Have you ever started a project – maybe home improvement, or setting up a budget, or planning for the future – and find there’s a piece of information you’re going to need to chase down?
And looking up that information reminds you of another task that’s due soon, so you complete that task quickly, which reminds you to get a different piece of information…
until you find yourself googling plumbing supplies for a whole different project you are not yet sure you’re even going to do at all, or browsing the internet to find exactly the rug you’ll need after your next home improvement project is done?
And then you look back at your original plan or budget and it looks hopeless to balance or solve or complete, and you just leave it open in the background, haunting you?
Well, that’s the situation God’s people are in when we hear the prophet Haggai talking to them this morning.
They’ve been in exile in Babylon for a generation or two – most of them were born in exile – and now Cyrus of Persia has conquered Babylon and sent them back to their ancient homeland and told them that they should rebuild God’s Temple in Jerusalem. The enormous, splendid Temple that King Solomon built with the wealth of nations, long ago.
It’s important – even essential – to the present and future of God’s people that they rebuild the Temple. That they create this center for community, this anchor for identity. Restoring the Temple to the beauty and power it held before the Babylonians smashed it is about reclaiming, establishing, their sense of self and purpose and nationhood as the people of God.
And here they are, a small group sent back and commissioned to rebuild the Temple, and no doubt they started out with focus and enthusiasm, but now…
They don’t have everything they need.
They need to put their own homes together, and get their own business organized so they can eat.
They have other stuff to do to get resettled after a generational exile disrupted them.
And they’ve gotten stuck on the Temple project. Maybe they’ve gotten as far as a half-restored wall, and rebuilt foundations, but it’s a massive project. Most of them don’t have any memory of – and no vision for – the splendor and solidity they are trying to build. And they don’t know where the time and materials are all coming from.
Have you ever been at that place in your life?
At work, or school, or in some community you’re part of? Or your family or personal life?
Just thinking about it, my shoulders feel heavy and I would like to go back to bed.
Enter Haggai, the prophet, speaking for God.
“Oh, hey there, look at that one row of stones you’ve laid. Doesn’t look like much, does it?
Yeah, I know.
Take courage!
Be strong, Zerubbabel and Joshua, you leaders!
Take courage, all you people!
Work because I am with you.”
I got you, God says to the people.
I promised I’d take care of you and set you up, I’m living among you now so that you have nothing to fear.
Count on me.
You do not have to pull this off alone.
And I’ll take care of providing the stuff you don’t have. The treasure of all nations and silver and gold and all the splendor that you aren’t going to find in poor, occupied, slowly recovering Jerusalem.
Phew!
My shoulders are relaxing again, a bit.
How many of us need to hear someone say that to us, now?
Need to hear God say, “I got you. Count on me. You do not have to pull this off alone.”
Maybe you’re managing a health or financial crisis in your family.
Maybe you’re looking at career change, or retirement, or some other life transition or celebration, and the road ahead just looks too steep, too rocky, to believe you can get to the end of it (so why try now?).
Maybe you really need to taste an old family recipe at Thanksgiving this year, but no one is selling one of the essential ingredients.
Maybe you want to figure out how to do something to help folks who are going hungry and working unpaid through the federal shutdown, and you keep running into dead ends of impenetrable and inadequate systems of support.
Maybe you’re trying to balance a budget that just won’t balance.
Maybe you just needed to get on a plane this weekend and you saw an hour-long security line and heard a voice in your head moaning “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”.
And you just need to hear God say, “I got you. Count on me. You do not have to pull this off alone.”
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Listen.
God’s got us.
The obstacles, and the tedium, and the friction of gritty daily evils and selfishness and greed are real, but God’s got us.
We aren’t doing this alone.
We’re not alone in any work of healing, community building, hope.
Any work of building practical supports for faith and trust and identity and mutual support. Not alone in any work of sharing vision, reaching toward God; any work of love.
Listen again, and hear God say, “I got you. Count on me.”
So let’s refocus. Let’s get back to work on this essential, core-community project.
I’ve got you, God says, so let’s quit distracting yourselves. Take heart, take courage, and get back to work on what matters.
Count on me. I’ve got what you need, even if you can’t see where or how. I’ll help you complete this work.
You’re not alone in this. God is with us. And you’ve got God’s people to support you, and God’s people looking to you, to support others; be part of the work.
God’s got us, friends.
Not so we can give up, and wait for God to just appear and change the world.
God’s got us so that we can do the work of building and restoration, whatever that work may be for us. So that we can care for one another. So that we can build hope, and share love, and grow, and make our community and our world a better, more healing, more awe-inspired, more joy-filled place. So that we can sense the presence of God, and share the love of God with the folks right around us who need it, too.
Today, God is calling us – as well as those ancient rebuilders of Jerusalem – calling you and me to take a deep breath, know that God is here among us, and refocus our hearts and our daily work.
Because we can do what God invites us to do.
With God among us, we can unknot the things we don’t know how to solve.
We can rebuild what was once destroyed.
We can overcome the challenges to make a home for God’s people in a broken world.
We can create beauty, and wonder, and hope and trust.
We can relieve our exhaustion, cut loose from despair, outlast our impatience, be braver than our fears.
Not instantly, but consistently.
Breathing in the presence of God with us,
leaning into God’s invitation to “Count on me,”
and taking courage, taking heart to work with God in the daily, ongoing, enormous and splendid, project of building hope, and healing, and love.
