Table Scraps
You may remember last week that one of the immediate problems we ran into with Habakkuk is that we didn’t know much about him. We could sort of look at the context of who he was writing about, and the style of his writing, and make some guesses as to his identity and location. But we really didn’t know.
We don’t get that problem with Haggai.
He’s identified as a prophet, as part of the navi’m – one of the priests identified as a mouthpiece for God. And he lets us know exactly the situation – Darius is king, so we know he’s writing during the Persian occupation of Jerusalem. And he’s writing from the court of Zerubbabel – the governor of Judah. So we don’t have to guess at his time, his place, or his context, which makes things much easier from an academic perspective.
And the content of Haggai is also fairly straightforward. There’s not a lot of poetry or symbolism or metaphor going on here. We don’t have to hunt around for the meaning to see what’s what.
In a nutshell – Haggai is writing during the Persian period – so it’s after the destruction of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. But before the Second Temple is completed. And work on the Second Temple has slowed, maybe stopped completely.
And God is not happy.
Now. This shouldn’t be news to us. We’ve seen enough times throughout the Old Testament that God is often not happy. When the people are faithful and living in concord with God, times are good – and what happens when times are good? Nobody writes stuff down.
It’s when things start to get sticky that people – not just people but priests and prophets and those people lucky or unlucky enough to be able to see the writing on the wall – that people decide, “we should maybe pay attention to this and take notes.”
In Haggai things are getting sticky.
No, they’re not turning away from God… not in the sense that we usually see. There are no altars to Ba’al or idols of Hadad or Asherah poles to be found in Haggai, the way we’ve seen in some of the other prophets. This is not an angry God, jealous of other gods, competing for worship and attention.
Instead, it’s a situation that might seem a lot more familiar to us.
Haggai is not the story of a religious people being fickle and taking their worship from one God to the next.
But it is the story of a people who lose interest in God. Who de-prioritize God. Who find other things to put their time and effort into. And maybe God will get the table scraps of whatever’s left at the end.
The issue at hand is the rebuilding of the Temple. Work is not being done on it, which has God upset. Ostensibly, the reason is that there’s been a drought, so the people don’t have as much time or energy to devote to temple-building. Which, Ok. God’s reasonable. If there’s a drought, there’s a drought, God’s not going to hold that against us for the sake of a building
But the thing is… work has stopped on the temple. But somehow, it seems, it hasn’t stopped anywhere else.
The temple’s on hold. But the people are busy building themselves fancy houses. While God’s house is a hovel.
“Is this a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin? Give careful thought to your ways,” Haggai warns, “You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”
These things that Haggai speaks of… that God speaks of… houses, harvest, food, drink, clothes, money… these are things that the people have plenty of. They’re doing well. They are not impoverished. Unlike life under the Babylonians, things under the Persians are going pretty ok for Israel. They’re rebuilding the city, reinvesting in trade, people are returning, and there’s life in the Jordan Valley and the Judaean Mountains. It’s not great. It’s not perfect. It’s not quite the land of milk and honey. But things are definitely improving.
And from these improvements, people give much to themselves. And little to God.
Now… you might look at Haggai and think that our theology has changed since the time of the Second Temple. And you’d be right. The necessity of the Temple isn’t as central to faith and worship as it was in ancient Jerusalem. Temples are nice to have. Houses of worship, big and small, grand and humble, are important. But they’re not the be-all and end-all of faith that they used to be. God doesn’t need a single grand building on earth to call home. Because God is everywhere, with all people.
We’ve moved away… actually, God has moved away… from the Temple to the covenant. The covenant is what’s important – the coming together of God’s people for worship, to find purpose, to encourage each other and live in fulfillment of God’s will for us – as much as we can, as imperfectly as we do.
And the temples, the churches, the buildings where that happens, they’re important. They’re focal points. They facilitate the covenant. But they aren’t the covenant itself.
I don’t for a moment believe in this day and age that God cares how grand and opulent… how decadent our temples are. Grand and glorious cathedrals… they’re beautiful… they serve a purpose in God’s kingdom… but not every church needs to be a cathedral. It’s probably better if most aren’t. And God doesn’t care if our temples have the finest furnishings and gold offering plates and gorgeous stained glass windows if those temples don’t serve the covenant between God and people.
In Haggai… God is angry because the people are putting themselves first and God second. Or third or fourth or fifth. Their transgression wasn’t that the temple was humble. People gather in humble churches all over the world in ways that are pleasing and a delight to God. The transgression was that it was a visible slap in the face, that God was not their priority.
Now I say this, fully aware that our little congregation has just paid a considerable sum of money to repair the roof of our humble temple. And we have plans to spend more to bring it up to code to host a daycare. So please don’t hear me and think, “Oh, Pastor Dave says that church buildings aren’t important – we shouldn’t be spending that money that way…” Again, the buildings are important… as long as we’re doing it to honor and glorify God, not to bask in a gilded temple and pat ourselves on the back.
But we need to be able to answer the question: “How does what we’re doing – whether with the church building, with our congregational covenant, with our own lives – how does what we’re doing show that God is our priority?”
