Ted Haggard

One of the important posts to bless the Internet this week was a piece about Ted Haggard. It’s written by a pastor who has a book coming out next year entitled “Why We Eat Our Own”. Here’s the beginning:

A while back I was having a business lunch at a sports bar in the Denver area with a close atheist friend. He’s a great guy and a very deep thinker. During lunch, he pointed at the large TV screen on the wall. It was set to a channel recapping Ted’s fall. He pointed his finger at the HD and said, “That is the reason I will not become a Christian. Many of the things you say make sense, Mike, but that’s what keeps me away.”

It was well after the story had died down, so I had to study the screen to see what my friend was talking about. I assumed he was referring to Ted’s hypocrisy. “Hey man, not all of us do things like that,” I responded. He laughed and said, “Michael, you just proved my point. See, that guy said sorry a long time ago. Even his wife and kids stayed and forgave him, but all you Christians still seem to hate him. You guys can’t forgive him and let him back into your good graces. Every time you talk to me about God, you explain that he will take me as I am. You say he forgives all my failures and will restore my hope, and as long as I stay outside the church, you say God wants to forgive me. But that guy failed while he was one of you, and most of you are still vicious to him.” Then he uttered words that left me reeling: “You Christians eat your own. Always have. Always will.”

The piece obviously caused discussion about issues of leadership and restoration. Some of the comments on the piece observed that Haggard’s behavior after his fall was less than stellar too.

I don’t think the important point of the passage is necessarily Ted Haggard, but rather the anger and despair that instinctively besets us after the center of our hope fails. Betrayal is a bitter word.

The Burned-Over District

The area of central and western New York state after the Second Great Awakening has been termed “the burned-over district” because it was so heavily evangelized there was no fuel remaining to consume.

What in fact grew after the second great awakening were a variety of religious nonconformist sects like Joseph Smith and the LDS, the Millerites, the Shakers and the Oneida community. Why did these groups arise at ground zero of some of the most effective ministry in the early US? Wasn’t all they had received enough?

The Drama of Old Testament Judah

Our text today is found in the small book of Haggai. Haggia prophesied to the remnant that had returned to Jerusalem after their exile in Babylon. To understand the context of this story you need to know a bit of the history behind it.

Israel was of course to be the epicenter of the LORD’s mission to the world. She was given the temple, built by Solomon, and the glory of the LORD descended upon it and filled the temple. Solomon dedicates the temple with these words:

1 Kings 8:56–61 (NET)

⁵⁶ “The Lord is worthy of praise because he has made Israel his people secure just as he promised! Not one of all the faithful promises he made through his servant Moses is left unfulfilled!⁵⁷ May the Lord our God be with us, as he was with our ancestors. May he not abandon us or leave us. ⁵⁸ May he make us submissive, so we can follow all his instructions and obey the commandments, rules, and regulations he commanded our ancestors. ⁵⁹ May the Lord our God be constantly aware of these requests of mine I have presented to him, so that he might vindicate his servant and his people Israel as the need arises. ⁶⁰ Then all the nations of the earth will recognize that the Lord is the only genuine God.⁶¹ May you demonstrate wholehearted devotion to the Lord our God by following his rules and obeying his commandments, as you are presently doing.”

Things, however, did not work out this way. The marriage between God and Israel was a rocky one and in the end the LORD used Babylon to destroy the temple and carry the people into bondage.

Visions of Glory and Unrealized Dreams

Prophesy continued in the exile, not just chastising Israel for her failure, but promising a glorious restoration of Israel. God would restore the people to the land and THIS TIME it would all work out OK.

The people did return to the land, and now it was time to rebuild the temple, but work was lagging. Part of the reason for the lag was morale.

Haggai 2:1–9 (NET)

¹ On the twenty-first day of the seventh month, the Lord spoke again through the prophet Haggai:² “Ask the following questions to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, the high priest Joshua son of Jehozadak, and the remnant of the people: ³ ‘Who among you survivors saw the former splendor of this temple? How does it look to you now? Isn’t it nothing by comparison? ⁴ Even so, take heart, Zerubbabel,’ says the Lord. ‘Take heart, Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and all you citizens of the land,’ says the Lord, ‘and begin to work. For I am with you,’ says the Lord who rules over all. ⁵ ‘Do not fear, because I made a promise to your ancestors when they left Egypt, and my spirit even now testifies to you.’⁶ Moreover, the Lord who rules over all says: ‘In just a little while I will once again shake the sky and the earth, the sea and the dry ground. ⁷ I will also shake up all the nations, and they will offer their treasures; then I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the Lord who rules over all. ⁸ ‘The silver and gold will be mine,’ says the Lord who rules over all. ⁹ ‘The future splendor of this temple will be greater than that of former times,’ the Lord who rules over all declares, ‘and in this place I will give peace.’ ”

They would rebuild the temple, but the second temple would never bear the kind of glory either remembered by the old timers who saw Solomon’s temple nor the kind of glory recorded in the book of Kings and Chronicles. Neither would it attain the glory of Ezekiel’s temple prophesy.

Israel after her restoration would most often be ruled by the major empires that controlled that part of the world. The Persians supported the rebuilding of the temple, but things with the Greeks and the Romans would not go so well. As a response to uprisings in the first century Rome would destroy it never again to be rebuilt.

Losing Faith 

I probably cannot fully appreciate the emotional world of Haggai’s audience. The return from exile must have encouraged them that this impossible dream was coming true for them, only to find that a dream half fulfilled sometimes seems worse than having no dream at all. A half-fulfilled dream feels too much like betrayal. “I gave you my heart, and then you broke it!”

