Celebrating in the Rubble Pile - Haggai 1:15-2:9

About 70 years before Haggai gave this message, the country of Israel was absolutely and utterly destroyed. The nation had been conquered. Everything of value was taken away. The sacred items were taken out of the temple and carted off as war booty. The Temple itself was completely demolished, not one stone remained upon another. The people were also carted off and taken into exile. They were forced to live out their lives as foreigner in a foreign land.

Then, about 20 years prior to this passage, the King of Persia allowed the Israelites to return to Israel. This was cause for much rejoicing. It had been about 70 years. These people had spent their whole lives dreaming about returning home. They were exhilarated. They joyfully made the journey back to Israel. The world had been set right. They were going home. The sun was brighter, the bird songs more lovely, and the breeze smelt sweeter; well that was until they cleared that last hill which separated them from the land of beauty and bounty of which they had spent their lives dreaming and did not see the lush rolling hill country fertile and bursting with the bounty of the land and beautiful cities which would cause those of their captors to pale in comparison. Instead, they saw barren fields over grown with soil which looked as if it would refuse to yield anything. They saw the burnt out shells of what were once their grand cities and rubble piles which had once been their ancestral homes. When they returned they found their homes and their cities destroyed by war. The land was barren and desolate, burned, un-worked and practically wild from being left for nearly a century. Nothing was as it had been.
Where there had once been a rich prosperous country there was just a broken shell of a country, which had been conquered, looted and left in a state of perpetual disrepair by the invading forces.

Not only that, even though they were allowed to return to their land it was still not their land; not really. They were no longer a self governing country; they were no longer a sovereign nation. Persia had placed a governor over them to rule them. As far as the government went being home was the same as being in exile. They were still under Persian control, living by Persian law, but now instead of living like this in a far off land, as they had while in exile, save they were doing it in their own land.

They arrived and everything was much the same as it had been right before they had left, completely and utter destroyed. So they did the only thing they could do, they started to rebuild. They set to work rebuilding their homes, their cities and working to make the ground fertile again.

About a month before Haggai brought this message, the people had begun to rebuild the temple. This was a long and arduous process. First, they had to clear out all the rubble, they had to sort the useable stones from the ones which were destroyed beyond repair, then they had reshape the usable stones and finally they had to find enough new ones, only they could they set to actually rebuilding the temple. Things were slow going and they were not making very much progress. It was nearly a month into the temple rebuild project and it still looked like a gigantic rubble pile.
You may have noticed that the passage gives a very specific date as to when Haggai gave this message to the people. The scripture tells us that the Word of the Lord came to Haggai on the 21st day of the month of Tishri, which would have fallen on Oct 17th of the year 520. This date is given because the day on which Haggai was given this message to take to the people of God is important. When Haggai stands up to address the people, it is the last day of the Festival of Tabernacles. The Festival of Tabernacles is a festival which always happens in the Fall, in mid to late October, even to this day. It is one of the most important festivals in the Jewish calendar. Festival of Tabernacles, also called the festival of booths or Sukkoth, is the one of the seven festivals which God instructs the people to celebrate. The festival of Tabernacles is the time during which the People of God celebrate how God had taken care of them in they traveled in the desert, as well as being a harvest festival thanking God for God’s provision, it occurred right after the last Harvest had been taken in. It was a time to celebrate how God had taken care of God’s people for yet another year, as well as celebrating the promise of how God would continue to take care of them for the year to come, which a bountiful harvest showed them.

I want you to imagine this scene with me. The people, they are standing in the midst of the rubble of what use to be the temple, they have started rebuilding the walls from reshaped/misshapen stones which they have collected, the walls are sad and sagging and in places they keep falling down, even as they attempt to rebuild them. Beyond the crumbling walls of the temple they can see the half built houses, which they put together in hast simply so they could have somewhere to live. These sad, sagging, structures make up the grand city of Jerusalem, which is then surrounded by a wall that is crumbling at its’ best and no-existent at it’s’ worst.

Here they are surrounded by the basically empty shell of the grand city, which once was, celebrating how God has taken care of them by providing a harvest and looking back celebrating how God had taken care of them all the years they wandered in the desert. But [pause] the problem is, there was no harvest; the crops had failed. There is no bountiful harvest for which they can celebrate God’s care and see the promise of how God will continue to care for them into the future.
Things look bleak. Here they are back in the land flowing with milk and honey and not only is there no milk and honey but there is no harvest, there is no temple and as they look at the rubble and destruction all around them they feel as if they are never going to be able to rebuild. It is hopeless.