And that looks like different things to different people. It can be time invested in doing the work of God’s kingdom – sharing the Gospel, feeding the hungry, tending to the sick, visiting the prisoner. It can take the form of stewardship – being a joyful and generous giver – the good works that Christ calls us to do require financing. You can say you want to feed 100 hungry people today, but it’s a lot easier when you’ve got a few coins to buy bread with. Prioritizing God can mean simply spending time with him. Staying prayerful and trusting God and building that relationship. Often, putting God first means doing more than one of those things. Which sounds like a lot. Until you start doing them. And doing them. And building that habit. And it becomes second nature.
For Haggai… and the people he was prophesying to… they simply forgot that nature. I doubt that they loved God and gave him their all one day, then the next simply said, “I quit!” Occasionally you’ll see dramatic crises of faith like that. But far more often it’s little by little. “Oh, I forgot to pray this morning… I’ll do it tonight.” “I meant to give $10 to the food pantry, but I really wanted that coffee, so I only gave $5.” “I know Joanie was sick in the hospital last week, and I meant to call her, but I’ll do it tomorrow…”
It’s that little drip, drip, drip of small things that constantly erodes at our life of faith. And if you think I’m using those examples to harangue anyone here – I am. I’ve done all of those and more myself.
But the bottom line is that, all things considered, God doesn’t really expect all that much from us. Love God, love our neighbor. And we don’t have to be splashy or loud about it. But if we truly believe that our God is an awesome God – and I do believe that – then it shouldn’t be too difficult for us to make loving that awesome God a priority.
And we do that by putting our time, our energy, our resources, and our prayers into things that matter to God. Not whatever we have leftover at the end of the day. Not with whatever loose change we happen to find stuck in our car seats. Not with table scraps. But by making the effort, making the time, making the statement with our gifts, our labor, our testimonies, and whatever else that we can bring to the table, and make that statement that says, “God, you have loved me. And I love you. You are important to me. And I put you first.”
To God be all glory, praise, and honor. Amen.
Let us pray,
Holy Lord, you know that we live in a world of turmoil. Our lives are chaotic as we see illness all around us. As we financial and political systems straining. As we see families and loved ones stressed and struggling. Lord, you are our rock and our anchor. Help us to put our trust and faith in you, as you are ever faithful to us. And help us to be grateful for your many mercies in our lives, to put you first in all things, and never make you an afterthought. And for those times when the whirlwinds of the world around us take our eyes off of you, we humbly ask your pardon, through the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
You may remember last week that one of the immediate problems we ran into with Habakkuk is that we didn’t know much about him. We could sort of look at the context of who he was writing about, and the style of his writing, and make some guesses as to his identity and location. But we really didn’t know.
We don’t get that problem with Haggai.
He’s identified as a prophet, as part of the navi’m – one of the priests identified as a mouthpiece for God. And he lets us know exactly the situation – Darius is king, so we know he’s writing during the Persian occupation of Jerusalem. And he’s writing from the court of Zerubbabel – the governor of Judah. So we don’t have to guess at his time, his place, or his context, which makes things much easier from an academic perspective.
And the content of Haggai is also fairly straightforward. There’s not a lot of poetry or symbolism or metaphor going on here. We don’t have to hunt around for the meaning to see what’s what.
In a nutshell – Haggai is writing during the Persian period – so it’s after the destruction of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. But before the Second Temple is completed. And work on the Second Temple has slowed, maybe stopped completely.
And God is not happy.
Now. This shouldn’t be news to us. We’ve seen enough times throughout the Old Testament that God is often not happy. When the people are faithful and living in concord with God, times are good – and what happens when times are good? Nobody writes stuff down.
It’s when things start to get sticky that people – not just people but priests and prophets and those people lucky or unlucky enough to be able to see the writing on the wall – that people decide, “we should maybe pay attention to this and take notes.”
In Haggai things are getting sticky.
No, they’re not turning away from God… not in the sense that we usually see. There are no altars to Ba’al or idols of Hadad or Asherah poles to be found in Haggai, the way we’ve seen in some of the other prophets. This is not an angry God, jealous of other gods, competing for worship and attention.
Instead, it’s a situation that might seem a lot more familiar to us.
Haggai is not the story of a religious people being fickle and taking their worship from one God to the next.
But it is the story of a people who lose interest in God. Who de-prioritize God. Who find other things to put their time and effort into. And maybe God will get the table scraps of whatever’s left at the end.
The issue at hand is the rebuilding of the Temple. Work is not being done on it, which has God upset. Ostensibly, the reason is that there’s been a drought, so the people don’t have as much time or energy to devote to temple-building. Which, Ok. God’s reasonable. If there’s a drought, there’s a drought, God’s not going to hold that against us for the sake of a building
But the thing is… work has stopped on the temple. But somehow, it seems, it hasn’t stopped anywhere else.
The temple’s on hold. But the people are busy building themselves fancy houses. While God’s house is a hovel.
