The Temple

DAILY BYTE

In the Biblical story of Haggai, we find a prophet telling people that they must work. Now, this might not be the message you were hoping for today. Perhaps you're thinking - but I don't work - I'm retired. Or, I work too much. Or, I want to keep work at work and church at church. Or, I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing with my life!

Well, Haggai is not just telling the people to work for the sake of working, to work themselves into a grave, or to work for the sake of achieving for their own glory – to make themselves like gods. That is what workaholics do.

He is calling them to a specific task - and that task is rebuilding the temple.

Now to understand the importance of this, we need to know a few things about the time Haggai lived - He was a prophet to the people of God who were coming out of exile. The Babylonians had conquered Israel years before, forcing the people either to live in the rubble or to leave their homes, as well as the temple, behind in Jerusalem, moving to Babylon, which is where Iraq is today.

We may associate temples mostly with modern-day Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism, but to the ancient Israelites, the temple was also the place where God had dwelled in their land. The inner room of the temple was called the Holiest of Holies - the place where God lived. There were no windows, and it was shrouded with a veil because the presence of God was considered so powerful there that it was dangerous.

You can understand that the place God was supposed to inhabit would be considered the holiest place in the land – and the place that by its very presence, made everything else holy and sacred. But Israel's conquerers destroyed the temple - the place where God dwelled, and God's people were scattered, seemingly outside his presence.

Think about the feeling of alienation that you sense when it seems like you're away from the presence of God. It can be lonely and paralyzing and scary. It's what we often call a wilderness time - when we feel like we don't a have a home - like when the Israelites wandered in the wilderness before God led them to the promised land.

So, Haggai enters the picture not long after the ending of that wilderness time for the people of God. The Persians had conquered the Babylonians, and they decided to liberate the Israelites, allowing them to go back to Jerusalem – back to the promised land.

Thank God - they must have said - we can finally go back to the way things were before! But we all know that you can never go back to exactly the way things were in the past, and they returned home to find economic crisis, conflict with the people who had stayed behind, and a temple in ruins.

It must have been an intimidating time that may sound a bit familiar to us. It was a time when the people were faced with a choice. Do they continue to live in an attitude of wilderness and exile, refusing to rebuild the temple and recognize the presence of God in their midst? Or, do they work and rebuild?

We might ask ourselves the same questions. When we feel far away from God and when our life feels like a heap of rubble, we have a choice. We can continue to wander, or we can ask God how to rebuild. What does God desire to rebuild in your life?

FOCUS READING

Haggai 1:15b-2:4 (NRSV)

In the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai, saying: “Speak now to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people, and say, 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? Yet now take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the Lord; take courage, Oh Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts....