I’m getting older by the day; but I don’t yearn for those “good” Old Days–cuz they weren’t. Yet I can empathize with the many who look vainly for familiar landscapes, and despair when all they can find is ruins. So scriptures for this upcoming weekend are meant to encourage those who wear a Faded Rose of Days Gone By, those who sift through rubble hoping to find viable heirlooms of a once-valid past which will never return again…
Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem lay in ruins. When the Exiles returned from Babylon in 539 BC, they found no glory or splendor remaining in this central symbol of their Nation and Faith. And here comes Haggai, urging them to build back better than ever (1:15b-2:9)! Church restoration projects are HARD, and require putting to bed the Old at the same time imagining the New. In 1969 I was assigned to a congregation considering such a thing; and being too young to know better, we did it. There were plenty of times when we looked at the half-finished shell and despaired of surviving. But even today, Embury UMC in West Scranton offers a worshipful space to spirit-travelers… God speaks through Haggai, “My spirit abides among you; do not fear.” The glories of this new temple would be as good as–even better than–the old temple of ancient memory.
The Second Coming of Christ is the central theme of II Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17. As memory changed to tradition, the Thessalonians debated and speculated about When & Where Jesus would reappear. How many needless and divisive conversations about this have been held by good people who’ve lost the imagination of a Creation yet unfolding! Despite the gloom ‘n’ doom of those who “remember when”, the sky is NOT falling! Is it not marvelous to preach a God who makes a way even though there may be only ruins surrounding? By the way, Jesus may not look like you think you remember him…
Kenyatta R. Gilbert writes in SOJOURNERS, “In Luke 20 [27-38], the Sadducees pose a tricky question. [Whose wife is the widow of seven brothers in the afterlife?] Resurrection is not resuscitation or re-animation of the physical self; rather, according to Reginald H. Fuller, it signals the active work of a divine sovereign to bring about a complete psychosomatic transformation of the human body. Resurrection is an absurd notion unless one’s faith-claim is premised on the assumption that the historical process is not theologically closed.” (November 2019) The Sadducees honored only the Torah, the five books of Moses which begin our current canon. They were unable to look past the Old Days to envision God’s continued creation. Are there Sadducees today?
It seems that there are two basic choices: we can sit on the debris of how we remember our past–or we can meet new possibilities, anticipating that the Lord of Light will make things better and better. “Jesus does not answer all our questions, though one of our fondest illusions is that he should. What he does is point us to a God whose faithfulness to those whom God has called is immeasurable and inexhaustable, and in that faith-fulness we find enough to endure all that life and death will ask of us.” (FEASTING on the WORD, C 4:289)
God Bless Us, Every One Horace Brown King
My encounter with scripture lessons for the upcoming weekend can be observed every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com
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