"Stirred Up" (Haggai 1:12-15)

 

watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEXEakKWBds

Sunday, January 10, 2020

 

            We read the Bible to hear God and relate to God.  It’s not the only way we relate to God.  Throughout the New Testament and throughout church history we see the Holy Spirit speak in dreams and directly to believers’ spirits.  Romans 1 confirms that God speaks through nature.  God can speak through a preacher’s sermon.  There are countless ways to hear God.  The Bible is the one way that is shared by all believers.  We all have the same Bible.  We don’t just read it just to say we read it. We read to hear God and grow in our relationship with God.  Hold onto that word, ‘relationship,’ because that’s the main idea.

            As I read Haggai 1 this past week, two incidents helped me hear God speak to this specific moment in history. First, Tuesday night out elders met.  We feel impatient at home, socially distanced due to spread of the very dangerous Coronavirus.  We want life to open up!  With initial roll out of vaccines, in my mind I jumped ahead of where are.  I began imagining us conducting ministries as we had before the pandemic began.  I imagined us doing that very soon. It is the pastor’s job to lay out for the church a path for achieving that imagined future. 

            We’re just not there yet.  Yes, vaccines are here.  However, with family gatherings around the holidays and colder weather driving more and more folks inside, breathing one another’s air, the number of cases has spiked.  I hear people argue that COVID-19 has been hyped up, and it’s not as bad the media make it out to be, and it’s no worse than a bad strain of the flu.  Cases have risen so sharply in North Carolina; we are running low on ICU in beds.  Just let that sink in; here in North Carolina, we could run out of ICU slots.  Vaccines are here.  One day, COVID-19 will be behind us.  We aren’t there yet, and right now it has gotten worse.

            Our elders did their job Tuesday.  They guided the pastor.  They helped me see the situation as it currently is.  It was sobering for me, but also hopeful.  We are doing good in the middle of the pandemic.  We host the food pantry and blood banks.  We stay connected through streaming worship and Zoom Bible studies.  God has enable us to make financial contributions to other ministries in our area.  God is working through Hillside Church to bless Chapel Hill.

            I am thankful God speaks through our elders.  Reflecting on that meeting, I realize God was speaking to me then.  God spoke through them to me, but also showed me how He is speaking to all of us through the words of scripture.  We need to bring our hearts along when we read Haggai 1.  If we willingly read with our full selves, emotions and all, we will be stirred up by Haggai.

            Speaking of being stirred up … after that Tuesday night meeting came Wednesday.  Refusing to accept the results of an election that have been affirmed by dozens of court decisions, rowdy supporters of Donald Trump gathered on Wednesday on the National Mall in Washington DC.  Riled up by the defiant words of the president himself, they stormed the U.S. capitol.  The videos we all watched on the news over and over of our own congress having to shelter in place because of violent insurrection have horrified us. 

            I had one church member say in a group conversation on Zoom, “I am sure Rob is going to talk about this Sunday.”  After she said that, how could I not?  Another member said she spent the day weeping as she watched the videos and digested the images of chaos and violence and disrespect of our democracy.  How could I not address this?

            What struck me on Friday is how easily the real issue comes to the fore when held alongside what’s happening in Haggai.  As we read last week, Haggai reports God’s frustration that His people were dragging their heels in rebuilding the temple.  Rebuilding the temple would put worship back at the center of Israelite community life.  Worship is the primary context for us to live in relationship with God.  There’s that word again, ‘relationship.’ Humans were created to worship God.  We were made for relationship with God. 

            After hearing Haggai, Governor Zerubbabel and High Priest Joshua obeyed the Lord.  These leaders led the people to worship God.  Haggai then writes that the remnant, not an overwhelming mass of people, but the small group who remained followed the governor and high priest’s lead.  They obeyed God. 

            God responded to this overture of worship and reverence from the people with a promise.  “I am with you,” God said.  This is one of the foundational assurances of the Bible.  It’s not a guarantee that all that’s wrong is fixed in the blink of an eye.  It’s the promise that the living God will not abandon us in the face of the storm.  Instead, God stays with us, holding us, even in the darkest hour.

