Time to Rebuild

Time to Rebuild         

A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Randy K. Hammer, June 27, 2021

Haggai 1:1-8; reading from Diana Butler Bass, Christianity after Religion

  What could a sixth-century BCE Hebrew prophet named Haggai possibly have to say to United Church members in 2021?  Well, I’m glad you asked that question.  So let me acquaint you a bit with the prophet Haggai and what was going on at the time that he spoke.

Judah, or the southern kingdom of Israel, had fallen to the Babylonians in 587 or 586 BCE.  Jerusalem had been overrun and destroyed, including the beloved Jewish Temple.  Many of the residents of Jerusalem and Judah had been carried off as exiles to Babylon. 

But in 539 BCE, Persia rose to power, and the King of Persia permitted the Jewish exiles in Babylon to start returning to Jerusalem.  So, for several years the exiles who had returned to Jerusalem began rebuilding their homes, lives, and livelihoods. 

But almost two decades after the first exiles returned, the Jewish Temple still lay in ruins.  Nothing had been done to rebuild the Temple, the focal point and center of Jewish worship.  Many people kept saying, “The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.”   So, the prophet Haggai felt a message burning in his soul.  Haggai’s ministry only lasted a few months, and the book bearing his name is a short two chapters.

But the brief message Haggai proclaimed was powerful in its effects.  And so, this is what Haggai said: “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house [the Jewish Temple] lies in ruins?” (1:4 NIV).  Haggai contends that even though the people were working hard and striving to earn a living, they were getting nowhere.  It was like they were earning wages and putting the coins they earned in a bag or purse with holes.  Then twice he says, “Give careful thought to your ways” (1:5, 7).  He urged the residents of Jerusalem to go to the mountains and cut timber and begin rebuilding the Lord’s house so that the community would once again have a place to gather and worship.

Well, fortunately we as members of the United Church are not faced with having to rebuild – physically speaking – our place of worship, this beloved Chapel on the Hill.  But I think we can extrapolate some relevant words of inspiration from Haggai nonetheless.

For instance, the time has come to rebuild commitment to the work of the United Church.  One of the issues Haggai faced was a lack of commitment to the Jewish Temple and Jewish religion.  Everyone was focused upon their concerns, homes, and affairs, and commitment to their communal concerns was a low priority.

During the 13 months that we were not having regular services, it was only natural that commitment to church, church programs, and church finances would wane somewhat, among some members and non-member attendees at least.  Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.  And some may be tempted to decide that after being out of church for 13 months, they can live without it.  Such may be true, not only for our church, but for many churches.

So, Haggai prods all of us to consider our ways and reexamine our commitment to the ministry and programs of the United Church.  Like the residents of Jerusalem, we, too, might find that as we focus upon our daily concerns, that if we leave out our commitment to the church or “things of God,” there is something missing in our lives.

Second, Haggai says to us it is time to rebuild the spirit of community.  In my sermon-report on our first Sunday back on May 2, I stated that the United Church community remained in-tack.  But as I have observed these past eight weeks, I sense that in some respects we need to get to know one another again, learn to listen to one another, and intentionally seek to rebuild beloved community.

Changes had already started to occur in the American Church prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.  As religious commentator Diana Butler Bass wrote in her book, Christianity After Religion, published in 2012, “Christianity, especially Christianity in the United States, is changing and . . . people are questioning patterns of faith and belief. . . .  In the last decade, Christianity in the United States has undergone tectonic shifts that have altered the nation’s landscape” (pp. 7, 12).

Well, as I stated, those words were written long before Covid-19.  But this pandemic, many agree, has added to the tectonic shifts in the way that many people think and feel about church, faith, commitment, what it means to belong (or not), and so on.  Many churches, I conjecture, will need to rebuild a sense of community and belonging.  Truly it is, as that great hymn states it, speaking metaphorically:

“We would be building; temples still undone . . .

Waiting till love can raise the broken stone,

and hearts creative bridge the human rift.”

Third, it is time to rebuild our membership by reaching out to new members.  During the 13 months we were not meeting together, we lost – through death by natural causes – a number of our regular, every-week-attendee-members.  And we have lost touch with – or more correctly, they have lost touch with us – some of our families as well.  I think the situation is the same for many churches – we cannot expect to return to exactly where we were as far as membership and attendance numbers prior to Covid-19.  Things have changed somewhat.

That being the case, it is a good time to make a conscious and concerted effort to again reach out to new members who may be thinking about a new church home and who would find the United Church to be that comfortable home they are looking for.  It is a good time for our current members to “talk up” the United Church, to get the word out,  among friends, family, neighbors, and other acquaintances who may not have and may be looking for a religious place of belonging.

Oh, by the way, Diana Butler Bass’s book, in addition to stating that Christianity is changing, is at heart a message of good news.  She says, quoting theologian Harvey Cox, “Faith is resurgent, while dogma is dying.  The spiritual, communal, and justice-seeking dimensions of Christianity are now its leading edge” (109-110).  That is good news, indeed, for a church like this United Church.

So, in the end, the message of Haggai comes round again, 2,500 years later.  The Covid-19 forced exile seems to have passed, for now anyway.  As exiles from the beloved Chapel on the Hill, we have returned.  And now it is time to rebuild – rebuild our personal commitment, rebuild our spirit of beloved community and sense of belonging, and rebuild our membership.  May it be so.  Amen.

1Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening, New York: HarperOne, 2012, pp. 47-48, 203, 204.