June 7, 2026
Take Heart and Begin the Work
Haggai 2:1-9
In the late 1940s, while the sanctuary was under renovation, this congregation worshiped for a time at the Imperial Theatre in downtown Asheville, which I believe was located in what is now the law firm parking lot on Patton Avenue.
When they returned here, the pastor, Grier Davis, preached a sermon from the text I just read: the second chapter of the prophet Haggai.
Today, as celebrate the conclusion of our capital fundraising for Building a Wider Welcome, I thought we would return to that text once more.
Now, to be honest with you. Until this week, I had never preached on Haggai. I’ve been ordained nearly twenty years. I have a doctorate in preaching. And I’m not sure I have ever once opened this small two-chapter book tucked between Zephaniah and Zechariah in the Old Testament.
The situation into which he writes is specific to the history of Israel. They were a small, struggling community trying to rebuild their lives and their institutions after the exile. Yet, Haggai’s words feel alive in 2026 because he raises questions that resonate in our time.
What do we owe the institutions that carry forward the life of faith? Where do we find courage to do hard things? What does God promise to those who undertake them?
Here is the backstory to Haggai. It is about 520 BCE and the Jewish exiles had returned from Babylon. They had been back for nearly twenty years. Some had rebuilt their own homes and established their own lives. Their broader economy was recovering.
But the Temple remained a pile of rubble. And what was the Temple and why did that matter? It was the center of Israel’s worship life, the location of God’s presence among the people, the place where the community gathered, prayed, brought offerings to the poor, and where people were reconciled to God… And nobody had gotten around to fixing it up.
When God speaks through the prophet Haggai, God is clearly offended. “Is it time for you to live in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?”
The people had convinced themselves that the timing wasn’t right. But Haggai calls them on their foot-dragging and tells them that now is the time. Now is the time to invest in the institutions of religious life, even though the context of the broader landscape looks dim.
Across the United States, and across the Western world more generally, mainline Protestant churches are struggling. Attendance has been declining for decades. Congregations are shrinking or closing. In this presbytery, the majority of congregations have under 100 members – and many have only 10 or 20 or 30 people in worship. The percentage of Americans who identify as Christian has dropped significantly in a single generation. The decline is sharpest among young people.
And in that landscape, we can something like what happened in ancient Israel: the broader culture is prospering in certain ways, people are managing their own lives and building ever larger “paneled houses.” But the institutions of religious life — the places where God’s people gather to be formed in faith as a witness to God and blessing to the world — are going unattended, underfunded, and in some cases, have lost their way altogether.
I have been ordained for 20 years this October, and in ministry for nearly thirty years, in one form or another. In all of that time, I have felt the persistent weight of the narrative of the past. The nostalgia for the 1950s and 60s is powerful. In all the years I have served in ministry, I have heard old stories of full pews, a culture that sent people to church, a sense of institutional confidence, a time when the church would speak with moral authority in the public square.
The Lord says through Haggai, “Who among you remembers this house in its former glory?” Christians in North America have been living with the memory of a lot of “former glory” for a long time.
Haggai is naming their nostalgia. He is naming the gap between what was and what is — the grief is real, especially for those who love the church. But Haggai, and the more importantly the living God, will not let the community of faith stop at nostalgia. Because what matters is not whether the former glory is gone. What matters is what God is doing next.
Thus, God speaks through Haggai. Three times, in rapid succession, God issues the same command to three different groups: to Zerubbabel the governor, to Joshua the high priest, and to all the people of the land: “Take courage. Take courage. Take courage and begin the work.”
Three times. The Hebrew word is chazaq — be strong, take heart, brace yourself and move. It is the same word God speaks to Joshua at the edge of the Promised Land, when he is setting out into an uncertain future: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. (Why?) For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
Why does God say it three times? Because once is not enough when you’re staring at the ruins of the Temple. Three times, because God knows that discouragement is real and the evidence is grim.
The Czech playwright and statesman Václav Havel spent years under house arrest before becoming president of his country after the Velvet Revolution. Some of you remember that.
Reflecting on his experience leading his country, he wrote that hope is not the same thing as optimism. He said, “(Hope) is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
That is the kind of hope which God summons up in the people God calls and sends, again and again, in generation after generation. Not, “It will definitely work out, you’ve got this.” But, “It makes sense to do this because this is worth doing.” So — take courage and begin the work.
Of course, God never gives them or us a command without giving us the resources to fulfill it. What are they? “For I am with you, says the Lord of hosts.”
I am with you. That is the whole essence of life in company with the God of Israel. “I am with you.” Not: you have sufficient resources, or the conditions are favorable, or the tide of history is on your side.
It is all about God’s presence. Covenant presence. The God who brought them out of Egypt, who sustained them through the wilderness, who stayed faithful through the long disaster of exile. That God is with them now, in the ruins, at the beginning of a task that is bigger than they are and that they cannot finish alone.
My spirit abides among you, God says. The Hebrew verb is ‘omed — it means to stand, to remain, to be stationed. The Spirit is not coming by just to put the golden shovel in the ground. The Spirit is not waiting to attend the ribbon cutting when the work is done. The Spirit is already here and has taken up residence among you. So, do not be afraid.
This word of hope from the Lord can speak to us today in many ways, depending on our circumstances and our time in life. For younger people in this room and in our culture, faith is already countercultural. Showing up to a historic downtown Presbyterian church on a Sunday morning is already an activity that puts you in the minority, compared to friends and neighbors who are at home, or outside, or relaxing together in some way.
This command to “take courage and begin the work” is an invitation to us to step in to the project of building a life of faith – not because it makes sense to do, but because it is worth doing.
“Take courage and begin the work” is an invitation to take seriously the life of faith and the community that sustains it, even when the culture around us sends every signal that this is not where the action is or where the future is.
Do not be afraid. The Spirit is already here. Take heart. It is worth doing.
For the older folks of this congregation, there is a word of hope as well. To those who have given for decades to this church and to the Church, who have served in countless ways; to those who, in many cases, in our congregation have given much of our lives to lay or professional service in ministry. Sometimes you wonder what lies ahead twenty or thirty years from now. When gray hair has turned to white. When many more of us dwell with the saints in light. The command is the same: take heart and do the work.
We do not plant seeds for the future because we have a thin kind of optimism that things will work out. We plant seeds because of a certainty that it is the right thing to do, and a confidence that the living God – whose very name means the promise of presence – will be there in generations to come. We are not investing to rebuild the past. Nor are we investing in a generic future. We are investing in a future that belongs to God.
Finally, there is a word here about what that future looks like. Aside from God’s promised presence, this is one of the boldest promises in this short book. God says: the latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former. The thing you are building will exceed what came before.
Now, to understand that, you have to know that Solomon’s Temple was legendary. And the promise that what they were building from ruins would surpass it is the kind of audacious promise that could only come from God. As some would say, it was a God-sized dream.
But wait there is more, and better. “And in this place I will give shalom.” We translate that Hebrew word as peace or prosperity, but it carries a fullness that neither English word quite captures. Shalom is wholeness. It is the deepest kind of flourishing. All is right with the world. And all is right with us. And all is right with me. It is the mending of what has been broken. The filling of what has been empty.
Grier Davis, who preached from this text when this congregation returned to the sanctuary over seventy-five years ago, made a turn at the end of his sermon that I have not been able to get out of my mind and heart all week. He said: the splendor of this latter house and the peace that rests upon it is in fact the peace of Christ.
It is the peace, the wholeness of Christ, that is the splendor and glory of God’s house and God’s people. If the cross of Christ, which is the glory of God in Christ in its greatest measure, which is the reconciling love of God in Christ in its most defining expression, if the cross of Christ is preached in this place, then the splendor of this house will be the peace of God that fills the place.
That was good theology then and it is good theology now. That is where God’s promise leads, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
The church is not a building where a community occasionally meets. The church is a community that occasionally needs a building. What we are building — what you and this congregation have given so generously to build — is not a museum. It is a meeting place. A place where people encounter the living God. A place where the peace of God is given and received. A place where the lost find their way home; where the grieving are held; where children learn to pray; where the sick find a healer; where the needy find a provider; where the lowly find a lifter; where the broken find a mender; where the lonely find a befriender; where the image of God is honored in all people; where ordinary people of every kind are invited to share in the extraordinary life of the love of God.
That is the splendor of this house and the beauty of God’s people. Thanks be to God!
This congregation is astonishingly generous, and I am so grateful. We have committed not simply toward the renovation of a building and the acquisition of property, but to the deepening and widening of a community of faith.
Not to the restoration of former glory, but to planting seeds for a glory and a future that belongs to God.
Good work is ahead of us. Our fundraising is done, thanks be to God. The physical work of construction lies ahead, yes. But more importantly, the work of being the church — gathering and worshiping and serving and welcoming and proclaiming. That work is always ahead of us, because God’s promise always lies before us.
So hear the word of the Lord:
Chazaq! Take heart. Do the work. Be not afraid nor discouraged. The Spirit abides among you. And in this place — in this community, gathered around the cross of Christ — the flourishing of God will rest and it will be a blessing. Amen.
Rev. Patrick W. T. Johnson, Ph.D.
First Presbyterian Church
Asheville, North Carolina