the heavens and the earth and upended everything so that nothing could stand between us and God.
Jesus was the embodiment of the invisible string of God's presence, that is with his people wherever they go, in prosperity or in rubble.
Do you see it?
Do you see the glory of God that is found in his presence in Haggai? God promised the people of Judah that the latter splendor of this house would be greater than the former.
The idea was that the splendor of the next temple would be greater than Solomon's temple.
And it was not because it looked grander, but because it was when God himself took on flesh and dwelt among us.
God's glory didn't arrive in gold and grandeur. It came as a baby born in a manger to a virgin mother and a carpenter from Nazareth.
God's glory came to meet us all in the rubble of life, literally in the dust and straw of Bethlehem.
God's glory is found, as Paul writes in Philippians, in the Son of God, making himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by being obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place.
That is the glory of God's presence with us.
When the people of Judah came out of exile and saw the desolation of the temple and realized their building could not produce the grandeur of what it once was, they thought the promise of God's glory dwelling among them was gone.
But the promise of God in Haggai, to the people and to us is that God's glory isn't found in the shine of success, but in his steady presence.
Even in the ruins, it is in the steady presence of Jesus Christ, Emmanuel.
God with us now, you might say. But wait, right at the end there, God promises to give prosperity.
I would like my prosperity, please.
And I know sometimes we do dream of seeing God's glory and prosperity.
I love the good times, I really do, because then it doesn't hurt as much, right?
It's easy to proclaim the glory of God in the good.
But friends, the prosperity here is more than the prosperity we often talk about.
In fact, I don't think the word prosperity really gets at the heart and the greater gift of what God is promising.
I know we want good fortune in life and to be happy and for things to be going well. But what God is promising here is far deeper and greater than that.
You know how sometimes there are words or phrases in another language that seem to perfectly capture an experience or a feeling that just doesn't translate to English.
Like the German word kummerspeck that literally means grief bacon.
It sounds tasty, but what kummerspeck describes is the extra weight you gain from emotional eating and grief.
Like, I cannot think of a better description of just the reality of eating and your body when you're dealing with grief. And we just don't have that in English. It just doesn't translate. I can't go around calling it grief bacon or the Dutch word geselik that describes a feeling of warmth, coziness and belonging.
It's more than comfort. It's that feeling that you are right where you belong and you can't just translate that word to English and sufficiently convey the entire meaning of it.
Our words in English just fail to live up to the meaning.
And I think this is what happens here in haggai with the Hebrew word shalom, which the NRSV translates as prosperity and many other translations translate as peace.
But I don't think it does it justice.
I don't think it fully captures the picture of this powerful word.
You see, I think shalom is one of the most important theological words in the Old testament, occurring over 250 times.
Peace is one of the most common translations of shalom, but it means more than mere absence of war.
The peace of shalom is closer to a sense of completeness, wholeness, harmony, or fulfillment.
In nearly two thirds of its occurrences in the Old Testament, shalom describes a state of fulfillment that comes from God's presence.
Isn't that what we want more than good fortune or just to be happy?
We crave that sense of peace that transcends understanding, that peace that grounds you, whether you're in good fortune or you're in rubble, that peace that gives you a sense of completeness, of wholeness, of fulfillment, and that comes in the presence of God.
When God says through haggai, in this place, I will give prosperity, God is saying, I will give you shalom.
I will give you ultimate peace and restoration.
In my presence, you will find completeness.
Isn't it fitting, then, that Jesus, who is the ultimate fulfillment of God's promises, is called Sar shalom, Prince of peace?
Jesus is the shalom that was promised.
Jesus is the one who brought redemption and fullness to all people.
Friends, so many of our visions, our hopes and our expectations, especially at this time of year, depend on grandeur and success and on everything going to plan.
But the truth of Hegai, the truth of the gospel, is that God's glory meets us not in the shine of success, but in his steady presence, even among the ruined.
God meets us right where we are, in the middle of family tensions, in the hospital rooms, in the disappointments, in the unfinished rebuilding of our lives, in the messy middle, like that invisible string, God's love holds us even when we can't see it through every season of loss and rebuilding, the promise God made through haggai still stands today.
My spirit abides among you. Do not fear wherever you find yourself as we start this season of high expectations, whether you are standing among the ruins or in radiance, hear this truth.
God's spirit abides among you.
Do not fear the glory of God is not gone.
It's here.
It's in the rubble, in the rebuilding.
It is in you.
And God's presence is with you forever and ever. Amen.
