“Sing to the Lord a new song,” the
psalmist says, and sometimes it’s hard to recognize how terrifying that command
can be. The moment we’re called to sing a new song – to change direction, to do
something different than we’re used to – is often profoundly difficult. For me,
one of those moments came fifteen years ago, when I was on a mission trip in
Rocky Mount, North Carolina.It was a Sunday morning and my youth
group was worshipping at the church that would be hosting us during the week to
come. They were commissioning their seminary intern to go accept the call he
had just received to pastor his first church. As they laid their hands on him
and prayed, something deep inside me said, “You
do that.”
This was a shocking and totally
unexpected thought for me. You see, my first memory of being in a church is
looking up at my pastor from one of the front pews (my parents always made us
sit in the front pews) and thinking, “Who in their right mind would ever want to do that?”Hearing that voice felt like being in
an earthquake.
“Once again, in a little while, I
will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land.” The Hebrew
word for “shake” in Haggai 2:6 comes from the same root as the Hebrew word for
“earthquake.” The word is also used metaphorically in Isaiah 14:16 – “Is this
the man who made the earth tremble, who shook
kingdoms?” There it describes the fall of the king of Babylon. So this word can
describes the cataclysmic upheaval of the ground upon which we stand or the
institutions upon which we dearly depend. Haggai isn’t just talking about an earthquake; this is a heavenquake – a
worldquake. Everything changes – nothing can ever be the same.
And if that sounds frightening, let
me just say that I see this as a passage of hope – a response to the people’s
despair. Haggai preached this message during the Feast of Booths in the year
520 BCE. It had been more than 60 years since the Temple had been destroyed and
the people had been carried away into exile. Now, more than half a century
later, many had returned and the Temple was starting to be rebuilt. It should
have been a time for celebration, but there were some, as Haggai points out,
who thought the current rebuilding efforts were a disgrace.
Haggai couldn’t agree more. “How does
[this Temple] look to you?” he asks rhetorically. “Is it not in your sight as
nothing?” Compared to the good old days of Solomon’s Temple, the pathetic
structure paled in comparison. Even though there couldn’t have been many in the
community who were old enough to actually remember Solomon’s Temple, the
stories of its splendor had only grown more and more fantastic with every year
spent waiting for the House of the Lord to be rebuilt.
Looking upon the meager
work that had been done so far didn’t so much remind the people of God’s
presence with them as it reminded them how dismal their lives were, how bleak
their hopes for the future.
Things looked bad and there was no
end in sight. Then, one day, as they celebrated a feast that had long ago lost
its meaning for them, God spoke to the people through Haggai, and this is what
they heard:
“Be strong! Be strong! Be strong!
Work! Fear nothing!” Of course, there was a little more to the message than
that, but at the end of the day, after the feasting and celebration, after the
families had returned to their homes, after the last oil lamp had been turned
down and everyone was tucked in bed, I have to believe it was those words that kept
at least some of them awake.
“Be strong!” How it must have rung in
their ears! God was telling these people – these pathetic people, who had just
returned from exile in a foreign land – to be strong. Haggai proclaimed that not
only would things get better, but they would be better than they had ever been
before. In that moment, the earth shook; nothing could ever be the same.
 |
| Jesus and the Sadducees |
In the reading from Luke, we hear a
story in which Jesus causes the earth to shake for some of his listeners. He is
confronted by some particularly obnoxious and sarcastic Sadducees, who hope to
stump him on the issue of the resurrection. (In case you hadn’t noticed, trying
to stump Jesus is not easy and rarely goes well for those who try.) “So,
Teacher,” they begin. “Say you’ve got this woman, right? And she gets married,
but her husband dies. And then she gets married again. And again and again and
again – you get the picture – anyway she gets married seven times, and then
finally she dies. So, Teacher, when this woman is ‘resurrected’, who’s she
gonna be married to? ‘Cause remember she got married seven times.”
Jesus manages to avoid directly
answering their question while also saying something incredibly wise and
profound. What he says is that they’re looking at things all wrong; they’re
trying to conceive of the infinite in terms of the finite. There is a
fundamental problem with their logic, Jesus explains, “For God is not God of
the dead, but of the living; for to God, all of them are alive.”It is moments like these when we have
no choice but to do as the psalmist says and “Sing to the Lord a new song,”
because our old ones don’t quite fit anymore. The earth shakes beneath our feet
and it seems the whole world is coming down around us. It may last just a
moment, but that moment seems like it will go on forever. When the trembling
ceases we look around and see that we have come through the ordeal unscathed,
but not necessarily unchanged.
And the Bible is a seismograph, a
written record of the ups and downs of God’s people throughout the ages. If
there’s one thing we know beyond a shadow of a doubt, it’s that God’s people
live on some kind of spiritual fault line, the earth constantly shifting under
their feet.
Sometimes earthquakes inspire us to
action, like in the story of Esther – a Jewish woman who marries a gentile
king. When her uncle discovers a plot by the king’s right-hand man to
exterminate the Jews, he pleads with Esther to help them. She isn’t sure at
first – she’d be risking her own life. Then comes the rumbling. “Who knows?”
her uncle asks. “Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as
this.”
There are times when the ground
trembles as we realize who we’ve become. Take David, the great king, from whose
line Jesus was born. While he was king, he gets another man’s wife pregnant and
then has that man sent to the front lines to die in battle. Nathan, the
prophet, confronts him with a parable about a wicked rich man. David is so
angry about what the rich man did that he doesn’t notice the ripples in the
water set out at the table. “You are that wicked man!” Nathan cries.
For some characters in the Bible,
their earthquakes come in a private moment, catching them completely off guard.
Mary, a young girl, engaged to be married to a carpenter, gets a visit from an
angel, who says, “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will
name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High,
and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.” And after
asking her question and getting her answer, Mary rises up from the rubble
surrounding her and says, simply, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it
be with me according to your word.”
The ground is always shaking as we
read the stories of God’s people. And the ground still shakes today. If you
don’t believe me, ask the man who’s just gotten the test results back from the
doctor. Ask the graduate who’s just landed her first job out of college. Ask
the person who’s just purchased an engagement ring, or the woman looking at the
little plus on a pregnancy test, or the man who’s just buried his wife. They
will all tell you of the upheaval life brings – good and bad – at those momentous
times.
Perhaps there’s nothing in your life
that seems momentous, nothing you expect to result in upheaval. Perhaps you
feel comfortable with your routine. I’m sorry to say, it doesn’t mean you’re
safe. Earthquakes strike those just stepping out to take a phone call or smoke a
cigarette or catch a taxi. They come just as easily when you’re sipping orange
juice at the breakfast table or slipping under the covers at bedtime.
In painting this picture for you, I
don’t want you to see God as some kind of cosmic prankster, shaking things up
just to keep them interesting. I don’t want you to think I’m saying that God
sends us blessings or tragedies in order to test or reward or punish or teach
us. To be honest, I’m not really sure what causes these seismic disturbances,
and that’s not really the point. The point is not what happens or what caused
it to happen; it’s what you do when
it happens.
I don’t know when your next
earthquake will come or how. I don’t know if it will come with tears or
laughter, with shouting or with song. I don’t know if you’ll even realize it
when it comes, or if you’ll only see it in retrospect, as the aftershocks
strike. But I do know that I want you to keep your eyes and ears open, because this
next one could be the big one.
So be strong! Be strong! Be strong!
Work! Fear nothing! For once more, in a little while, God will shake the
heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land.
And praise God because everything –
everything – will change.
Amen.
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