"The Spirit Abides" - Sermon, November 10, 2019
Community UMC, Quincy
“Abiding in the Reign: The Spirit Abides”
Rev. Andrew Davis
November 10, 2019
Haggai 1: 5b-2:9
Luke 20: 27-40
We have made it through the first week of November and one of the busiest weeks too, filled with administrative meetings, worship committee, Christian education, and charge conference in addition to all the other activities that regularly happen around our church. And yesterday, we celebrated the life of Marian Gonzalez and once again, I am grateful for everything we do as a church, and especially the love you have shown and continue to show Barbara, (Angela) Andrea, and Leah as we remembered Marian and the love she showed her family. God’s Spirit abided with us through this past week and continues to abide with us today and beyond.
Of course, this coming week is one of our biggest events of the year, as we host our annual Fall Dinner on Thursday afternoon and into the evening, welcoming hundreds of people to our campus for the delicious turkey dinner that is lovingly prepared by many in our congregation. Even though things may hit panic-level proportions in the preparation at times, the Spirit abides with us, as everything always manages to come together in the end. It was like when I was singing with Sacramento City College Choir when we got to sing at Carnegie Hall in NYC in 2012, it all came together in the end, even when tensions ran high during rehearsals as we got closer to the time, which does happen when getting ready for something, right choir? Nevertheless, the Spirit abides.
This past week with our meetings and charge conference, we had some conversation around vision, growth, and goals for the coming year which is pertinent to our Old Testament reading this morning. As we find ourselves in the book of Haggai, we encounter Haggai delivering a message to Zerubbabel, son of the high priest, Shealtiel. Zerubbabel is tasked with rebuilding the temple upon return to the land from the Babylonian exile, although not much progress has been made on the temple, as it’s still a foundation and people are a little disappointed. God tells the people through Haggai that they expected too much, as they expected their crops to yield big harvests, yet the crops blew away (Haggai 1: 9) and spent more time tending to their own self-interests instead of the common good. Haggai brings a message to the people, telling the people that God’s Spirit abides and the people actually listen this time. They get to work on the temple, as God tells the people through Haggai that God will be with them as they work on the new temple which will glorify God. The Spirit of God will abide, remain, hold on through all of time. God was doing new things in the midst of the people who have returned from exile and are now rebuilding, the same way God can do things in our own lives and life of the church. When asked if there is anyone who remembers the temple in its former glory,
the prophet sounds like those folks in the church who think things used to always be better than they are now. If only we could go back; if only we could make the church great again. But Haggai seems to be taking a different tack. When he promises that the future glory of the temple will be better than what it was in the past, was he talking about a building or a people? The words from God speak about God more than about the temple. The glory of any building said to represent God and house the people of God is really more about God than about buildings. “My Spirit abides,” God says through Haggai; that’s the glory you need to focus on, not the building and not who’s here and who’s not here.[i]
During Haggai’s time, there was bound to be someone around who remembered the temple before it’s destruction. Like the people back then, there are days in the church today where we wish we could go back in time, because it seemed happier, or that the church was in its glory days, similar to how Haggai sounds when asking about the temple’s former glory before the exile. I know I fondly remember the early 1990’s at my parents church when the sanctuary and Sunday School rooms were full, when there were a lot of children and youth, along with various small groups to meet every spiritual need. Even here in our church, when I’ve looked at photos of past eras of our church, I tend to ask “who are these people?” That’s especially the case when I look through past church directories, seeing the people who have come and gone, seeing the changes in people through the years, seeing the kids grow up in each new directory. Whether the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, 2000’s, 2010’s were ‘the good ol’ days,’ God’s Spirit still abides today just as it did in each of those eras. Today, our Sunday school classrooms might not be bursting at the seams and we’re lucky if we have one or two kids, the sanctuary certainly isn’t packed each Sunday (which in reality, a packed sanctuary can have the opposite effect for newcomers), people don’t necessarily sit silently during the gathering music, someone might bring their coffee into worship, and other actions that have happened or never used to happen in the past, yet the Spirit still abides with us and abides with us in the future.
Our lessons from Haggai and the Gospel of Luke both come at the right time, as we have faced some challenges this past year and will no doubt will be facing more challenges in the coming years. We have an ageing building and we’re all getting older, myself included (I have to remind myself at 39 that I can’t do things that I used to do at 25, plus 9:00pm is the new midnight). Things happening in our denomination have upset people, leading them to leave, or non-action from our Western region may leave us anxious, although the Western Jurisdiction’s bishops had a major announcement earlier this week. As you may notice, we have declined some since this time last year, as the sanctuary isn’t as full as it has been the last few years and that we haven’t had as many children and youth in worship as we have the last couple years (as children grow up and interests change). We have had some people depart and go to other churches as spiritual needs change, and as much as I don’t like bringing money into the picture, our giving has dropped significantly.
