Living well but dying inside

 Texts: Haggai 1.1-8, Luke 7.12-17

The Church of England, in its infinite wisdom, has designated this as ‘Generosity Week’.  The less-than-subtle idea is that on our Harvest Festival, we should focus on all the things God has given us, because “it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand”.  Then, this coming Sunday, we Vicars are encouraged to encourage the people to every greater heights of generosity, in response to God’s generosity to us. 

Those who know me well will understand that I’m a bit of a cynic about such initiatives.  I hate asking people for money, especially as I know that for so many, the recent cost of living crisis has left many people poorer than ever.  It seems a little tone deaf of the church to be encouraging even more generosity, when so many can barely pay their energy bills.

But, I’m forced to acknowledge that generosity, from God and to God, is a consistent theme of the Bible.  And so, I try to lay my cynicism aside, and look at what the Scriptures have to say to us.  Let’s start with today’s reading from the opening verses of the prophet Haggai. 

Haggai was a minor prophet (which means he only has a short book).  He was writing and prophesying about 20 years after the return of the Jewish leadership from Exile in Babylon.  The first Temple, built by King Solomon centuries before, had been razed to the ground by the Babylonian conquerors, roughly 600 years before Christ. Just a pile of rubble was left.  Haggai believed that the Temple should be rebuilt – as a tangible sign that God had generously led the people home, and provided food, clothing, and even the luxury of ‘panelled’ walls in their homes.  Walls, lined with wood panels, would have been a real luxury in the period about 500 years before Jesus.

A prophet is not a fortune-teller, or someone with a vision of the future – though that is sometimes what prophets appear to be doing.  Rather, a prophet is someone who tells people ‘how it is’.  A prophet’s job is to be a mirror to the people – encouraging or warning them of the consequences of the way they are living today.  Haggai looked at the way people were living, comfortably, without a care in the world – but spiritually dead.  They were fed, but still hungry.  They drank, but were still thirsty.  They made money, but it dribbled away from their purse, as though the purse had holes in it.  Haggai is describing a people who are living well, but dying inside.  He could be talking to Western society of today, couldn’t he?

Haggai’s solution was that the people should turn their face towards God, through the tangible act of rebuilding the temple.  The Temple would stand, as any great worship-building stands, as a sign and a token that there is more to a community’s life than eating, drinking, and decorating their homes.  By giving generously to the task of maintaining the house of God, the people of God honour their Creator, they give praise for the Creator’s gift of life, and they also awaken their dead, spiritual lives by coming together, working together, being together, in the house of the God who is togetherness personified – in the person of the Trinity.  Living well physically can lead to living well spiritually – if our energies, and our wealth, are directed in the right directions.

Today’s Gospel reading, with its story of the feeding of 5,000 men, reminds us of God’s over-flowing generosity to all humanity.  In fact, the passage only records 5,000 men – it says nothing of the women and children who were doubtless also present. So perhaps 15 to 20,000 people were fed by God, through Jesus, on that day – from two little fishes, and five loaves of bread.  When we turn to God, making him the focus of our day – as those crowds did when they followed him into the desert, we can expect to be ignited, spiritually, by God.  Our response to God’s generosity, in lighting up our dying souls, has to be to offer God all that we have in return.  It’s an ever-turning virtuous circle that the Bible is describing.  The more we dedicate ourselves to God and the ways of God, the more God pours out spiritual gifts, and spiritual life on us.  So the more we give back to God, and so on…

I’m reminded of the Sunday School song about this story – do you remember it?

"Two little fishes, five loaves of bread,

Five thousand people by Jesus were fed,

All this could happen ‘cause one little lad

Gladly gave Jesus all that he had.

All that I have, all that I have.

I will give Jesus, all that I have."

When I was at Sunday School, that song was usually sung just before the collection was taken up – no doubt to persuade me to give up the shilling my parents had put in my pocket for the occasion;  to give ‘all that I had’ rather than spending it on sweets!

And perhaps it would be no bad thing if we did something similar.  I wonder how many of us are a little bit like Haggai’s people.  We eat, we drink we decorate our homes. We earn money that we fritter away on frivolities, as if there was a hole in our moneybag.  We may be living well, but dying inside.  Perhaps, for any of us who feel that way, the remedy of Scripture is not something to flee from, but to embrace.  Whether we give to the church - to maintain this building and its ministry to our community, or whether we give to charity, the remedy of Scripture is that it is in giving we receive.

Amen.