The Problem of Nostalgia and the Promise of the Future [Haggai 1:15b-2:9 - Proper 27C]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Haggai 1:15b-2:9

The Problem of Nostalgia and the Promise of the Future

Haggai.  We don’t talk a lot about the book of Haggai.  Actually it’s a bit of a stretch to even call it a book; it is only two chapters long.  You heard a fairly high percentage of the entire volume this morning.  Haggai really kinda puts the ‘minor’ in minor prophets.

It appears that even his career as a prophet was rather abbreviated.  The prophecies contained in the book bearing his name occur over just a four month period.  Besides a couple of name drops in Ezra there is no other mention of him in the Bible.  And even those two mentions give us nothing as far as biographical information is concerned.  It seems that God took out a short-term lease on him; hired him for a very specific task: to cheer on a building project.  Probably not exactly the orders he expected when he said, “Here I am, Lord.  Send me.” 

But this wasn’t just any old building project.  Haggai’s prophetic work was to encourage, although that word might be a bit gentle, strongly urge, maybe goad the governor and the high priest into rebuilding the Temple.

The Temple, you might remember, had been destroyed, along with Jerusalem, about 70 years earlier by the Babylonians.  At that time, the nation, at least those who survived the siege, were carried away into exile.  But when the Persians defeated Babylon, the king of Persia, Cyrus, allowed the exiles to return home.  And so after seven decades away, they returned.

But home was no longer home.  The returning exiles did not find the city they remembered in their best rose-colored daydreams.  Instead they returned to the scene of their worst nightmares.  The city was still a ruin.  And the house of God was nothing more than a pile of shattered stone.  Their arrival was a sobering reminder that there are wounds time simply cannot heal.

There was a lot of rebuilding to do.  And so the people, this scrappy remnant, began to rebuild.  They built houses.  They struggled to carefully build up a fragile economy.  But all the while, the Temple haunted them, untouched, disheveled, their former glory lying in state. 

And this is where Haggai comes in.  It was his job to convince the people and their leaders to get to work on the Temple.  It was his job to convince a people who didn’t have enough, to build a Temple that they could not afford.  There was not enough money; there were not enough resources; there were not enough willing hands or strong backs.  The only thing they had in sufficient supply were excuses – some of them very reasonable.  The prophet’s task was not an easy one.   

But he was good.  And the people build; they get to work.  They re-build the Temple – a new Temple.  And it is…well, it’s fine.  Actually, mostly, especially for those who remember the first Temple, it is disappointing.  Like the Stonehenge in This is Spinal Tap, the expectations were high and the final product did not quite deliver.  That is why Haggai says to the people, “Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory?  How does it look to you now?  Is it not in your sight as nothing?”

We find this story in Ezra chapter 3; it reads: “Many of the priests and Levites and heads of families, old people who had seen the first house [of God] on its foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this [new] house, though many [others] shouted aloud with joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping.” 

It is a stunning passage, one that profoundly captures the tension in this struggling community: the tension between hope and despair, between the intoxicating lure of nostalgia and the very real future into which God was calling them.  

It is not uncommon for one to long for an earlier age.  In fact these very memories – of David’s palaces and of Solomon’s Temple, their beautiful adornments reflecting glints of gold that danced like angels through the bustling shops of the lively town square on sunny days – were the only possessions those exiles carried with them into an alien land.  The hope that they might one day see them again is what kept those exiles alive.  The stories of past glory inspired a new generation to leave Babylon for the country of their parents.  And what they found was nothing like the stories.  And they were starting to realize those visions of that idealized past were just that: past.

And that is why the tears.  That is why the weeping.  That is why the prophet tells his discouraged audience to take courage.  Because the past is past.  And, you know, that is OK.

It was OK then.  And it is OK now.  But that can be a hard sell, because nostalgia is powerful.  We have all heard it; it has become the stuff of political campaigns: that sweet nostalgia for the simpler days of the 1950's, for example – with its slower pace of life, rudimentary technology, clean-cut television families, packed churches, and mama's good ol' home cookin'.  And with that earlier age, those kinder, gentler, friendlier people, those Mayberry people.  The good old days. 