Even in light of the challenges we are facing as a church, it’s easy to feel discouraged. Yet when we start feeling discouraged, we need the reminded that the Spirit still abides with us, something I as a clergyperson need to be reminded of at times, whether we are bursting at the seams or struggling to make ends meet. Things may feel like they’re heading towards death, except Jesus talks about resurrection, that God’s spirit abides even in death. Jesus speaks of how “Moses proves that the dead are raised to life” as “the Sadducees were of the opinion that it was a fairy tale, not supported by scripture”[ii] However, the Sadducees held fast to the first books of the Old Testament, or Torah. Things may feel like a future filled with hope might feel like a fairy tale, yet Jesus is foreshadowing his own death resurrection, something that is the common thread in the Gospels. When we don’t know what the future may hold for us as a church or in our individual lives,
When we stumble over questions of how this world folds into the next one, our answer is “God’s got this.” Even when we don’t understand death or life, God’s got this. Even when our hearts break and our vision is cloudy, God’s got this. Even when it seems like everything is broken and violence rules the day and division is the mode of this life, God’s got this. The Spirit abides, and we are invited to live differently, to value differently, to hope unreservedly, and to praise constantly. Because God’s got this.[iii]
In light of rapid change, conflict, or when we experience sudden decline, it’s easy to hit the panic button. It’s like right now with the Sacramento Kings and their slow start to the season, especially when the expectation was there that they would finally make the NBA playoffs for the first time since 2006. In light of budget shortfalls, lighter attendance in the church, a lack of children and youth, it’s easy to point fingers. Yet instead of panicking or pointing fingers, times like these is when we need to have faith, believe in resurrection, trust God, and allow the Spirit to abide. God’s got this!! Yet, like the coach of a basketball, hockey, or football team or manager of a baseball team, it’s easy to blame the coach or manager when a team doesn’t win just as it’s easy to blame the pastor when things suddenly don’t go right in the church. Some of the Kings’ slow start has been blamed on their new coach, Luke Walton when the players aren’t exactly performing at their best or since they didn’t make the playoffs last year, they fired their former coach, Dave Joerger. As your pastor, I will take some responsibility for some of our decline, as maybe I have not reached out more, maybe my preaching hasn’t been very inspiring as of late, maybe I’m not bold or visionary enough or visit enough. Perhaps I’ve thought I could re-create an era that is not likely to come back by letting nostalgia sabotage my vision, and maybe we are tempted to look back to those days when things were bursting at the seams like they were some twenty-ish years ago and set that as a bar to get back to. Perhaps I too need the reminders from Haggai and Jesus that God’s got this. And yet, have we focused on God or trusted God in all of these challenges? It’s not without hope, as resurrection is possible. It’s in these moments where we get a reminder that God’s Spirit abides with us, just as God’s Spirit abided with the people returning from exile in Haggai, and just as Jesus tells the Sadducees that God’s spirit abides through the power of resurrection.
Amidst the challenges we are currently facing, one really valuable reminder we received at a recent administrative meeting was the best advice possible; have faith. God reminded the people through Haggai to have faith, to keep the focus on God; God is still calling us today to keep listening to where God is calling us to go, who God is calling us to be as a church; who God is calling us to reach out to, and not necessarily trying to reinvent the wheel or try the latest flavor of the month book or study on church growth. At the same time, what is a practice in the church or ministry that isn’t bearing fruit that we need to let die, so that resurrection can happen? What is an attitude we may have that needs to die to allow for resurrection? What is something that hinders our focus on God, that takes a lot of our focus away from God? Maybe we need to let attitudes of scarcity or can’t do attitudes die, so that resurrection is possible. Perhaps we need to let our fears die, so that we can experience hope and resurrection.
As we prepare to begin a new year in a little more than a month from now, let us have faith. As we celebrate Thanksgiving this month, let us count our blessings. Let us believe in the power of resurrection. Let us have hope. Let us keep our focus on God. And most important, God’s got this, as the Spirit abides.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, let the church say, Amen!!
[i] Derek Weber, “Week Two: The Spirit Abides” in Discipleship Ministries of The United Methodist Church Worship Resources, Accessed 5 November 2019, https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship-planning/abiding-in-the-reign/twenty-second-sunday-after-pentecost-year-c-planning-notes/twenty-second-sunday-after-pentecost-year-c-preaching-notes.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
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