Remembrance Sunday Year C

(Haggai 1.15b –2.9; Psalm 98; 2 Thessalonians 2.1-5, 13-17; Luke 20.27-38)

Our first reading this morning came from the book of Haggai. Today is the one and only time in our three year cycle of Sunday morning readings that we hear from the book of Haggai. It is the shortest book in the Hebrew scriptures, and one that can be quite challenging to even find in our bibles. Haggai is one of the twelve so-called Minor Prophets, whose writings come at the end of our Old Testament. The minor prophets – which include Amos, Hosea, Joel - although grouped together, actually cover a whole sweep of history, stretching back to before kings are established in Israel, through to later times after the fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the exile in Babylon, and then the kingdoms partial restoration. What joins these minor prophets across that very varied history, those very different times and situations, is that they continually remind the people of their original vocation as the people of God. They again and again remind the people that that vocation to be God’s people is rooted in the promise given to Abraham, their father in faith, the promise that in them the whole earth might be blessed; a promise given further substance in the covenant made with Moses, a covenant that brings them into relationship with the living God who liberates them from Egypt; a covenant that asks them to walk in God’s ways by protecting the vulnerable, the orphan, the widow and the stranger.

The writings of the minor prophets therefore are testimony to the fact that throughout the people of Israel’s turbulent history, the prophets evoke and remind the people of the original promise, blessing and covenant that defines who they are, and invites them to act in ways that lead to its at least partial fulfilment in their own time. That faith in God’s promise, and its fulfilment, is stretched almost to breaking point at times in that turbulent history – the descent of the kings into corruption and civil war; the subsequent Babylonian invasion, with its destruction of Solomon’s temple and the carrying off of God’s people into exile. Throughout it all, however, the prophets witness to the possibility of faith, and the self-criticism, doubt, and demand which accompany that possibility.

Haggai comes toward the end of this sweep of history. After the pain of exile, things are looking up. The Persian empire, under Cyrus, broke the hold of the Babylonians, and introduced a very different conception of how to govern its subject peoples. Cyrus allowed the people of Israel to return from exile to Jerusalem, and now in the reign of Darius, the temple, the centre of worship for God’s people, is being rebuilt. The only problem is that compared to the remembered glory of the temple of Solomon, the new temple seems a bit pathetic. ‘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; ... take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear.’

The heart of the book of Haggai is the faith that if the people build the temple, then God will honour the promise and bless his people – the longed for fulfilment will come: ‘In this place I will give prosperity,’ says the Lord of hosts.

How might this text from 2,500 years ago, written in very different times to our own, have something to offer us, especially on this Remembrance Sunday, when we remember the trials and tribulations and tragedy, the sacrifice and demands, of our own recent times. In or own context, Haggai reminds us of that basic dynamic of faith – faith as both a thanksgiving for God’s promise given, and the hope and trust that that promise might be fulfilled in our own time. Following Haggai’s time, the second temple was indeed built and stood for 500 years. It was expanded by King Herod in the years just before Christ was born. One wall of that temple famously stands to this day in Jerusalem, but the bulk of it was torn down, destroyed by the Romans in AD70. The fulfilment of the promise seemed once more to be an impossibility. The promise an empty one.

And yet, once again, in the face of that destruction, answers emerged to the devastation, to the removal of the temple as the living heartbeat of Judaism. On the one hand the tradition of rabbinical Judaism emerged, based around synagogue, rather than temple, worship. And simultaneously, with a radical new understanding of who was now to be considered to be the people of God, Christianity took off in the wake of the person of Christ, of his death and resurrection. At the heart of this new Christian faith was the claim that the temple had been replaced by the living temple of Christ, the body of Christ, found in both the bread and wine offered at the heart of worship, and in the people of God formed and constituted by that offering. Both rabbinical Judaism and Christianity reworked, following the destruction of the temple, in their own radical ways, God’s ancient promise to be with God’s people in liberation. Both sought to be and fulfil God’s blessing upon the earth. The promise that God is with us, the God who liberated the slaves from Egypt, is with us.

Remembering is at the heart of our worship today. In a few moments we will keep 2 minutes silence to remember the sacrifice of those who fought fascism and authoritarianism. To remember the tragedy of war and the loss it entails. To remember the promise of God that the world might be blessed through us, and to wonder how that might be fulfilled in our own time.

And we will also remember, as we do every week, the actions of a man who revealed in new ways how that promise might be fulfilled. We will give thanks for the promise of God, and we will celebrate its fulfilment as bread and wine is shared as the body and blood of Christ. That is the dynamic of faith, and the central claim of Christianity: that the fulfilment of God’s promise is found in a man offering himself as he is put to death by his religious and political compatriots. It is a strange claim – that here, in a crucified man, is where the promise finds fulfilment. But, just as we remember the sacrifice of those who laid down their lives for their friends, so we remember the sacrifice of Christ because there the true nature of God is revealed. A God who works through love, who is revealed in the breaking of hearts and not the banging together of heads, through acts of suffering love and nor displays of sheer power. It is in the offering of Christ himself that the fulfilment to which we are all called is known, and into which we are invited to participate. Amen.