A Look
to the Future
Keith
McFarren
November
9, 2025
Haggai
2:1-9
    If you are like me, you sometimes feel
like there’s just not enough of you to go around.  Too many pressures.  Too many demands and expectations coming at
you from all different directions.
Everyone seems to want something from you…family, friends, your
employer, your church, even outside organizations you belong to…it seems like
they all come at you at the same time.  
    With everything coming at you from all
directions, it doesn’t take long to run out of time and energy.  We find ourselves rushing through life taking
care of the things that need our urgent attention and our immediate care…while
at the same time, the things that are really important to us, the things that
mean more to us than anything, are often overlooked and left behind in the
dust.  
    Our problem is not the volume of demands
made upon us or even our lack of scheduling skills.  Our problem is defining our values…what is
truly important to us.
    Our values and our priorities are
reflected in how we use the resources that we have…our time, our money, our
strengths, and our talent.  And more
often than not, our actions end up contradicting our words.  
    For instance, as good God fearing people, it’s
easy for us to say that God is number one in our lives but when we leave here
and find ourselves faced with the everyday pressures of life from the outside
world, that’s not true.  When we are
faced with pressures from the outside world, we find ourselves trying to take
care of those pressures first and we end up relegating God to a lesser number
on our “to do” lists.
    Twenty-five centuries ago, a voice was
heard calling out to the  men and women
of Israel to get their priorities straight.
The prophet Haggai knew what was important and what was not.  He knew what was going on; he also knew what had
to be done, and he challenged God’s people to respond.
    Nearly 600 years before the coming of
Christ, the Babylonian army destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem.  They destroyed God’s house; the house that represented
God’s presence in the world and they took the people of Israel into exile.
    Some fifty years later King Cyrus released
the nation of Israel from exile and allowed them to return to Jerusalem to
rebuild their beloved Temple.  But the
entire Temple had been reduced to rubble and even though the people began to
rebuild, over a period of time they became overwhelmed with the amount of work
that needed to be done to restore it to make it look like it used to be.  
    Looking at the seemingly impossible task
of rebuilding the Temple back into what it used to be, the people lost their
focus… and when they lost their focus, they ended up getting their priorities
and their values mixed up.  
    They started out strong with positive
attitudes but after looking at what seemed to be an insurmountable task of
making the Temple just like it used to be, the people changed their way of
thinking.  Overwhelmed with all the hard
work it would take to make the Temple like it used to be they developed a
defeatist attitude.  They put the
rebuilding of the Temple on hold and became more concerned about themselves and
about building their own homes and their own lives and less and less about the
Temple…and finally they quit.
     But
along comes God’s prophet, Haggai, hoping to use the power of the past to
envision the future and at the same time, to encourage the present.  Speaking for God, he tells the people, “Be
strong.”  “Don’t give up” he says as he
puts on his work clothes and picks up his tools and begins to work on the
Temple.  
    The task of rebuilding the Temple wouldn’t
be easy and there would be a lot of tears shed in the future. There would be a
lot of tears shed as they remembered what was lost when the original Temple was
destroyed and there would be a lot of tears shed as they moved forward on what
seemed to be an insurmountable task.  
    But be strong and don’t give up the
prophet says, because you are not alone.
“Be strong, and get to work, for I am with you” says the Lord.
    Be strong…God is in control.  Don’t look back.  Look forward to what God can do.  Even though the building is in shambles…even
though your lives are in shambles…let God be the architect of the vision that
lies ahead, says Haggai as he holds the blue prints up in front of the downcast
people.  Even though the building is in
ruins and even though your lives are in ruins, God will not forsake you.  God has a plan…for the Temple and for your
lives and he want nothing more than for you to follow him.  
    If we let God be the architect of the
vision that lies ahead of us and if we let God be the author and the architect
of this new vision that lies ahead then, with the help of God, the future is
going to be much brighter than the past.
    Over and over again Haggai repeats it, “God
is present.”  Do you believe that?  Do you not believe that after all that had
happened to God’s people, after being torn down by the world around them in the
worst way and then being lifted up again to a new life…do you not believe that
he will do the same for you?
    Despite all that has happened in the past
and no matter what happens in the future, God is still here with us.  Even when we stand in the rubble of our hopes
and dreams.  Even when the hopes and
dreams and promises of the past seem to be far, far away from us during the
troubled times of our lives.  Even when
the tasks set before us seems greater than all our strength and all of our God
given resources…God is still with us.  
    God’s word to Haggai not only assured the
people that he would lift them up and that the Temple would be made better than
it was before, but also that his presence would benefit the ill health of the
community, its economic weakness, and its vulnerability, and that all the negativity
and chaos that filled their minds and their souls would be replaced by God’s
peace.  
    “Shalom,” the Hebrew word meaning “peace”
is a term that includes restoration of one’s health, the cessation of
hostilities, and the enrichment of individual and community life.  “Shalom” means spiritual and material
prosperity.  
    That is God’s ongoing commitment to those
who make the commitment to follow him.
That is God’s ongoing commitment to all of us…to establish peace in our
world, and peace in our lives.
    Speaking for God, Haggai makes one more
point.  Standing on the job site, with
plans in hand for a new Temple and surrounded by the rubble of the old Temple,
Haggai tells the people they have lost sight of who they are as a church.  They are all wrapped up in their building and
not in their being and their doing as a church.
    A few years ago, during the pandemic, many
churches and communities of faith lost their way or maybe we should say lost
their identities because they were unable to worship together in person on a
Sunday morning.  Some of those churches
never fully recovered.  Some closed up
and some are now shells of what they used to be.
    But other churches saw things
differently.  Other churches saw the
opportunity to be reminded that the church is more than just a building.  They saw that the church extends outward to
the people who were working in various ways throughout the community and even
in their own homes.  
    But more importantly the people of the
church, doing whatever it was they were doing, recognized that just as God was
present in rebuilding the Temple, God was present with them during the pandemic
as they continued to do God’s work in their various ways.
    The glory of God is not just this building
or all the stuff within it.  The glory of
God is in the doing and the being of the people who are a part of this
building.  
    Theologian Leonard Sweet, in one of his
podcasts, declared that maybe the pandemic ended up being good for the church
in that it might help us get over what he calls our “edifice complex,” meaning
that our desire to build big, beautiful multimillion dollar churches has no
bearing on whether or not we are doing God’s work as a congregation.  
    Maybe Haggai, even as he was directing the
rebuilding of the Temple after the exile, was sounding the same note.  
    We have spent, within the last few years,
probably close to $75 thousand dollars on a new roof, a new ceiling here in the
sanctuary that was destroyed by the leaking roof, and two new boilers.  We need to stay dry and we need to stay warm
in the winter, and we want our ceiling here in the sanctuary to look
presentable, so, all the expenses were necessary.  
    Why shouldn’t they be necessary, after
all, we need a church that is warm and dry and beautiful, so that we can be
drawn into a deeper experience with God in our lives and in our world…but the
main purpose for the upgrades, beyond the esthetic values and being comfortable,
was so that we, as a church, can continue on to do God’s work…so that we can continue
on with the ministry of Bethel UMC.
    But Haggai would have us remember that the
building will only serve its intended purpose if the people are willing to put
God first in their lives, and if they are willing to create space for God in
their lives, in their doing and being and in their thinking and in their
dreaming.  
    That is what Haggai hopes for…a community
of faith that is based on God’s presence a presence that provides hope for
today and hope for the future.  A
community of faith that keeps their eyes and hearts focused on God both through
the good times and through the bad knowing that God is always with them and
that they will always allow space for God’s glory to shine through them and to
shine from them.  May all this be
so.