Hope and Glory

Haggai 2:1-9

In the second year of King Darius, 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 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 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 shall 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.

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Buying bananas is hard work.  It seems like it should be easy enough to buy bananas - but when you buy perfectly bright yellow bananas they seem to have aged by the time you bring them home.  When my friend Bob was facing cancer, he always asked his doctor if he could still buy green bananas - if he still had enough time to watch them ripen, he was still healthy enough.   My great aunt Mable was always searching for the best deal.  She was tremendously wealthy, but she still wanted to save every cent she could - so she had a deal worked out with the shop keep that she would pay a little less if she would buy the bananas after they had turned brown.

And she would bring these bananas home from the store and they would just be brown and black and oozing out of the peel - and she would eat them with a spoon.  And I remember asking her why she would buy something after it wasn't good anymore.  And my great-aunt Mable,  all 80 years of wisdom looked at me and said, "It might not look good anymore - but the riper it is, the sweeter it is.  You'll never find a sweeter fruit than this banana."  And she scooped out another spoonful for herself.

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Around the world, our economies work on the backs of stock exchanges.  Many of the world's billionaires made almost all of their money just by playing around with these markets.  And the idea is simple, really - if you buy low and sell high, you'll make a lot of money.  But, if it was simple - we would all be doing it and we would all be rich.

Because our human nature is to do the opposite.  People who manage their own stocks tend to buy high and sell low.  When everyone is excited and talking about a company - people pay huge sums of money to own part of it, but as soon as something goes wrong - those same people sell it for whatever they can get.  The people who make money, they see struggling - bad companies and they see some small spark in them - some small piece of good news - and they invest in the fact that the future can't be as bad as the past.

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We often quote the verse "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you." But we forget the  context of this verse.

This is a prophecy to God's people as they are led into exile.  For hundreds of years.

And yet, God has a plan for them.

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The Old Testament is a history of exile.  If we were to sit down and list out all the stories of the Bible together, we could put them into two groups.  One group would have all the stories and poems and songs and prophecies that were written during the times when God's chosen people were on top - when they were in control of their own destiny and ruling themselves and worshiping in their own temple.  And the other group would have all the stories and songs and poems and prophecies written about and by and for God's chosen people when it seemed like everything was lost.

And which of these two groups would be bigger?

God's people were in exile and in the wilderness and in slavery a lot more than we think.  Even when they were in their homeland - it's a fifty-fifty split between good and terrible times.

If we split the Old Testament between the words for a lost and hurting people in exile and the words for ruling Israel - we would find that this is a book written for the lost and the hurting.  This is a book written for the displaced.  This is a book written for the disappointed.  

In today's scripture God's people are in exile.  Their lives are under the control of Babylon, but they have planned well and have been political enough to earn the right to rebuild some of their previous life.

They are rebuilding the temple in this passage  - and the oldest among them still remember what the old temple looked like and they are heartbroken.  This new temple could never compare with the old temple.  Solomon had built the old temple and adorned it with gold and with silver - and it had been the center of who they were as a people.

The people mourned because it didn't look the same and it didn't feel the same and what's more - they were sure they it wouldn't ever be the same.

And God reminds the people that soon enough he will shake the earth - to shake the earth was understood as what God would do before the Messiah arrived. They were building this simple, humble temple to prepare for the Messiah.

And the Messiah was born in a barn.  The new temple wasn't good enough for the people because it lacked silver and gold and God had the Messiah show up in a barn.

God has a sense of humor when we try and show off.

Because God reminds the people that all the gold and all the silver belong to God - and if this was the plan, certainly God could pack the temple with such riches - but God has something far greater in store.

Glory.

God intends to fill the temple with God's Glory.

Because this is the central issue - the people feel that the glory of the temple was theirs.  They made it.  They built it.  They created it.  It was gold that they gave.  It belonged to their city.  It was their temple and it's glory was theirs.  Something they did made it a great place.

It was a temple that God never asked them to build, but they built it anyway.

And now God is asking the people to trust that God's Glory will be with them again in a bigger and grander way than they could ever imagine. And it's not about the temple they are building - its about the God that they are worshiping.

As Christians, we are a people of hope.  We see hope in places where no one else does.  We see hope for reconciliation in the darkest days of apartheid.  We see hope for redemption in the hooker working the street.  We see hope for a new and glorious temple among the ashes and rubble of what used to be.

We are a people of hope.  We see the world in a different way than others.

We understand that the ripest, sweetest banana happens to look ugly from the outside.  We understand that the right time to invest it all is when all seems lost.  We understand that God has a plan for us even when all we can see our are chains and shackles as we are led away in captivity.    

Dear friends, as we experience our time of exile and uncertainty - remember that God has promised us a way forward greater than we can envision.  God has promised to show us God's glory.

Amen.