Haggai: Renew the Vision

HAGGAI: Renew the Vision (preached by Canon David Lindsay)

Today, after last Sunday’s Harvest celebrations, we return to the minor prophets. And it’s actually quite appropriate that we should make a slightly bigger gap between Zephaniah - our subject fortnight ago - and Haggai, on whom we focus today. That is because each of the prophets we have looked at so far prophesied before the exile of the Jews to Babylon in 587 BC; whereas our three remaining prophets - Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi - prophesied after the return from exile in 539 BC.

We know scarcely anything about Haggai apart from the meaning of his name, which is ‘holy days’. What we do know - from the information he gives us  – is that he wrote in the year 520 BCE. This offers a valuable glimpse into a significant time in Jewish history – a time of return and rebuilding. The Babylonian exile was the worst thing that had ever happened to Jews. Thousands of their best people had been either slaughtered or carted off to Babylon. Solomon’s magnificent temple lay in ruins. Many despaired – and no wonder. But some – like Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the prophet whose name we do not know, who wrote the middle section of the book of Isaiah, kept the flame of hope burning, with the promise that the exile would not go on for ever – God had not abandoned people; one day there would be a return.

And so, there was. In the year 539, Cyrus, king of Persia, after overwhelming the Babylonians, issued a famous edict, enabling the restoration of all the communities that Babylon had displaced.  So, the Jews went home – or at least some of them did. The exile had lasted 50 years; many of the original deportees had died. Others had become settled in Babylon and were happy to stay. For the fifty thousand or so who did return to their ancestral lands, it was not quite the glorious triumph that some had envisaged. The land had lain fallow, the houses were in disrepair, and the lower classes left behind had helped themselves to the property of those who had gone. Complex legal situations arose, requiring the reconciliation of the rights of returnees with those of remainers. A start was made on rebuilding the temple – but the work was soon abandoned; there was little sense of urgency, and the people put their energies instead into their own affairs. After all they had been through, who could blame them?

But when people see no further than their own back yards, they easily fall into a state of weary, self-centred inertia. It is this that Haggai addresses in his message. As we heard, he begins by challenging his hearers to think about their lifestyle: ‘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 you that earn wages earn wages to put them in a bag with holes.’

In these few graphic images, the prophet paints vivid picture of people in a state of collective depression – their appetites are diminished, their zest for life has gone. It’s not unlike the way a good many people feel - and behave - in these post-Covid days; after all, Covid itself was for us all a very real experience of exile. But if Haggai expertly diagnoses the spiritual sickness of people, he also knows the remedy, because God has told him: they must rebuild the temple. Not because God is homeless without it!  But without that powerful symbol of holiness, the people have no vision – and, as the Book of Proverbs reminds us, where there is no vision, the people perish. Hence the message of Haggai – renew the vision!

We know no more about Haggai; but we do know that his message was heeded; just five years later, the temple was rebuilt. It was not, to be honest, as splendid as Haggai’s vision had predicted; we read in the book of Ezra that, at the new building’s dedication, the older folk who remembered Solomon’s temple wept bitterly at the contrast between the two. But it was built; and it did serve for several centuries as the centre, and bulwark, of Jewish life.

What message is there here for us? It is too simplistic to think purely in terms of building churches. The creation of a holy building does not in itself guarantee the presence of a holy God. William Golding’s novel, ‘The Spire’, tells the grim tale of a mediaeval cathedral Dean who is obsessed with building the tallest spire in Christendom. What becomes horribly clear as the novel progresses is that the new spire has nothing at all to do with the glory of God, and everything to do with Dean’s own burgeoning ego. What lies at heart of Haggai’s message is the need for God’s presence to be made known to everyone. To Christians, that must mean the presence of God as compassionate, pain-sharing love. So I want to finish with some wise words from a sermon preached at the dedication of the refurbishment of the church in Hertfordshire where Anne and I worshipped for many years before we came to live  here. The preacher was a former curate of the church, the Very Reverend Michael Mayne, who subsequently became Dean of Westminster Abbey. Here are his words:          

‘But some who come to this place will be searching and exploring, and maybe we shall also have to answer as to whether by our sensitive words and actions we have helped them become aware that God’s name is father, that his eyes are merciful, and that his heart is a heart of love. And there will be among them those whom life has badly bruised, who will come grieving and desperate and without hope. So perhaps we shall be judged most of all on whether we make it easy for them to come to the place of God's heart, and find here, not simply the beauty of stone and colour and light and music, but truthful words and sensitive, caring people, and so go out encouraged, strengthened, consoled, and affirmed.’

May that vision of church also be ours; may we renew our vision!

Amen