In the name of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
You
know what happens if you ask a bad question, right? You get a bad answer.
Today’s Gospel text from Luke is an illustration of that wisdom. Right from the
beginning, Luke makes it clear that the Sadducees did not believe in the
doctrinal concept of a resurrection. Why then were they asking about the
marital status of people in resurrected life? If they didn’t believe in the
resurrection, why ask about it? It was a trap that they set to catch Jesus.
Would he say that only the first marriage counted, that only the last one
counted, or that polygamy would be the answer. It’s like asking a Carolina fan
if Coach K is the greatest coach ever or the best coach ever. It’s a lose-lose
answer.
There
are many bad questions that we put to our faith. How many angels can you fit on
the head of a needle? Can God draw a square-circle? Can God create a rock so
heavy that even he can’t lift it? These are bad questions of the obvious sort,
but that hasn’t stopped people from asking them. Now there is nothing wrong
with holy curiosity, nothing wrong with philosophical musing, nothing wrong
with wondering what your marriage might look like in the Resurrected life. If
you are divorced and when you die find out that it is your first marriage that
counts for eternity, well, you might question whether or not you made it into
heaven.
The problem with bad
questions of faith is they take a bad foundation and construct a house of
poorly built faith on it, which only leads to destruction of the house and the
ruin of all who live in it. There are many other bad questions of faith that
are sometimes asked. If we try to answer bad questions, we are forced into
building on top of their flawed foundations. Notice that Jesus never really
answered the question that was put to him.
One
such bad question of faith that you can find being discussed all over the place
is “Why is the Church in decline as we start the 21st century?” It’s
a bad question because it lays out the foundation as decline when that is to
completely miss the point, just as the Sadducees completely missed the point
about what the Resurrection is all about. And here, it is quite helpful to turn
to that book of the Bible that we didn’t realize was a book in the Bible until
it was read earlier in the service – Haggai.
Haggai
is one of the prophetic books of the Old Testament. It is short, only two
chapters long. And because it makes some very specific references to dates
based on a lunar calendar, we actually know that Haggai’s prophetic ministry
took place between August 29 and December 18 of the year 520 BC. The specific verses
that we read this morning actually date to October, so today’s reading is 2,536
years old, and as we will see, still speaks truth today.
Haggai
was written during the post-Exilic era of Israel’s history. You’ll recall that
Israel was conquered by the Babylonian Empire in 587. The Temple was destroyed, along
with most of Jerusalem, and the middle and upper class were all deported to
Babylon. But 67 years later, as happens to all empires, Babylon itself was
conquered. After the Persians defeated the Babylonians, the Jews in Exile were
allowed to return home.
In the portion of the
prophecy that we read, we see that Haggai is addressing Zerubbabel, the
governor, Joshua, the high priest, and the people who were left behind in
Jerusalem. Haggai’s purpose is to argue for the rebuilding of the Temple. In
Judaism, there were three major pilgrimage festivals – religious holidays when
people traveled to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices and prayers. These were the
Festivals of Passover, Booths, and Weeks. The problem, in Haggai’s eyes, was
that there was no Temple to travel to, and the faith was in jeopardy of being
lost if the people were not able to mark these major religious observances. In
fact, the name Haggai is a name that this anonymous author took on for himself
in his prophetic ministry. Haggai, in Hebrew, means “my pilgrimage” or “my
holiday.” If you’re familiar with the Islamic tradition of the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, you can
hear the relation of the words Hajj
and Haggai.
There
was a plan in place to rebuild the Temple, but progress stopped and it was
stuck on the drawing board. The Temple was the center of Jewish communal and religious
life. It was the place where God’s earthly presence remained, it was the home
to many important religious artifacts, including the Ark of the Covenant which
contained the stone tablets which Moses received on Mount Sinai. But was all
lost when the Temple was destroyed.
Haggai had to struggle
with the people, some of whom were asking bad questions. From Haggai’s writing,
we can infer that the questions were something like this: “It’s never going to
be as glorious as the Temple that Solomon built, so why bother,” “Our borders
are loose and the Samaritans are a threat, shouldn’t we focus on national
security first,” “We’re experiencing a drought, which is leading to hunger and
issues with high inflation rates, is this the right time to be building a
Temple.”