            After that promise of presence, Haggai writes that the Spirit of Lord stirred up Governor Zerubbabel and High Priest Joshua and the people.  Stirred by God’s spirit, they got to work.  By the time Haggai’s protégé, the prophet Zechariah was writing his prophecy, the new temple was ready to be dedicated.  Stirred by God, the people did the work they previously thought was too hard. 

            Now, let this improbable temple building work stand side-by-side with what happened at the capital.  We need to be stirred up.  However, who is doing the stirring?  I don’t endorse candidates or political parties.  I know in our church we have Republicans, Democrats, independents, swing voters, and people who hate politics.  If you think you know my politics, you might be surprised. 

On Wednesday, a group of mostly white people, allowed themselves to be stirred up by Donald Trump to the point that they committed an act terrorism and insurrection.  If there is justice, every person who crossed the barricades will be tried and convicted of acts of terror on American soil.  Our senators and representatives, doing their jobs, representing us, were literally terrified by supporters of our president.

            We need to be stirred up, as the people in Haggai were stirred up, but by whom?.  Who motivates us to act?  Who we listen to shows what we do when we’re inspired.

            Campaigning, before he was ever elected, Donald Trump bragged about grabbing women and dragging them around by the vagina, but he used a much crasser term than vagina.  Also, he openly mocked a reporter who has a disability.  How, in the 21^st century, can we tolerate a leader, who mocks people with disabilities?  Tolerate?   We made him president and then followed his lead in making a mockery of our cherished democracy.

When white supremacists held a rally that turned deadly in Charlottesville, Virginia, President Trump insisted there were “good people” among the white supremacists, avowed racists.  He refused to condemn white supremacy.  Later in his presidency, when given the opportunity to do so, he again refused to condemn white supremacy, and he has embraced the endorsement and support of racists. 

He decried nations in Africa as “Shit-hole” countries.  I am sure someone is unhappy to hear a pastor say “shit” in the sermon.  I am equally sure the people offended by me did not utter a word of condemnation when the president said it.  I am quoting him.  I have visited more than one African country and have traveled to the continent 10 times as well meeting scores of Africans here in the U.S.  I don’t know where the president gets the idea that these are shit-hole countries.  Some of the most beautiful, proud, welcoming people I know and count as life-long friends are Africans who follow Jesus with a dedication I pray I could come close to matching.  They’re not shit-holes.  You’re wrong Mr.  President.  I know from experience.

If I said any of the things he said, I’d be fired, and should be.  The mess in Washington on Wednesday happened because too many of us have allowed ourselves to be stirred up this president.  Governor Zerubbabel and High Priest Joshua and the people were stirred up the Holy Spirit.

What does it look like when we are stirred up by the Spirit?  Temples get built.  Churches figure out how to do worship and small group and stay as safe as possible in the midst of a dangerous, contagious, worldwide pandemic.  Food pantries and Blood banks, happen at the church.  The church of Jesus Christ is known for doing good and loving people.

I see in our church people stirred up by the Spirit.  We are doing vital ministry while at the same time showing patience and discovering new ways to be God’s church.  Stirred by the Spirit, we call out evil.  What happened at the capital last week, a mob following the whims of a foolish, self-serving, self-promoting president, was evil.  We name it. 

Stirred up by the Spirit, we welcome people of different political stripes and viewpoints.  We come together in the death and resurrection of the one we all love and follow, our Lord, Jesus Christ. 

Stirred up by the Spirit, we stand in confidence, knowing that our God is with us, we are His people, He secures our future, and He holds us in His arms.  No politics, no event, no pandemic can disrupt our relationship with God in Christ.  That defines who we are.

Church, we exist to worship and serve Jesus, and to share his gospel.  We love others, follow him, spread hope, and help people God sends to us find their own way into relationship with him.

