Building Our Houses | Rev. Steven P. Gunther

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our adult service here at the Barnathan Cathedral.

My name is Stephen Gunther, and I'm one of the pastors here at the Barnathan Church.

This morning I'd like to begin our service with our readings from the Lord's Word, both in the sacred scripture and in the teachings for the new church.

Our first reading comes from the first chapter of the prophet Haggai.

In the second year of King Darius, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel, the son of Shaltiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jehosedak, the high priest, saying, Thus speaks the Lord of hosts, saying, This people says, the time has not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built.

Then the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, saying, Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses in this temple to lie in ruins?

Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways.

You have sown much and bring in little.

You eat, but do not have enough.

You drink, but you are not filled with drink.

You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm.

And he who earns wages, earns wages to put into a bag with holes.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways.

Go up to the mountains and bring wood and build the temple, that I may take pleasure in it, and be glorified, says the Lord.

You looked for much, but indeed it came to little, and when you brought it home, I blew it away.

Why, says the Lord of hosts, because of my house that is in ruins, while every one of you runs to his own house.

Therefore the heavens above you withhold the dew, and the earth withholds its fruit, for I called for a drought on the land and the mountains, on the grain and the new wine and the oil, on whatever the ground brings forth, on men and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands.

Read now from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 19.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

Then Jesus entered and passed through Jericho.

Now, behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector, and he was rich, and he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not because of the crowd, for he was of short stature.

So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was going to pass that way.

And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and saw him, and said to him, Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house.

So he made haste and came down and received him joyfully.

But when they saw it, they all complained, saying, He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner.

Then Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor, and if I have taken anything from any one by false accusation, I restore fourfold.

And Jesus said to him, Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham, for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.

And finally, from the teachings of the new church, from the work True Christianity, number four hundred and twenty two.

Charity itself is acting justly and faithfully in our position and our work, and with the people with whom we interact.

Charity itself is acting justly and faithfully in our position and our work, because all the things we do in this way are useful to the community, and usefulness is goodness, and goodness in an impersonal sense is our neighbor.

As I have shown above, our neighbor is not only individual people, but also our community and the country as a whole.

For example, if monarchs lead the way for their subjects by setting an example of doing good, if they want their people to live by the laws of justice, if they reward people who live that way, if they give all people the consideration they deserve, if they keep their people safe from harm and invasion, if they act like parents to their countries and take care for the general prosperity of their people.

These monarchs have charity in their hearts.

The things they do are good actions.

Priests who teach truths from the Word and use truths to lead to a goodness of life, and therefore to heaven, are practicing charity in very important ways, because they are caring for the souls of the people in their church.

Judges who make decisions on the basis of justice and the law, and not because of bribery or because someone is their friend or relative, are caring for the community and for the individual, for the community because their decisions influence it to stay obedient to the law and fearful of breaking it, and for the individual, because their decisions allow justice to triumph over injustice.

Business people who act with honesty and without fraudulence are caring for the neighbor they do business with.

So are workers and craftspeople when they do their work uprightly and honestly, rather than falsely or deceptively.

The same goes for everyone else, for ship captains and sailors, for farm workers and servants.

Amen.

Here end our lessons.

Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.

So our first reading this morning was taken from the first chapter of the prophet Haggai.

And in order to understand what's happening in this reading, we really need to put it in its historical context to see what's going on here.

So, as we all know, the Israelites had settled in the land of Canaan, the land that had been promised to them by the Lord.

And they had gone in and conquered it and they had built cities in it and lived in it for generations, and they had built a glorious temple to the Lord for their worship of him.

But as generations went by, eventually they were invaded by the Babylonians, and they were taken over.

And many of them were taken away by the Babylonians into a foreign country where they were held for almost for about 70 years.

And this temple that they had built to the Lord had been torn down and was laying in ruins.

And after these 70 years of being held in a foreign country away from their homeland, finally the Israelites were allowed to come back and settle again in their homes in the land of Canaan.

And so they came back and they got to work of settling back in.

They started rebuilding their homes.