In the midst of the destruction, in the midst of the rubble, in the midst of the hopelessness, God has a message for them. God says, “Remember the former glory of the temple?” The people look around them at the ram shackled temple all around them and it is really kind of hard to imagine the temple which had once stood in this very place. Very few, if any, of those who had been originally carted off into exile, would still be alive after being exiled for nearly 70 years. The people who stood in the ruins what was once the splendor of Solomon’s temple had merely heard about the temple and its former glory from their parents and grandparents. They had grown up on the stories of their homeland, Jerusalem, and the glory of the Temple which stood at its heart, much like many of us grew up on fairy tales.
None-the-less, God tells them to look at the temple around them. Thing is what was all around them looked like nothing. It was a rubble pile. It was not a temple. But where they saw a pile of rubble God saw a temple. God was calling them to see what God saw. To see with new eyes to catch a glimpse of the vision God had for them. Gods says to them, “I am with you – with me – there can be a temple where there is no temple.”

God is the God who made something out of nothing. God spoke the universe into existence after all. In the beginning there was nothing and God made something but here, here God at least has some stones from the former temple with which to begin.

In the midst of the hopelessness Haggai is given a message of hope, “God is with you and when God is with you can do what seems impossible. With God with you, you can rebuild this temple. Not only that, but just as the nations carted everything which had once made up the grand glory of the temple; all the gold, all the lamps, all the plates, goblets, God says those same nations would come and fill the temple again. Not only will the temple be rebuilt but it will be even better than it was before – God will take the rubble and make it even more beautiful and more spectacular than before.

Side note – Eventually they do rebuild the temple and in the end the temple which Herod would complete, which is an refurbishment of the one they were now building, was bigger, and by some estimations better and more spectacular than Solomon’s temple.

Too many times our lives can be compared to the rubble in which the Israelites were standing. And here we are, on yet another Sunday, called to rejoice in who God is and how God takes care of us. But sometimes when we look at the rubble in our lives, it is hard to see God. It is hard to see how God is taking care of us. We look around at the devastation, at the chaos, at the pain and the heartache and we cannot see how God could be a part of this at all. We look around and simply can’t see God. The bills are mounting. Our health or the health of those we love is not good. The children don’t always behave as well as we would like. No matter how often we do it, or how hard we try to stay on top of it the laundry seems to always need to be done. Things at work are not going well. Our relationships are not what we want them to be, it seems as if our spouse is slipping away from us. We are not as close to our parents or our grown children as we would like. Perhaps those relationships seem beyond repair. There is death and brokenness all around us. So many things in our lives are going wrong. Our lives are torn apart. We are surrounded by rubble, chaos and destruction. And, it is hard to celebrate God’s provision for us when it is hard to see how God is providing.

But God has a message for us this morning! God is calling for us to remember, to remember how God has provided in the past. God has a message of hope, hope for us as we find ourselves in the hopelessness of our lives, “Have you heard the stories of what I have done for other people? Do you remember how I have provided for you in the past? Can you see what I have done before? Can you see what is around you?”

Your life is not what you had hoped it to be, it is not how you wanted it to be. You had a dream of what it would be. You followed God and thought you were following God to the land flowing with milk and honey and instead you find yourself here (where ever here is). And here is not what it was crack up to be. You look around you and all you can see is chaos and destruction. Everything is a mess. It is a pile of rubble. So many things are going wrong. You feel like there is no way out. You are wondering how things can ever be good again.

God sees your life. God sees the pain, the hurt, the concerns, the rubble and the junk pile. But God wants you to know that God is a God who can take the junk and the rubble pile you feel your life is and turn it into something spectacular. God promises to be with you in the chaos, in the hurt. God promises to stand with you in the rubble, in the junk pile. God will be with you and work alongside of you as you rebuild your life. It won’t be easy. It may even collapse in on itself again. But God can assure you that someday, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow you will look around you and see your life as the glorious thing God sees.

With God with you, spectacular things will happen. With God with you, even God can make the impossible possible. You might be standing in the middle of a mess but know that even in the mess God is with you. Even when things look a bleak and bad as they can possibly be, God is with you and God promises that even though things might look insurmountable now, things will get better – take heart– God is with you, God has been with you and God will continue to be with you.