“You scatter bags of seed, but you bring in so little; eat, but aren’t full; drink, but not drunk; clothed, but cold; earn your wages, but your pockets are full of holes. This is what the Holy One of the Hosts of Heaven says, ‘Be mindful of your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down wood; rebuild my house and honor me.’ So says the Holy One” (Haggai 1:6-8).
If this sounds familiar, it’s set in the same time period as the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Haggai and Zechariah, we’re told, speak during the period following the return from captivity—a time when the economy is in shambles, the land reluctant to produce enough to eat.
The writings from this period are the ones, out of the whole of Scripture, that feel the most distant to me. Their declarations of God’s desires seem out of harmony with the One who in the Psalms expressed no desire for sacrifices, no need to dwell in houses built by human hands. Mercy, love, compassion are the things we are meant to cultivate and tend, not rituals and structures.
Yet, here is Haggai who claims to speak for God. And from his lips comes the command to concentrate the limited resources of the land into rebuilding the Temple. While people struggle to maintain shelters sound enough to protect them in storms and seasons, God wants them to put all that aside and spend their energy on rebuilding what the Holy One refers to as “my house.”
Practically, there is good reason to rebuild the Temple. For those who have grown up with the stories their parents told them of the former glory of this place, it is an object of hope. Restoring it to operations is a means of restoring their sense of the future.
Of course, it’s also a way to try and return to the way things were in the time before.
Something revolutionary happened during the Babylonian exile in the Jewish faith. Unlike many ancient peoples who, in a foreign land, found themselves cut off and separated from their gods, the people of Judah found that their God had come with them. The Holy One, it seemed, wasn’t limited by borders or structures: the Divine, it turned out, was everywhere.
This can seem strange to us in early-twenty-first-century America, but the concept of a God whose power and influence extended beyond the defined borders of the nation or the empire was uncommon. Gods reigned over regions, dwelt only in their temples.
Why, then, with this new understanding in hand, would there be such a desire to rebuilt a symbol of this nationalistic god? Why would committing resources to this project be paramount over stabilizing the economy, assisting those impacted by these difficult times, and building upon this radical new understanding of the God they followed?
Could it be that after the upheaval and uncertainty of the years of exile, when everything was so strange, they wanted something, someone with which they were familiar? Maybe despite the realization of the depth and width and breadth of the Divine all they really wanted was something small, enclosed, and safe? Perhaps, after everything, they just wanted to go back to normal again.
And, there, find the god they used to know.
Holy One your loving character never changes; yet, we do. Change is so frightening, so unsettling that we often want to shelter in the familiar, return to what we’ve always known. Give us courage to embrace what we have learned about ourselves so that we might better know you.