AMEN 

"A Warning" (Jeremiah 1:9-10; 9:1-16)

 

"A Warning" (Jeremiah 1:9-10; 9:1-16)

Sunday, November 1, 2020

(The Sunday before election day in the race between President Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden)

Watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwXuHk9JGbs

 

            How does God feel about politics in America?  Sit with that question.  What is God thinking?  Our North Carolina senate race has been rocked by a sex scandal.  Our governor’s race is a referendum on how we’ve handled the Coronavirus.  And what can we say about the presidential race, so filled with strife, anger, and hatred?

            I heard a word from God.  At least, that’s how it felt.  Not some secret message.  What I heard is there for anyone willing to open the Bible, read Jeremiah, and listen and honestly face what God has put before us. 

            Jeremiah prophesied in the 6^th century BC in Jerusalem, the capital of Judah.  God’s people faced annihilation.   A century and a half earlier, the mighty Assyrian empire had all but destroyed the northern kingdom, Israel.  Broadscale intermarrying with people the Syrians relocated diluted the genealogical ties to the original 10 northern tribes of Abraham’s descendants. 

            By Jeremiah’s day, Judah remained as the nation of God’s chosen people.  Babylon had taken Assyria’s place as the world super power and was about to overrun Judah.  Jeremiah prophesied that the end was inevitable.  His words ring ominously in our time, if we will listen.  I don’t think some other nation will overrun the United States as Babylon did to Judah, nor do I think the United States is a chosen nation as Judah was.  America is more like Babylon, a super power imposing its will on everyone else.  But Jeremiah’s words still speak because God is as angry at our self-centered arrogance.  God allows sin to run its course and sin always ends up hurting humankind.  

            Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann writes, “I believe the great pastoral reality for the church in the United States is that we are watching the termination of the world we have loved too long and lost – a world of Western, white, male, heterosexual domination, privilege, and certitude.”[i]  Of course there’s nothing particularly good or bad about being white, male, heterosexual or western, but there’s something unjust about a world where all those qualifiers gives a person a slew of unfair advantages.  People of color, women, and others are tired of bowing before white male dominance. 

Brueggemann’s prescription for pastoral response to the changes in America, came in his book about Jeremiah, written in 2006.  Since he wrote that, we’ve had a white woman as a vice presidential candidate, a black man elected president, a white woman was one of the presidential candidates four years ago, and on Tuesday, if you haven’t voted already, one of your vice-presidential choices is a woman who is both African American and Asian American. 

Termination of a world is the way Brueggeman described the reality pastors must address.  Sinking into Jeremiah’s message, we see the issue is much deeper than the race or gender of our leaders.  We are a materialistic society who relegates God to the margins.  We are hedonistic society whose god, as Paul writes in Philippians is our bellies (our craven appetites for excess, sex, and pleasures we often have not earned).  We are an impatient people who want what we want, and we want it now.  We see God as a possession here to serve us, not as the Lord we must obey.  When God allows the consequences that result from our collective sin, pain and darkness far worse than that wrought by the Coronavirus pandemic follow. 

Termination of a world is how Brueggemann put it.  God’s warning in Jeremiah 9 – I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a lair of jackals … a  desolation – is God’s warning to American Christians regardless of who wins on Tuesday.  God’s disgust at how easily we disregard His holiness eclipses the noise of Trump v. Biden. 

Thus paying attention to the real issue, we listen to Jeremiah 1:9-10.  “Now I have put my words in your mouth,” God tells his prophet.  “See, today I appoint you over nations … to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.  Pluck up.  Tear down.  Build.  Plant. 

You’ll hear pastors and religious leaders desperately implore us to pray for this election, the most important one of our lifetimes.  Such rhetoric is nothing more than a cheap fear tactic used to cajole us into praying for victory for the candidate that religious leader supports.  In every election, someone, in a voice dripping with desperation, declares it the most important of our lives. Jeremiah and the other prophets of God did not tie their hope to political leaders. 

