Rebuilding the Temple

“You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the LORD of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. “ (Haggai 1:9 ESV)

I thank God for Bible reading plans that get me into areas I might not otherwise ever consider looking at. The reading this morning was the first chapter of the prophet Haggai. I know I have read this before but for some reason today it really struck me as an important message for me personally and for us as Christians in the modern world.

We must first understand the reading in its historical context. The Jewish nation had made a covenant with Yahweh at Mount Sinai. The covenant was a legal agreement in which Yahweh promised to bless and prosper Israel if they kept the stipulations of the covenant. The stipulations were embodied in the Mosaic law but I think it is important that the law, though incredibly complex and in some ways unintelligible to us, was intended to make Israel the beacon of God’s love, compassion, and justice. That meant that rather than giving into the temptations of the world as had all of the other peoples of the Earth, Israel was to remain absolutely true to God alone, demonstrating in their lives the attributes of the one true God, and thus drawing all peoples to Him as God had promised Abraham (Gen. 26:4). Thus, even though the law was complex, its foundation was both simple and profound: it was the love of God.

For the next several centuries the Israelites ignored, violated, and eventually forgot the covenant they had made with God and instead became indistinguishable from the pagan nations surrounding them. In spite of the fact that prophet after prophet came to warn them they were incapable of obedience. Finally the City of Jerusalem was sacked, the temple destroyed, and the Jewish people were dragged into exile in Babylon. Seventy years later the Babylonian Empire was defeated by the Persians and the Jews were allowed to return to Israel to rebuild the temple. Common Jewish thought after the return from exile attributed their national calamity to their infidelity to the covenant.

Haggai is one of the post-exilic prophets. When the exiles from Babylon returned to Jerusalem from exile their immediate task was to rebuild the city, including the walls and the temple. But the rebuilding was beset by so many difficulties that the effort was quickly abandoned as the exiles set about attempting to rebuild their own lives in the promised land. It is in this context that Haggai addresses the people. They were attempting to rebuild their lives but were having a tough go of it. Haggai tells them the reason: they were living for themselves rather than for God. He pointed out to them that they could not expect to prosper under those conditions; that the blessings of God are experienced only in devotion to Him. In the case of the people of Haggai’s time that meant dedicating themselves to rebuilding the temple.

Listen to what Haggai tells the people:

Now, therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes. (Haggai 1:5-6 ESV)

Does this not sound eerily familiar? Is not this in fact the condition in which we find ourselves and our society? Are we not constantly grasping after more and more material possessions, sensual experiences, and social acceptance to try to fill an unfathomable emptiness? What is the basic cause of this futility? It is, as God told the returning exiles through the prophet Haggai, that we are devoted to building our own house rather than God’s.

In the New Testament age we consider the Temple not as a building in Jerusalem but rather as our own selves (1 Cor. 3:16). How does one devote oneself to rebuilding that temple? Not by our own efforts, but by surrender to Jesus. Just as the Old Testament Israelites were only able to prosper by devoting themselves to God, so we are only able to prosper by devotion to Jesus, by doing his work, by living his life. Not that we are blessed because of our works, but that by surrender to him we allow him to work through us. Ask him earnestly to use you as an instrument of his love, and you will find yourself both blessed and a blessing.

From “A Time to Break Silence”

Everybody loves the "I Have a Dream" speech for it's powerful oratory and compelling imagery and now we look at it with smug satisfaction and say "see how we solved that problem!" So the way we see it now really just lulls us back to sleep and injustice continues to flourish. The following quote is from a different, lesser known speech delivered by King exactly one year before he was murdered. It reveals a King who is radical enough to still make us uncomfortable. But I think this address is in many ways more powerful and more prophetic than King's better known speeches.

--Quote starts below.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Extremists for Love

“The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”[1]

On Monday we will be celebrating the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. My experience tells me that Dr. King after all these years is still a divisive figure, but I think he is not as divisive as he should be. I contend that his memory has been sanitized to make him into a very safe, but not very controversial, martyr. His legacy starts with the very real struggle for justice by African Americans, but our culture has focused on a myopic view of his life and work which in the end constructs a story about a courageous black man and the triumph of the melting pot. In this formulation Martin Luther King’s life and death helped to make it possible for everyone to share equally in the “American Dream.” If you think about what that means practically, it is that we all have equal access to a life “style” of self-centered over-consumption as the ultimate end of life. And I will argue that this view twists Dr. King’s actual message beyond recognition.

One of the ways in which we have neglected to understand King is by overlooking the fact that he was and always claimed to be first and foremost a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because we live in a secular society the celebration of Christian virtues is often minimized in public discourse to the extent that it is rendered “inoffensive.” Let’s leave aside the fact that the gospel intends to be offensive to the world and just observe that to separate an understanding of the gospel from Dr. King’s message robs both of their power. The true meaning of sacrifice is obscured by notions of secular virtue and sappy emotionalism. And I think it is safe to say that this dilution occurs not only in the public discourse but within the church as well; that too often the church comfortably reflects the values of society rather than the counter-cultural offensiveness of the gospel.

In 1963 Martin Luther King was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama for leading a campaign of civil disobedience aimed at dismantling the institutionalized segregation that effectively created a legally inferior class of the African-American community. While incarcerated he wrote the letter we have come to know as the “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” or to a lesser degree as “The Negro is Your Brother.” This was an open letter but it responded specifically to a group of white pastors who had criticized Dr. King’s activities against injustice in Birmingham. They had accused him among other things of being an “extremist” outside agitator. His response was

…[A]s I began to think about the matter I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist in love – “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice – “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” … So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice – or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?[2]

The gospel is extremist. Jesus was extreme in the accomplishment of his mission “…though he was in the form of God, [Christ] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8 ESV) (See also Mt. 26:39) As disciples (followers) of Jesus, we look to him as our model. We must be willing, along with Paul and the apostles and all of those who have since devoted themselves unreservedly to the gospel, like King, to be martyred in the service of God. And though for most of us this does not mean physical torture and death, it at least requires the death of our worldly selves as we are born into communion with Christ. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20 ESV) Jesus will have our hearts in whole or not at all.