“Is this a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin? Give careful thought to your ways,” Haggai warns, “You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”
These things that Haggai speaks of… that God speaks of… houses, harvest, food, drink, clothes, money… these are things that the people have plenty of. They’re doing well. They are not impoverished. Unlike life under the Babylonians, things under the Persians are going pretty ok for Israel. They’re rebuilding the city, reinvesting in trade, people are returning, and there’s life in the Jordan Valley and the Judaean Mountains. It’s not great. It’s not perfect. It’s not quite the land of milk and honey. But things are definitely improving.
And from these improvements, people give much to themselves. And little to God.
Now… you might look at Haggai and think that our theology has changed since the time of the Second Temple. And you’d be right. The necessity of the Temple isn’t as central to faith and worship as it was in ancient Jerusalem. Temples are nice to have. Houses of worship, big and small, grand and humble, are important. But they’re not the be-all and end-all of faith that they used to be. God doesn’t need a single grand building on earth to call home. Because God is everywhere, with all people.
We’ve moved away… actually, God has moved away… from the Temple to the covenant. The covenant is what’s important – the coming together of God’s people for worship, to find purpose, to encourage each other and live in fulfillment of God’s will for us – as much as we can, as imperfectly as we do.
And the temples, the churches, the buildings where that happens, they’re important. They’re focal points. They facilitate the covenant. But they aren’t the covenant itself.
I don’t for a moment believe in this day and age that God cares how grand and opulent… how decadent our temples are. Grand and glorious cathedrals… they’re beautiful… they serve a purpose in God’s kingdom… but not every church needs to be a cathedral. It’s probably better if most aren’t. And God doesn’t care if our temples have the finest furnishings and gold offering plates and gorgeous stained glass windows if those temples don’t serve the covenant between God and people.
In Haggai… God is angry because the people are putting themselves first and God second. Or third or fourth or fifth. Their transgression wasn’t that the temple was humble. People gather in humble churches all over the world in ways that are pleasing and a delight to God. The transgression was that it was a visible slap in the face, that God was not their priority.
Now I say this, fully aware that our little congregation has just paid a considerable sum of money to repair the roof of our humble temple. And we have plans to spend more to bring it up to code to host a daycare. So please don’t hear me and think, “Oh, Pastor Dave says that church buildings aren’t important – we shouldn’t be spending that money that way…” Again, the buildings are important… as long as we’re doing it to honor and glorify God, not to bask in a gilded temple and pat ourselves on the back.
But we need to be able to answer the question: “How does what we’re doing – whether with the church building, with our congregational covenant, with our own lives – how does what we’re doing show that God is our priority?”
And that looks like different things to different people. It can be time invested in doing the work of God’s kingdom – sharing the Gospel, feeding the hungry, tending to the sick, visiting the prisoner. It can take the form of stewardship – being a joyful and generous giver – the good works that Christ calls us to do require financing. You can say you want to feed 100 hungry people today, but it’s a lot easier when you’ve got a few coins to buy bread with. Prioritizing God can mean simply spending time with him. Staying prayerful and trusting God and building that relationship. Often, putting God first means doing more than one of those things. Which sounds like a lot. Until you start doing them. And doing them. And building that habit. And it becomes second nature.
For Haggai… and the people he was prophesying to… they simply forgot that nature. I doubt that they loved God and gave him their all one day, then the next simply said, “I quit!” Occasionally you’ll see dramatic crises of faith like that. But far more often it’s little by little. “Oh, I forgot to pray this morning… I’ll do it tonight.” “I meant to give $10 to the food pantry, but I really wanted that coffee, so I only gave $5.” “I know Joanie was sick in the hospital last week, and I meant to call her, but I’ll do it tomorrow…”
It’s that little drip, drip, drip of small things that constantly erodes at our life of faith. And if you think I’m using those examples to harangue anyone here – I am. I’ve done all of those and more myself.
But the bottom line is that, all things considered, God doesn’t really expect all that much from us. Love God, love our neighbor. And we don’t have to be splashy or loud about it. But if we truly believe that our God is an awesome God – and I do believe that – then it shouldn’t be too difficult for us to make loving that awesome God a priority.
And we do that by putting our time, our energy, our resources, and our prayers into things that matter to God. Not whatever we have leftover at the end of the day. Not with whatever loose change we happen to find stuck in our car seats. Not with table scraps. But by making the effort, making the time, making the statement with our gifts, our labor, our testimonies, and whatever else that we can bring to the table, and make that statement that says, “God, you have loved me. And I love you. You are important to me. And I put you first.”
To God be all glory, praise, and honor. Amen.
Let us pray,
Holy Lord, you know that we live in a world of turmoil. Our lives are chaotic as we see illness all around us. As we financial and political systems straining. As we see families and loved ones stressed and struggling. Lord, you are our rock and our anchor. Help us to put our trust and faith in you, as you are ever faithful to us. And help us to be grateful for your many mercies in our lives, to put you first in all things, and never make you an afterthought. And for those times when the whirlwinds of the world around us take our eyes off of you, we humbly ask your pardon, through the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.