The prophets spoke hope, but “their hope was not grounded in their sense that things are going to get better, nor in the notion that things were evolving in a desired direction.  Therefore, they were not … undone with things got worse.”[ii]  We will see things get worse.  Count on it.  However, we need not get rattled.  Our hope is the same as that of the prophets – in the new world given as a gift from God.  We have a clearer picture of it than Jeremiah did because we know God’s promises are fulfilled in Jesus, regardless of who lives in the White House.

Jeremiah’s charge from God: pluck up!  He will be the play-by-play commentator calling the action as the structures, conventions, and institutions of our time are uprooted. 

This is God’s warning.  In Jeremiah 9 God spoke to his chosen people, the ancient descendants of Jacob, those who lived under kings in the line of David.  With the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, and the exile, it appeared the old covenants with Abraham and with David were ended.  God addresses this in Jeremiah 9:12. “’Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness, so that no one passes through?’  And the Lord says, ‘Because they have forsaken my law that I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, or walked in accordance with it.’”  God will uproot the ground our society stands on for we have forsaken His ways. 

Pluck up.  Tear down.  Understand that God does not relish the state of things.  Listen in Jeremiah 9:1 as God speaks his sadness. “O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!”  Can God love us, and at the same time allow us to fall into destruction?  Have you ever loved an addict, done all you could to help them, and then watched as their life descended into hell anyway, in spite of your love and your attempts to help them find a new course? 

God’s warning is full of God’s deep sadness when He sees us suffer what comes of the sins we commit.  It has to mean something when we say ‘God is love.’ It has to mean something to people in pain, even when they’ve brought that suffering on themselves.  “If the love of God is more than an empty metaphor, then the suffering of God must also be regarded as real.”[iii]

Pluck up.  Tear down.  Societal destruction.  God’s sorrow at our suffering – suffering we’ve brought on ourselves. What else did God tell Jeremiah?

Build. God tells Jeremiah.  Prepare.  Plan.  Remember, Jeremiah was quite certain.  Destruction and exile are coming.  Your life will never be the same.  But, through prayer and study, learning to see with God’s eyes, we get ready for what’s coming, whatever it may be.  Whatever happens next – extended pandemic, backlash from the election results, or some new horror we haven’t anticipated, none it compares with the God who loves us.  That’s why, with confidence, we can say, we meet God even in dark days.  When every warning comes true, we know God is in it, God loves, and is with us.

In chapter 29, Jeremiah tells the exiles, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you … and pray to the Lord on its. Behalf” (29:7).  After Tuesday, we will have the same calling that we had before President Trump was elected.  Again, from Philippians 3:20, “our citizenship is in heaven.”  We vote and try to be good neighbors, but this is all temporary.  We seek the welfare of this city because of the love God showed us as Jesus hung on the cross, dying for our sins.  We build lives here, we glorify God, and we invite our neighbors to put their faith in Him.

The warning ends as all God’s warnings do; with the hope of a new day.  Pluck up.  Tear down. Build.  And finally, plant.  Our culture is not moving farther away from God, or sinning more egregiously.  We are just more open about our rejection of the Lord than ever before.  As many people rejected God in prudish Puritan New England as today, but today, we tattoo our idolatry on our arms. 

As Jesus declared himself sent to the lost (Mk 2:17), so too are we.  Having accepted God’s assessment of the world, having built up lives of faith within the fallen world, we then go to the world as God’s messengers, witnesses, telling the truth.  God is love, Jesus is Lord, and if people turn to him, they will receive forgiveness of sins and new life in his name. 

If you haven’t already, vote.  Handle your relationships with friends and neighbors whose vote is different from yours with grace, and kindness, humility.  We’re followers of Jesus.  Our calling is about helping people become followers of the king.  No matter who the president is, we answer that call.  We love others, follow Jesus, and share the hope of the gospel.

AMEN

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[i] Brueggemann, W. (2006), Like Fire in the Bones: Listening for the Prophetic Word in Jeremiah, Fortress Press (Minneapolis), p.27.

[ii] Brueggemann, p.182.