They even began rebuilding the temple.

They started laying a foundation.

But as time went on, the work on the temple fell by the wayside.

They became so focused on their day-to-day work of building their houses and planting their farms and doing that kind of work that they needed to do, that eventually the work just stopped on the temple.

And so they had settled back into their homeland.

And they were living and they were working, and they were back to business as usual, and yet the Lord's temple was lying in ruins.

And so this is where our reading from Haggai comes from: that the Lord speaks through the prophet Haggai, and he delivers a message to the child to the Israelites where he says, What are you doing?

Why are you so focused on building your own houses and living in your houses when my temple lies in ruins?

Why have you stopped working on that and instead focused on your own things?

And it sounds like, from the way the Lord is speaking, that this hasn't been working out very well for the Israelites.

He tells them, He says, You have sown much, but you take in little.

You eat much, but you're never satisfied.

You drink, but you're never filled with drink.

You clothe yourselves, but you're never warm.

And you earn wages, but you put those wages in bags that are full of holes.

And so this message isn't merely that you're focusing on the wrong thing.

He's saying, look at what happens when you focus on the wrong thing.

When you prioritize your own houses, your own dwelling places, and your own priorities over what the Lord is asking of you.

You work and you work and you work, but there's nothing to show for it.

And this is something that all of us fall into in our own lives.

Because building these houses is like our own goals and our motivations that we have in our natural lives.

We all have things that we work towards.

Maybe we work and we say, you know, I want to get, I want to get this new promotion at work.

So I'm gonna work really hard and I'm gonna hope that I can get this promotion.

Or we say, well, I really need to buy a house for my family, so I'm gonna work really hard and save my money so that I can buy a house for them.

Or I want to take my family on a nice vacation, so I'm gonna take the time, I'm gonna save my money, and I'm gonna see if I can achieve this goal of taking my family on this nice vacation.

And just like the Israelites, so often those goals and those motivations that we have can become the end in view so much that we leave the Lord by the wayside.

Just as the Israelites said, well, yeah, we'll get around to building the temple, but I just, I gotta finish my house.

I just have to plant this year's crops, and I've got to make sure I've gotten this taken care of, and eventually we'll come back and we'll build the temple.

We do the same thing, don't we?

We say, Yeah, I know I need to focus on my spiritual life, and I need to focus on what the Lord is asking of me, but I'm just, I'm really overwhelmed right now.

And once I get this promotion at work, everything will settle down, and then I can focus on what the Lord wants for me.

Once I get this house and my family is comfortable, everything will be easier, and I'll be able to focus on what the Lord wants for me.

But when we do that, it's easy to say, to go from someday I really want to get to what the Lord wants, to that falling by the wayside.

And then we're like the Israelites, and we find ourselves working and working and working, but we never find ourselves satisfied.

It never seems to be enough.

We never have what we need.

And so this is where the Lord's message comes in, and he says, Why are you building your own houses?

Why are you focusing on that when my temple lies in ruins?

And so it feels like the message here might be that we shouldn't prioritize these goals.

We shouldn't strive after that promotion at work.

We shouldn't strive after this house we want to buy.

We shouldn't try to save up for this vacation for our family.

Instead, we should just focus on worshiping the Lord all the time.

But is that really what the Lord was saying to the Israelites with his words?

In thinking about this, I want to turn now to the other story that we read that came from the Gospel of Luke.

It was a story of a man named Zacchaeus.

And Zacchaeus was a man who had found success in his career.

He was the chief tax collector.

He had a position of status in society.

But tax collectors weren't people that were often looked up to.

They weren't people who were honored and revered.

In fact, tax collectors were often looked down on.

They were viewed as immoral.

They were viewed as thieves because their job involved taking money from people and sending it off to a faraway government.

But not only was it that them collecting the taxes felt like theft, but many tax collectors actually were thieves.

Many of them did their work dishonestly.

And they would tell people that they owed more than they really did.

And the extra money they would collect, they would keep for themselves.

So they would get wealthy off of the backs of all of these people.