There is always some truth in the nostalgia – lazy Sunday afternoons were actually a thing 60 years ago, when businesses were closed and no one walked around with a computer in their pocket; there were no text messages or voice mail and it took like a week to send someone a message and maybe week to get a response.  There are days when I look at my email inbox and every message cries out for an immediate response and traveling back in time sounds amazing.  But also the past is seldom as simple or golden as it is remembered.  The 1950's in our country were certainly not the good-old-days for everyone; for black people, for career-minded women, for gays and lesbians the 1950's were rough.  

Those returning exiles, they remembered the old days in Jerusalem as the good old days, but the years leading up to the Babylonian Exile were, according to the biblical witness, a time of panic, corruption, injustice, and terror.  The first Temple was still standing back then but it had been long neglected; it stood but as a forgotten relic.  I’m sure there were some good days, but it was hardly a golden age. 

Whether today or twenty-five centuries ago, people have always been intoxicated by the alluring scent of nostalgia, have always enshrined the past.  And it is not just a cultural phenomenon; it is a favorite pastime in the Church as well.

Many mainline churches today, Episcopal Churches, Lutheran Churches, United Methodist Churches, look back to the golden age of the 1950's and 60's.  Folks remember the full pews and the bursting Sunday School classes and the dearly beloved Pastor who led the church through those years of prosperity.  And they sigh.  And they long for what was.  It was the same thing during the Reformation and the Middle Ages and even in those earlier days, when the Church transitioned from persecuted to powerful: folks were always looking back to the time when the Church was something else, something better – when there was more money, more purity, more power, more promise, more people.

It is this nostalgia that the prophet challenges.  Because there is something about nostalgia that stands in direct opposition to the work that God wants to do in and through us now.  It can mutate into some kind of agnosticism – one that doubts whether God has any interest in our future, one that believes God is done with us, that God only worked in the good old days.

Like the prophet I refuse to believe that.  The prophet reminded those who wept for the past, that the God of Exodus, the God who split the Red Sea, was with them.  That same God was with them.  The God who filled the old Temple, that same God would fill the new Temple too.  The building might be smaller and less impressive but the God is the same – and that is what matters.

I believe that.  Do you believe that?  I believe that the God of the Bible is still moving in our midst.  I believe that when I look at the numbers from the Episcopal Church office and they show decline across the country.  I believe that when another church runs out of money or people and closes the doors.  I believe that when I read about another mass shooting in our country.  I believe that when I am overwhelmed by another report on climate change.  I believe that when I think about the devils that plague our sisters and brothers: isolation and despair, anxiety and fear, violence and hatred.  There are reasons to weep when we consider our present and our future.  But the God of the Exodus, the God of Elijah, the God of the Incarnation, the God of the Resurrection, the God of Pentecost is with us.  God is with us now and God will be with us in the future. 

Our God is not nostalgic.  Our God is a God of hope.  Our God is not intimidated by the challenges of our time or by the uncertainties of our future.  Our golden age is not in some distant past – because our God is still dreaming big dreams.  We serve a God who says, in our Haggai passage, “the latter splendor shall be greater than the former.”  We serve a God who dreams of a future in which swords are beat into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks; a future in which war is learned no more.  We serve a God who promises that there will come a time when sorrow and pain cease to exist, when death shall be no more.  That is the God we serve.  Our God is still dreaming dreams – big, impossible dreams – and daring us to expect those audacious dreams to come true.  Even more, God is foolish enough to believe that we can help make those dreams become the reality in this world.  God is daring us to live as if the golden age is yet to come, to work for an impossible future, the future of God’s dreams.  You wanna know what hope looks like?  The God of the Exodus, the God of Elijah, the God of the Incarnation, of the Resurrection, of Pentecost actually believes that the best is yet to come.  And wants you to believe that too.  Can you believe it?