I think this dynamic is common in the church. The language of the promise is all encompassing making the failure to fulfill all the more crushing.

I suspect that part of the reason nonconformist Christian sects grew out of the burned-over district is because the Christian life that they embraced didn’t realize their expectations. They soon headed off for something that could pan out more for them today.

I think part of why eastern religions are so attractive to many today is exactly this. They offer a procedure to acquire that which they hope to achieve. A bird in the hand is of course worth two in the bush. If you discovered that being within the church didn’t banish suffering from your life, try following someone who promises to eliminate suffering. 

Expectations as Preconceived Resentments

Few people in our culture have as clear an understanding of the fruit of resentment as the recovery community. They understand that resentments fuel addiction as surely as the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico fuel hurricanes.

They also realize that expectations fuel resentments. We don’t ask for expectations, we absorb their seeds unnoticed and as these seeds grow within us, and as the world around us fails to yield them, expectations give birth to resentment and resentment gives birth to the determined pursuit of our desires or the punishment of our adversaries.

Why do many act so instinctively against Ted Haggard while they would have been overjoyed if someone came with his story of failure before entering the church? Because it breaks the narrative and exposes the poverty of our supposedly Christian system to deliver what we want. Ted was supposed to be happy enough with Jesus and his Christian marriage to not seek comfort in those other ways. Ted betrayed the program. Ted wasn’t much different from Joseph Smith who went out and got more testaments and more wives.

We resent God for not coming through with what we expected.

Difficult Waiting for Radical Recipients

I can’t cast stones at Haggai’s audience because I’ve received so much more and suffered so much less. I do sympathize with their position in history. They would go on to build the temple, and it would be underwhelming, in spite of the prophesy. There wouldn’t have the gold to adorn it like Solomon had.

Empires would continue to abuse the people and when years later the temple would receive a dramatic face lift it would be done by a messianic pretender named Herod the Great who shamelessly used it to try to try to bolster his political base.

By the time Herod was finished with it God’s people were continuing to double down on enforcing moral and religious compliance by leveraging social pressure to get the nation to obey. Sinners and tax collectors faced social sanction as the truly consecrated among them worked hard to prime the religious pump so that the LORD would restore the fortunes to Israel. Their zealotry was legendary but God seemed to never show up.

When he did show up, they didn’t recognize him. (Read John 1:1-18)

A Temple Not Made By Human Hands

We like to grab onto the Bible and use it as a contract to make God fulfill his end of the deal. The difficulty is that God likes to play with words.

Core to Israel’s identity was her status as radical recipient. All the way back to Israel, her father and namesake, Israel’s blessing was received, not achieved. A new temple would be given and this new temple would be filled with the glory of God, and the nations would stream to it and offer its cultural and financial riches to it, and that temple would be Christ.

Jesus identifies so closely with the temple he claims to replace it.

John 2:12–22 (NET)

¹² After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there a few days. ¹³ Now the Jewish feast of Passover was near, so Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴ He found in the temple courts those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers sitting at tables.¹⁵ So he made a whip of cords and drove them all out of the temple courts, with the sheep and the oxen. He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶ To those who sold the doves he said, “Take these things away from here! Do not make my Father’s house a marketplace!”¹⁷ His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will devour me.” ¹⁸ So then the Jewish leaders responded, “What sign can you show us, since you are doing these things?”¹⁹ Jesus replied, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.” ²⁰ Then the Jewish leaders said to him, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and are you going to raise it up in three days?” ²¹ But Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body.²² So after he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the saying that Jesus had spoken.

Jesus’ templeness will be expressed in the cosmic Christ, his church imperfectly manifest by us today.

1 Peter 2:4–5 (NET)

⁴ So as you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but chosen and priceless in God’s sight, ⁵ you yourselves, as living stones, are built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood and to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

That temple fulfills the promise in the book of Revelation

Revelation 7:9–10 (NET)

⁹ After these things I looked, and here was an enormous crowd that no one could count, made up of persons from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb dressed in long white robes, and with palm branches in their hands. ¹⁰ They were shouting out in a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God, to the one seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Standing with Haggai’s People

When we read Haggai we are still standing with his people in a “more, but not all” situation. We have received more than Haggai’s people have received, but there is more yet to come. The LORD has come to Jerusalem, the second temple has been destroyed and reconstituted in the church, but the church is still incomplete and the full restoration has still not arrived.

What can we learn from Haggai? We remain co-laboring radical recipients. We continue to labor yet our restoration is received, not achieved.

What we also learn from the first Israel and the ultimate Israel is that suffering has always been part of the promise, so we shouldn’t be surprised by it.

The third thing we must see is that the work of Haggai’s listeners was always part of a larger, longer plan and that they themselves would in their lifetimes in the age of decay not be the full heirs of their investment. Their sufferings would be for the benefit of another, ones they didn’t know, ones not even within their own time. They would be forced to live out the life rule of God, the welfare of others at their expense.

The Relational Polarity of the Kingdom Revealed

God would make fruitful the suffering of Haggai’s listeners. He would make it fruitful in Jesus.

Jesus’ suffering was made fruitful in us, and our suffering in faithfulness will be made fruitful for others we don’t know and people we don’t see. This is God’s long story and mission.

The relational polarity of the age of decay is “my wellbeing at your expense”. This is the relational polarity of the empires.

The relational polarity that brought he world into being, and now brings the world into restoration is “your wellbeing at my expense”. This was the relational work asked of the temple builders of Haggai’s day. This is the relational work asked of by the true temple, destroyed and raised in three days, and this is the relational work that we carry on today. Still unfinished, carried on in hope.