Today’s sermon was not based on this, but on Blind Bartimeus receiving his sight, and seeing things as Christ, and dealing with those things we would unsee. I talked to the Pro Photographer: we decided not to school Barry on PTSD (have treated too many people: have had it: and it is not nice) and the morality of taking photos when at times the correct thing is to put the camera down and help.
To not record, to become human. So after a long discussion and drive and brunch I return to the word for today: as I follow the Book of Common Lectionary there is often a difference.
And I look at a Scripture about rebuilding the temple. But we have no temple. We have but a church, and the church is people.
In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest: “Thus says the LORD of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD.” Then the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? Now, therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. 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 he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.
“Thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the LORD. You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the LORD of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors.”
Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the LORD their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the LORD their God had sent him. And the people feared the LORD. Then Haggai, the messenger of the LORD, spoke to the people with the LORD’s message, “I am with you, declares the LORD.” And the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came and worked on the house of the LORD of hosts, their God, on the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.
In the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, “Speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and to all the remnant of the people, and say, ‘Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the LORD. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the LORD. Work, for I am with you, declares the LORD of hosts, according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not. For thus says the LORD of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the LORD of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the LORD of hosts.’”
What is our duty as men? To rebuild the Church. This is not a job for women: it is not optional. The fruit of letting women and entryists run the church is that it dies on the vine: within a church the number of people with gray hair should never be the majority.
On the post church drive the Pro Photographer and I counted the cars outside a couple of churches. One of the local churches in Dunedin had a few: while the Outram Presbyterian church had many. We sat in the back of the congregation and saw the babes and children play. Without children and young people the church will die, and without parents who have the courage to raise their children in the faith there will not be a new generation to witness to the world.
So it is our job, at this time, to rebuild the church. Because it is unfashionable. Because the church has a God-given structure that gives that damned elite who would see us equal in hell hives. Because we need to repent, we need to reform, and because we need to build properly.
What does this require?
- Firstly and most significantly, that we repent and turn to God. We let our excuses for doing other things go, and consider people the temple, and people the church.
- Secondly, that we reform our leadership, removing the entryists. For us Presbyterians, this requires that we ask all elders to affirm the teachings of the Bible, and as secondary guides the Westminster Confession and the Greater Confessions of the Church
- That we take the teachings of Paul on the Church: with women silent (and perhaps, even, the Orthodox custom of separating them from men less our minds wander) and men leading: and similarly the teaching on families.
- That we free up women to teach and correct each other. Women are not (praise God) men, and one teaches in a different manner to different audiences (Which is a skill of basic rhetoric). Us men have enough of a task dealing with each other: besides feminine clay cannot sharpen masculine iron.
- And, above all, that the gospel is preached. The social needs of society will remain. The poor will always be with us, and will always require care. Our prime aim is to proclaim the death and resurrection of Christ until he comes. We must not lose sight of our mission.
If we lose this, we become worse than the pagans. We become a false witness, a dry spring, a source of comfortable damnation. And we will be cut off. For we have rejected the very nature of God, the very hope of Christ, for a fashionable hashtag.
The these entryists not destroy the Church of Christ. Let us do our duty, clean out the stables, fix the foundations, and build anew the people of God.