• Haggai 1: 1-15b-2:9

Having been released from captivity in Babylon due to the conquest of the Persians and the sympathy of King Cyrus, God’s people straggle back to Jerusalem, which is in ruins.  These are the people Haggai addresses.  The first work of rebuilding Solomon’s Temple has barely begun and there is much more to be done.  The Lord’s representative asks the people a question, Who among you can remember the former glory of the Temple?  Then he offers assurance of the Lord’s assistance for this enormous task of rebuilding and issues a directive to “work for I am with you.”  This assurance is to be seen as an extension “according to the promise that I made to you when you came out of Egypt.”  He concludes this excerpt with the prophet’s message from the Lord,  “My spirit abides with you; do not fear.”  The Lord also relates through Haggai that “the treasures of all nations shall come, and I will fill the house with splendor.”  Which will even be “greater than the former….”

• Psalm 145: 1-5, 18-22

The singular purpose of this psalm is to praise/exalt/bless the Lord for now and future generations for God’s “mighty acts.”  It concludes with personal testimony by the psalmist that the Lord is “close” to all who call upon the name of the Lord, who “guards all who love ” the Lord.  Now the psalmist can speak because he knows what to say: “The Lord’s praise lets my mouth speak.”

• OR  Psalm 98

The psalmist praises the Lord who is known in “victory” and in “bounty” for the Lord’s people in the eyes of the nations.  Instruments, such as the lyre and trumpet, join with “the sea and all its fullness thunder;”  “The rivers clap… the mountains together sing gladly.”  The cause for this praise is one specific reason: the Lord “comes to judge the earth… in justice.”

OR

• Job 19: 23-27a

Exhausted from the calamities he has endured and the futile attempts made by him and his friends to make sense of it, Job blurts out a full, unequivocal certitude he is willing to write in stone: “I know that my Redeemer lives.”  He is equally certain that “after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold him, and not another.”

• Psalm 17: 1-9

The psalmist is certain that the Lord will hear the “rightness” of her plea for justice.  She reviews the intimate interactions with the Lord that have given her this certitude.  “I called You, for You will answer me, God….”  “Your mercies abound…/Guard me like the apple of Your eye….”

• II Thessalonians 2: 1-5, 13-17

Expressed in the apocalyptic language prevalent in the time, the writer of this “second”  letter to the Thessalonians wants to be absolutely clear that they should not be rattled by those who teach “that the day of the Lord is already here.”  For one thing, the writer continues, an event expected in Jewish apocalyptic writings– the appearance of an anti-God figure– has not yet occurred.  He concludes by encouraging them to “stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that were taught by us either by word of mouth or by our letter.”  Be strong and full of hope.

• Luke 20: 27-38

Luke’s narrative concludes the major section devoted to the life, ministry and teaching of Jesus with a series of encounters with a growing list of those who oppose Jesus.  In this encounter, the initial question is about “resurrection.”  The “Sadducees” present their arguments that there can be no resurrection.  The response from Jesus that Luke provides is not a direct response to their burning questions.  Instead Jesus talks about those who are already “children of the resurrection.”  This response leaves open the interpretation that Jesus is returning to the theme of so much of his prior teaching; who is participating here and now in an alternative way of valuing and living this life.  The “God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” is not a God “of the dead, but of the living…!”  To God, “all are alive.”

These readings and the excerpt from Luke do not indulge in speculative debates about the living and the dead in some vague future so much as they ask who is ‘dead’ or ‘alive’ right now!  They do not respond to questions human beings regard as important, they turn the tables and ask us: are you ‘dead’ or ‘alive’ now?

Standing before the ruins of their homes, every institution and aspect of their national and the center of their identity, the Temple, God’s people are given assurance by the Lord’s messenger, Haggai, that the story begun in the rescue of their ancestors from slavery in Egypt is about to write a new chapter by them with God’s help.  Their stories will merge with the story of God’s love/salvation begun in the past to record something new.  The psalmist (145) testifies that it is “the Lord’s praise” that gives him the something worthwhile to say/sing.  On another occasion, the psalmist (98) is so engaged in her song of praise to God whose primary passion is justice that the sounds of nature seem to accompany her.  Job and his friends have pursued the narrative of nihilism to its logical conclusion when he abruptly changes his story: I know that my Redeemer lives, whom, when I meet, I will discover was on my side all along.  The psalmist (17) expresses a deep, personal confidence that the Lord hears and responds because “Your mercies abound….”

In the introduction by the editor of Paul Ricoeur’s collection of essays, Figuring the Sacred, Mark Wallace observes:

“Everyone needs a story to live by in order to make sense of the pastiche of one’s life.  Without a narrative a person’s life is merely a random sequence of unrelated events: birth and death are inscrutable, temporality is a terror and a burden, and suffering and loss remain mute and unintelligible.” (p. 11)

Ricoeur himself writes in this same collection:

“… it is within the structure of the narrative itself that we can best apprehend this intersection between the text and life that engenders the imagination according to the Bible.”  (p 146)

Every person’s life is a story.  The biblical texts offer a larger narrative which give us meaningful words to sing and the opportunity to add a new chapter, our own autobiographical contribution, to God’s ongoing promise of justice/healing/renewal.  The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is not the God of the dead, but of the living; not the past, but the present and future!