And Zacchaeus wasn't just a tax collector, he was a chief tax collector.

And so, and the reading said that he was rich.

So here's a man who has status, he has a position, he has a title, and he has lots of money.

To borrow the imagery from the first chapter of Haggai, this is someone who has built his house.

And so we might look at this story and assume: well, this must be the bad guy.

This must be someone whose priorities are way out of whack.

He's got, he's so successful on a natural level that there's no way that he's focusing on what he's supposed to be doing.

Well, in the story, the Lord is coming to visit.

And Zacchaeus knows this and he wants to see him.

But he's not very tall, and he knows he's not going to be able to see Jesus through all of the crowds.

So Zacchaeus goes and he climbs up in a sycamore tree that overlooks the road so that he can see the Lord when he comes by.

And as Jesus walks, he looks up and he sees him, and he calls out to him and says, Zacchaeus, hurry up and come down from there, because I have to stay with you at your house today.

And as he goes, it says Zacchaeus receives him joyfully.

But isn't Zacchaeus supposed to be the bad guy?

Isn't he the one who's rich?

Isn't he the one with this title?

And that's what a lot of the people around there felt.

It says that they sort of grumbled about it.

And they said, Why would Jesus go and visit this man?

He's a sinner, he's a tax collector.

Why would the Lord go to his house?

But Jesus goes into Zacchaeus' house and he talks to him.

And Zacchaeus tells him something powerful.

He says, Look, Lord, I give half of everything that I have to the poor.

And if I've ever taken something that I wasn't supposed to take, I have returned it fourfold.

So he shows him, yes, I have money.

Yes, I have been successful.

But it's not just for myself.

I take half of what I have and I give it away.

And if I've ever caught myself being dishonest, not only am I accountable to that, but I give back what I've taken and I give extra in return.

And the Lord's response to him is today, salvation has come to this house.

Think about that.

Zacchaeus, this man, who seems like on the surface, has focused on building his house, has focused on these natural goals.

He's rich, he's made a lot of money for himself.

He has received a big title for the job that he has.

So maybe it's not the goals themselves that we have that get in the way of us following the Lord.

But sometimes when we when we focus on our natural goals, when we focus on the things that we want, the things that we are working for in our own lives, we can fall into the trap of those becoming our end in view.

And suddenly the work that we do, whatever job we have, becomes a means of getting a paycheck so we can pay our mortgage, becomes a means of putting money in our retirement account so someday we can relax, become a means of us saving up for that vacation that we want to take our family on and nothing else.

And when that becomes our life, we work and we work and we work and we never feel fulfilled, and we never feel that we have enough.

But Zacchaeus shows us that what matters isn't the goals that we have.

What matters instead is that whatever job we have, that we do the work of that job honestly, justly, and faithfully.

And that was what our reading from True Christianity this morning told us.

It said that charity itself is doing the work of our occupation honestly, justly, and faithfully.

Think about that.

It didn't just say one aspect of living a charitable life is doing our job.

No, it says charity itself, the life of loving the Lord and loving our neighbor in its essence is showing up day after day and doing the work that is expected of us honestly, justly, and faithfully.

And when we focus on that, when that becomes our goal, then we can still save up for a house.

We can still seek after that promotion at work, but suddenly we're not doing it for ourselves.

We're not doing it because we want to be better than other people.

We're not doing it because we want the pleasure of these natural things that we can attain through it.

But we're doing it because we know that by devoting ourselves to doing our work well, we are serving our community and we are loving our neighbors.

So I would encourage all of us as we go throughout this week, whatever our job may be, whether we're a stay-at-home parent, whether we have a high status at our work, whether we are retired and we don't have a nine-to-five job anymore, think about the things that we do every day.

And we can focus on how can I listen to the Lord's call to not just focus on building my house, but how can I go up to the mountains, get wood, and start building the Lord's temple?

How can I focus on doing my work honestly, justly, and faithfully so that my job isn't just a job, but it can be a means of being useful, and it can be a means of us dedicating ourselves to following the Lord and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

Amen.