A pastoral resource for Christians in exile

Barry J. Robinson

Now therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider how you have fared. You have sown much, and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough, you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes.

  She was the kind of person people loved to have around. Wonderfully dry sense of humour, cheerful, curious, bubbling with enthusiasm and extremely considerate. And then, her husband got the news that he had about two years to live. Things had been going extremely well for them up until then. A beautiful new house. Two wonderful daughters. A few more years and they would be able to retire on a very comfortable income. Then the news of the cancer came; and it was as if a great hole opened up beneath her. She fell into it headfirst, her mind dizzy with fears she had never really faced and hoped she would always be able to avoid.

  To minimize the pain, to avoid the confusion of voices inside her, to deaden her vulnerability to the inevitable loss and sense of abandonment that was to come, she began to withdraw physically and emotionally from everyone. Never again would she permit herself the pleasure and risk of being so open, so receptive, so trusting to what life had to offer; because, if she enjoyed it too much the disappointment at its ending might just be unbearable. She decided to "play it cool".

  There is a peace that comes from having gotten what our hearts desire; and there is a kind of peace that comes from stifling desire. There is much to be said for this latter kind of rest. We minimize all our involvements. We do enough to get by. But most of the time we are unengaged. The fourth century ascetical writer, Evagrius, put the matter of apathy, that soul-rending despair that affects every last one of us sooner or later, this way.

The noonday demon makes it all seem that the sun barely moves, if at all, and the day is fifty hours long. - The Praktikos

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  It is about as much as it is possible to get from a prophet like Haggai, the sixth century prophet who, more than anyone else, was responsible for the rebuilding of the Temple, Israel's national shrine, following the return of the exiles from their Babylonian captivity. We can look, but it will be in vain, for the kind of passionate concern for justice and righteousness that rings through the message of the earlier prophets of Israel. Haggai is just not that kind of man. He was more into building projects than he was programs for the poor. Not my idea of a prophet but the kind that probably makes people on the property committee happy. Haggai was actually a bridge between prophetic and priestly institutions and theologies. He was a man concerned about giving hope to the nation. He was also very much a man who wanted to restore the institutional framework of religion.

  His message mainly concerns a particular problem, the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. In 538 B.C.E., Cyrus had conquered Babylon and issued a decree permitting the captive Jews to return to Palestine. He even encouraged them to rebuild their temple (Ezra 1.1-4). While the rebuilding probably got started under prince Sheshbazzar's leadership, 18 years later not much had been accomplished. One can only imagine why. A people still suffering from the post traumatic stress of displacement and the significant challenge of restoring their own homes and farms, wilted under the prospect of completing the enormous task of rebuilding the national monument. Standing there amidst the ruined walls of the original structure and listening to the ambition plans laid out for them by governor Zerubbabel and his priest Joshua, they were discouraged, to say the least. Few of them there could even remember what the original temple looked like. It was almost impossible to imagine it again in all its former glory.

  But to judge from Haggai's response to this situation, the problem was much deeper than being intimidated by the project before them. The temple, and the monarchy along with it, had been symbols of what Israel had once stood for. It reflected their belief in themselves and the God who had delivered them. Their devotion to the temple was a sign of that faith.

  It was that faith that was now missing. It wasn't just that the people had lost interest in a building project. What was at stake was their identity. Did they still believe in themselves and the God who had made them what they were? That was what concerned Haggai, the practical visionary of Jerusalem. The people, as he saw it, were not just dragging their heels. They had given in to the sin of indifference. It wasn't just the effort in rebuilding the temple that they didn't support. It was the spirit of demise and apathy that had infected every aspect of their lives.

You have sown much, and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough, you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes.

  A champion of the poor and the oppressed Haggai was not; but he was a brilliant psychologist.

  There is a lot to be said for playing it cool. We diminish our vulnerability. We limit our capacity for pain. And we do it precisely by removing ourselves from those areas of feeling and caring in our lives where the possibility of pain and vulnerability lurk. We might not get much done; but then nothing we do works that well anyhow (we tell ourselves), and this way we don't get hurt. The only time such an approach to life bothers us is when we pause to ask ourselves what we have done with our lives. The noonday demon does his best to make sure that we don't ask that question too often.

  There is, of course, a profound religious and theological issue at stake when this begins to happen to us; and it is an issue that most of us struggle with in the middle years of life. In fact, it is the crisis of those middle years. It is fundamentally the issue of enthusiasm versus disillusionment. It's not all that difficult to be enthusiastic in your twenties or even early thirties. You have had fewer shattering experiences. The various fluids in your organism flowed free and clear. But in the middle years our bodies begin to wind down and psychic energy begins to flame out. From that point on enthusiasm is less a matter of natural energy and more a result of deliberate, conscious effort. The issue, quite bluntly, is whether it's worth trying or not. If nothing I manage to do really seems to add up to much, it is so easy to say, why should I bother?

  Jesus, of course, had something quite different to say. That group of religious professionals who approach him in this week's gospel, the Saduccees, are not the earnest inquirers they seem to be. They are rather sly, cool and calculating interrogators - the kind that is too often found in religious communities. They want to debate issues but never do anything about them. They want to score points with others but never improve relationships with them. In their cool, detached rationality, they are trying to set Jesus up and keep him at a distance.

  Jesus, of course, is more than up for the challenge and answers their rhetorical question about resurrection with an answer from scripture they cannot dispute. Then he reminds these cynical men that the very resurrection they deny is what it is all about.

      Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.

  The issue is not whether life is difficult but whether or not you and I are ready to risk the pain of it. The issue is not whether most of our efforts end in failure but whether or not you and I are willing to try again. The issue is not whether loving other people and trusting them enough to love us is an enterprise fraught with danger but whether or not you and I think it is one worth the effort. The challenge of resurrection, of believing in a God who is God of the living, quite simply, is the challenge of starting over again - which is one of the most difficult things in all of the world to do.

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