[iii] Craigie, Kelly, and Drinkard (1991), Word Bible Commentary: Jeremiah 1-25, Word Books (Dallas), p.145.

Identified with Christ

 

         To be identified with Christ is to embody specific attributes.  The New Testament enumerates many of these traits in “virtue lists” found throughout.  For instance: 2 Timothy 2:24-25.  “The Lord’s servant must be … kind to everyone, an apt teacher, patient, [and] correcting opponents with gentleness.  The Christian does not have the option of withholding kindness or opposing others harshly.  Kindness and gentleness are mandated by the word.

          Of course, we see people claiming the title ‘Christian’ lash out in judgment, villainizing those who disagree with them.  Such behavior disregards the New Testament these very Christians would herald as the “word of God.”  Those guilty of withholding kindness and gentleness clearly are not actually connected to Jesus, who gently welcomed the tax collector, the prostitute, the physically disabled, and the morally corrupt.  Why did Jesus treat his opponents so differently that those today, who claim to be his followers?

          Similarly, look to 1 Peter 3:9: “all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and humble mind.”  Again, the label ‘Christian’ inherently calls for full submission to the dictates of the word.  Christians don’t have the option of being unsympathetic, arrogant, or rough.  To speak and act in a bullying, abrasive manner is to reject the Bible’s authority. 

          Numerous other virtue lists round out the picture of one who truly follows Jesus.  For better understanding, begin reading in Matthew chapter 1 and keep at it through Revelation chapter 22. 

          Christians in America stand at a five-way (at least) intersection where divergent COVID-19 responses, reckoning with generational & structural racism, bipolar presidential politics, instant feedback on social media, and one’s personal identity all collide.  In this maelstrom of words and assaults, what is the Christian’s posture?  We know from the virtue lists: when attacked or offended, we are to be humble, kind, gentle, and sympathetic.

          Consider the specific arena of Facebook.  Is Jesus defiantly posting memes to assert his rights?  Well, he never asserts his rights in the Bible, so why would he do so on Facebook?  And if he wouldn’t why do his followers?  To act in a way differently than Jesus, indicates the individual isn’t really following him. 

          Zero in on the example of someone who feels offended, hurt, or scared.  Does one respond to someone else by defending one’s own right to say or do or post what made the other feel offended, hurt, or scared?  If so, that one isn’t communicating in the way Jesus did, and thus is not a ‘little Christ,’ even if he or she claims the moniker ‘Christian.’  A black person feels threatened or hurt; the white person tells the black person not to make a deal out of it; or, not to see race in everything; or, to get over it and move on.  Obviously that white person is not walking in the way of Jesus and thus is not ‘Christian’ regardless of his or her claims. 

          To the black person who feels wounded, Jesus says, “I proclaim release to the captives” (Luke 4:18b); and, “I will give you rest” (Mt. 11:28); and, “my peace I give to you; do not let your hearts be troubled” (Jn. 14:27).   Jesus welcomes all who are broken, all who are repentant, and all who seek truth.  Jesus will give success to the white or Asian or black person who strives to embody kindness, gentleness, welcome, and the other virtues.  He will guide the lost and fill the hungry.  Christians don’t need to be super saints; they only need to die to self and live in Christ.

          Christians embodying Christ will affect the community; working through His church, Jesus will bring change to the way people interact.  But that won’t happen when Christians are more caught up in defending their identities and asserting their rights than in exhibiting his holy gentleness and kindness.  When Christians, on Facebook and other platforms, act as combatively as anyone else in society, they actively suppress the positive force of the Gospel.  Christians acting like the world instead of like Christ hurt the world as much as anything.

          Christian reader, does the Bible have authority?  Are Christians bound to live by the word?  Do Christians understand that choosing to walk in the way of Christ means one chooses to relate to others gently, humbly, kindly, and sympathetically, even when those others are obnoxiously confrontational?  To find out if Christians understand these things, look at their Facebook posts and Tweets. Look for Christ in what people express in their social media communications.  Holding Facebook up to the virtue lists will reveal who is identified with Christ.