So in reflecting on the upcoming holiday I think it is time that we recover the meaning of Martin Luther King’s life for us as Christians. Yes, he was concerned about the African American community but as a minister of the gospel he was concerned about God’s “Beloved Community,” which he believed consists of all who are in Christ. In a lesser known speech in opposition to the war in Vietnam delivered by Dr. King exactly one year before his death he made this clear. In explaining his motivation he pointed out his obligation to “the brotherhood of man” as a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace. He then went on to say

This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be they do not know the good news was meant for all men – for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully he died for them?[3]

As we remember the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., let us rededicate ourselves as followers of Jesus to live as he lived. We are called to do more than simply admire Jesus, we are to live his life, or, more specifically, we are to surrender so fully that he can live his life through us. Martin Luther King was exemplary in this regard, but our remembrance of him is insipid. Let us honor the legacy of Dr. King by not only recalling the sacrificial spirit of his life but by surrendering ourselves to the prophetic nature of our own calling: to be the hands and feet of God, regardless of the cost.

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[1] Martin Luther King, Jr. “The Strength to Love” in James M. Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.,(San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991), 501.

[2] Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” in Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope, 297, 298.

[3] Martin Luther King, Jr. “A Time to Break Silence” in Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope, 234.

A Dark, Smelly Place

“And I will show you a still more excellent way.” (1 Corinthians 12:31 ESV)

I want to get it straight from the beginning that I think American politics is a cesspool. The bulk of it consists of what might otherwise be sensible people willingly abandoning their capacity to reason in favor of making political “points.” Shrill cries and denunciations, demonization, hyperbole, and outright dishonesty are the order of the day in the best of circumstances. When tragedy strikes, otherwise horrendous discourse becomes even worse as sides jockey for position. There exists a pervasive delusion that if we can only convince our fellows to arrange society in the way we think best, by whatever means, we will be able to create paradise on Earth. This attitude coincides with the logical counterpoint that if our opponents win the day it will represent the triumph of Satan. All of this ignores the fact that in the overall spectrum of political ideas the differences between the so-called “left” and “right” in America are almost indistinguishable. It also ignores that humans, left to their own devices, cannot create paradise, only hell.

So having said all that I will venture a bold statement here that no one can be blamed more than anyone else for what happened in Arizona this last weekend, except for the lone gunman who actually planned and carried out the attack. It is painful. To look at the sunny face of the beautiful little girl who lost her life in this tragic way, it just tears my heart out. I can only scarcely imagine the anguish her parents must feel at such a profound loss. And all of us have lost something. It engenders an enormous sadness in me; I think in many it provokes outrage that seeks a target. I also think, to illustrate the depravity of American politics, that in some it presents an opportunity to score political “points.” All of this is very human. It is not new to American politics or to human affairs.

One of the greatest lines in the movies occurs in The African Queen when Charlie Allnut protests that to drink to excess is “only human nature.” Rose Sayer, played by the inimitable Katherine Hepburn, responds “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.” Well, I don’t know that we can say categorically that is why we are put here, but Scripture does tell us unequivocally that as Christians we are called to a higher standard than that of the world.

In the verse quoted above from 1 Corinthians Paul introduces the famous chapter concerning love. Most Christians probably know but I think it instructive to point out that this chapter, cited so often in reference to human romantic emotion, was not given to the Christians at Corinth to inspire them but to rebuke them. The church at Corinth suffered from division, factionalism, open sexual immorality, favoritism, and spiritual pride, among I’m sure every other human failing. They had accepted the gospel gladly but they had not been changed by it. Rather than undergoing transformation by the Holy Spirit and becoming a community set apart to draw people to the gospel by their behavior (1 Pet. 2:9, John 13:35, Mt. 5:16), the Corinthians had made their church community look little different from the surrounding society, little different from the world. Rather than a force to reshape the world, the church had been shaped by the world. Paul wrote the letter we call 1 Corinthians to admonish the church there and to remind them of how they were called to behave as Christians.

Go and read chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians and consider it in light of your emotions and your actions. In verses 4-7 replace the word “love” with your own name. “Keith is patient and kind; Keith does not envy or boast; …is not arrogant or rude …does not insist on its own way; …is not irritable or resentful; …does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Keith bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” I am embarrassed. How do you measure up? If we are honest we cannot but acknowledge our inadequacy to live up to this standard. Nevertheless it is what we are called to as followers of Christ. As humans we are incapable, but in Christ we have strength (John 16:33).

Now let us consider Paul’s rebuke in our own circumstances. In the midst of the present tragedy, as at all times, how must a Christian act? Are we to succumb to the temptation to join in the chorus of recrimination and condemnation, or are we to “rise above,” to be Jesus’ hands and feet in the world? What would that look like? The Sheriff of Pima County Clarence Dupnik suggested on the day of the shooting that the nation ought to “do a little soul searching.” Well, I guess I second that, except that I don’t believe it will. But I do think that as followers of Christ we must seriously ask ourselves how we can shine the light of Christ in the world, rather than swimming in the darkness of the cesspool. I think we will discover it looks very little like what we are naturally inclined to.