Paying attention to God’s ongoing presence



The reading from Haggai and the gospel story from Luke are both stories of people getting tied up in the details and unable to see God’s presence among them. They are about people unable to see the much bigger story of God’s ongoing, creative and redemptive work going on around them.
Haggai is addressing those who have returned from exile in Babylon, freed by the new Persian Empire. They returned full of hopes and plans, but now are disillusioned with the lack of progress and how small and lacking grandeur their plans have turned out to be. It has all become about them, and they have lost sight of God’s much bigger story of which they play only a part. It is God’s ongoing presence and work that will fill anything they create with grandeur. It is in paying attention to this presence that will be their only enduring source of hope and motivation.
In Luke Jesus faces two groups (Sadducees and Pharisees) who are so busy haggling over whether there is a “resurrection” they miss the ultimate truth of God’s ongoing and eternal care. Whatever we believe about the afterlife God’s care does not end at our death. As Paul says, nothing separates us from the love of God.
In light of these two readings I wonder how we miss the big picture and our part in it. What details distract us, and lead us to not pay attention to God’s ongoing work and presence among us and through us?
Today is Remembrance Sunday, the Sunday nearest the 11th November, the day WWI ended. It is a day we remember and honour all those who fought in every war New Zealanders have fought in. We honour and remember those who died in those conflicts, and those who returned forever changed.
Anchoring our remembering to the end of WWI offers us a chance to burst many of the myths that surround our involvement in war. WWI should never have happened, and our involvement was, as the war memorial on Marsland Hill in New Plymouth states, about the motherland and empire. These men did not fight for our freedom. This day helps us recall the great cost these wars have exacted from our country (10% of our total population were sent to fight in WWI) and on every country involved. We honour those who fought by recalling this cost and to keep asking what these conflicts really were for.
May we who worship on this site also remember those who fought and died for their freedom, their land, their way of life in the face of the invading British army. May we also remember the work of those who strived for a peaceful resolution of conflict in this land, including Wiremu Tamihana, Te Whiti-o-Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi.
As we remember these events, may we take the time to pay attention to God’s ongoing presence, and God’s unfolding work. May it help us sharpen our resolve to not glorify war, and to work with God in action and prayer for God’s lasting justice and peace.

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