Well, who doesn’t? The poet has said, “Grow mold along with me: the best is yet to be!” (sorry, Liz!) Some of what keeps life going is the anticipation that the Present Darkness/Boredom/Captivity will someday come to an end. Soon. One of my friends usually greets me with “How’s it going?”, an acknowledgement that today’s in process and not at a dead stop. Taken separately, the scriptures for the coming weekend could stand by themselves; indeed, their first reading seems to yield no coherence whatsoever. Yet something impels me to link them under the concept of The Journey.
Haggai, who spoke in or about 520 BC, was one who returned from the Babylonian Exile when the Persians sent them “home”. But home wasn’t as they had remembered: time and neglect had turned the old sites of prosperity into ruin, including the Temple. Alas! The Golden Days of our ancestors will never be the same… “Get real”, says Haggai.”The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts; and in this place I will give prosperity, says the Lord of hosts.” (2:9) Is this a political message for those today who want to turn back the clock and “make America great (?) again”?
The household congregations in Thessalonia were quite concerned about Christ’s Second Coming. Did we miss something? Have we slept through the revolution? Today’s pew-sitters have pretty much dismissed this idea, and have little anticipation of an actual apocalypse, despite the movies of Summer. The author begs the people “not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here.” (II 2:2) There’s more to the passage, which dances around a bit–but the benediction, vv.16 & 17, is wonderful! And timeless…
The Sadducees said there was no afterlife. Live for today, because when we’re gone, we’re GONE. (That’s why they’re SAD, You See…) So some smarties among them asked Jesus about the wife whose husband died, thus his brother dutifully married her. And then HE died–and all his brothers. All in all, this hypothetical Typhoid Mary outlived seven husbands! So in the resurrection, they chortled, whose wife will she be? (Luke 20:27-38) Jesus explained that marriage is an Earthly custom, and doesn’t apply in heaven, no matter what Country songs say. You who wish to spin out the bit about Something Better should be advised to proceed with caution!
And so we wait: for Friday, for Christmas, for the Wells Fargo wagon… Hope, being the substance of things not seen, drives us to stay alive to perceive the wonders yet to be revealed. I am an idea in the mind of God, in the process of unfolding.
God Bless Us, Every One Horace Brown King
My reflections on scriptures appointed for the upcoming week can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com
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