To
be sure, the old Temple was probably the grandest building ever built – no
expense was spared and only the finest materials were used. But the Temple also
reminded the people of a bygone era, one before they were conquered, before
they were forced from their homes, when Israel was a powerful empire in its own
right. So not only was the Temple a magnificent building, but it represented
the magnificence of the nation. To build another Temple, a less grand one,
would only add salt to the wounds by reminding the people that it’s no
longer the glory days.
This
is what Haggai writes to address. He relays the word from God saying, “Take
courage, all you people of the land; work, for I am with you, according to the
promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you;
do not fear.” The people had assumed that their best days were behind him, they
had given into the narrative of decline, but God had bigger things in mind for
them. It’s a bad question that I hear posed all the time in the Church, both at
the national level and at St. Luke’s – why are we in decline? The Church, like
the people who Haggai prophesied to, can suffer from crippling nostalgia
and hopelessness. In modern terms, this is what it sounds like: Don’t you
remember the good old days when we said prayers in school, don’t you remember
when we had to bring in extra chairs for the Christmas Eve service, don’t you
remember when the Sunday School rooms were full of children, don’t you remember
the glory days? As Jesus said, “God is God not of the dead, but of the living.”
God
is not stuck in the past, waiting to be rediscovered, but is with us now. God
is with us not because we deserve it by building a magnificent Temple or
filling the pews, but God is with us and blesses us because that is who God is.
God is a God of blessing. The last thing that God says in this book is “for I
have chosen you.” Haggai tells the people that through the work of rebuilding
the Temple, God is with them.
And the same is true for
us, God is with us in our ministry today. We are never alone and God is always
with us, and so the glory days are always, always with us, not stuck in the
past. Sure, in the 1990s maybe the Youth Group had 30 teens in it, but you know
what, we have about a dozen now and God is with them. Maybe in the 1970s the
pews had more people in them, but you don’t need a time machine to receive the
grace of God, just open eyes, open hands, open hearts. Perhaps you liked the
liturgical or musical style the way it used to be, but with each note of the
organ, the invitation to praise God is waiting for us to join in. We can live
stuck in the past, either by lamenting that things aren’t the way the used to
be, or by constantly saying how much better things are now than they used to
be, but both responses are to be slaves to the past.
The prophet notes that
God says “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 shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor.”
God is saying that it is not our task to rekindle past glory or splendor; that
is God’s work. Our work is to be faithful in worship and service. God will meet
us in the future with transformation, new life, and salvation. The future isn’t
a repeat of the past or the faint echo of former glory, but rather the ongoing
movement towards the fullness of God’s grace, wonder, beauty, power, and love.
As God says through Haggai, “The latter splendor of this house shall be greater
than the former.” In other words, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
This is why the work of
stewardship is so important. Today, we will be dedicating our pledges to
support the work of this parish in 2017. In our work, God is with us, revealing
God’s splendor anew. It may not be our task to build a Temple, but it is to
live lives that give glory, honor, praise, and service to God. And yes, there
are bad questions that we might ask when it comes to stewardship that will only
lead us to bad answers – Does the church really need my money? Won’t others
step up to the plate? I don’t come to church that often, so I don’t really need
to give, do I? I give so much of my time, that keeps the lights on and pays
salaries, doesn’t it? I’m sure that we can all come up with some good reasons
to not give as generously as possible. But as Haggai says, God is with us in
our work, waiting to be known through our faithful service and ministry.
Stewardship isn’t about funding our budget or my salary, it’s about inviting
God more fully into your life, your budget, your community, and this present
moment. As long as God is with us in the present and promises to be with us in
the future, there is no such thing as decline.
Still, Jesus does not
answer all of our questions, though it may be our greatest wish that he would. What
Jesus does do is to point us to a God of steadfast, immeasurable, and
inexhaustible love; and in that love, we find enough to endure all that life
and death will ask of us. I firmly believe that the future splendor of St.
Luke’s shall be greater than the former, because God is drawing us more deeply
into faith, hope, and love. Stewardship is your invitation to be a part of
glory of this day. Amen.
