November 9, 2025
Pentecost 20, Year C
Haggai 1:15b-2:9; Luke 20:27-38
Epiphany, Winnipeg
“God is not God of the dead but of the living. And to God, all of them are alive.”
Does anyone know who Private George Lawrence Price is? He was the last Canadian and Commonwealth soldier killed in World War I. He was killed by a sniper’s bullet at two minutes to eleven on November 11th, 1918. Two minutes before peace officially began. One hundred and seven years ago.
It sort of leaves you shaking your head, doesn’t it? What’s the point? Two minutes to go. For a peace that was already declared.
George Lawrence Price was the last of close to sixty thousand Canadians who died in World War One, right in the middle of the 120,000 or so who were killed in two world wars and Korea and Afghanistan and a few other places here and there.
As Canadians we remember George Price and all those other 120,000 or so. I don’t know how many of us have a close connection to someone who died, but I’m sure some do, and if we all asked around it wouldn’t be long until we heard stories of a friend of a friend or a family member a few generations ago who went off to war and never came home. Those would be stories known and told about loved ones here. And those stories would be known and told about loved ones who we once called enemies in wars that were supposed to end all wars.
As members of the human community we also remember – and no one’s quite certain about the numbers – ten million military personnel and seven or eight million civilians who died during the First World War. I tried to pull up some of the same kinds of numbers for World War II, where the estimates are from 70 to 85 million total deaths. After awhile I found myself bouncing back and forth between the two sets of numbers that are too large to make sense, and it all just kind of turned into a fog. Flipping from page to page, seeing the numbers and then forgetting them again, and going back and forth and trying to get them straight, but I just had to quit. Too many numbers, too many people, and maybe one of the strangest things is that all the numbers are estimates. 70 to 85 million people – We’re not even sure, you can’t even keep track once the numbers get that high, so we say, “Give or take a few million or so.” How many disappeared without a trace, and how many were scarcely noticed in the first place?
I remember times when I’ve listened in on conversations or been a part of conversations that happen around Remembrance Day, where we’ve talked about war as an abstract sort of thing, and attacked or defended the ideas of pacifism or militarism or just war theory, as though war is just an idea.
There’s a place for that kind of conversation, but sometimes we don’t need a lecture or a debate about ideas or a call to arms or to peace. There are times when it’s just good to remember – to remember names and faces and stories we’ve heard of or we know…. And to remember people and stories whose names and details have slipped away.
(take a moment)
We heard a word from the prophet Haggai a few minutes ago. Don’t feel bad if you don’t know who Haggai is. The book itself is just two chapters, and the book and the prophet kind of get lost in the shadow of the big names like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Haggai doesn’t get to warn everyone about a disaster that’s going to strike, and he doesn’t stand with the people in the middle of the disaster to try to get them through it. Haggai just tries to encourage the people after the disaster has passed, but the signs of it are all around and it still lives on inside.
It's about twenty five hundred years ago, and Haggai is talking to the people of Jerusalem as they stand in the rubble of a city they’re trying to rebuild. Sixty or seventy years before all this their city was attacked and captured and ransacked by the Babylonians. The city walls were torn down. Their temple, which was the centre of their whole nation’s life together, was flattened, and all of its riches and sacred things were taken away. Most of the people were taken away and forced to live as strangers in a far away country. It was a disaster. Think of pictures you’ve seen of cities in Europe after one of those wars, or cities in the news today – cities lying in ruins and piles of stone and rubble and smoke.
After fifty, sixty years of living away from home, the politics of the world changed as the Persian empire defeated the Babylonian empire. This new power told the people of Israel that they were allowed to go home and rebuild. But rebuilding is hard to do, especially when it’s been so long. Most of the people who returned home to Jerusalem didn’t even know what the city was like before. It had just been such a long time. When Haggai speaks to them they’ve been home for almost twenty years, and people are getting their houses back in shape but they’re still standing among the broken buildings, and the temple work isn’t going so well. Nothing will be like it was before.
When you’ve lost everything, where do you begin to rebuild? Think of lives and communities and peoples so broken by politics or economics or isms of all kinds. Or think of broken inner landscapes, yours or someone you know. Where do you even begin to rebuild?
The prophet Haggai speaks to those people who are rebuilding what’s most dear to them. God speaks through the prophet Haggai and says, “Don’t be afraid. Do your work. I’m with you. My spirit is with you. So don’t be afraid. This temple will be rebuilt, these lives you’ve lost will be put back together, and where death seems to be winning life will rise up again.”
We say that every Easter, don’t we?
Haggai puts it this way: “Take courage, people. Work, for I am with you…My spirit is among you, don’t be afraid. The latter splendour of this house, this rebuilt life, will be greater than the former; what is yet to come – even when it’s too far ahead to see – will be more than what was before.”
As the story unfolds it will be clear that life for the people of Israel - just like life for anyone who is trying to put the pieces back together - life will not be what it was before. But God speaks through the prophet and says, “Just do what you do. Work to rebuild what’s broken and to heal whoever is wounded. And don’t be afraid, because you know how the story ends; you know that I am raising all of this up to new life.”
We listened to Jesus a few minutes ago as he talked with some important religious leaders – they’re called Saducees. Jesus has come to Jerusalem in the scene we remember from Palm Sunday, and it’s only going to be a few days until he dies. He has some inkling that that’s what is going to happen, and the only other ones who know that as well are the ones who are planning to have him put to death. Pretty soon there will be friends and followers of Jesus who will be feeling like they’ve lost everything and they’re just standing in ruins.
The Saducees ask him that weird question about a woman whose husbands keep on dying, and which of them will be her husband in the resurrection. It’s kind of a pointless question, sort of like the old thing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Jesus pushes all of that aside and says, “To God, all of them are alive. The old arrangements of life, the good ones or the not good ones, the winners or losers, the great ones or the least ones, are done, and the simple straightforward good news is that, to God, all the dead are alive. Because death is not the last word, whether that is for a person, for a people, for the creation. Because God is not the God of the dead but of the living. And to God, all are alive.”
The ones we can only remember? To God, all are alive.
The ones who seem to be forgotten? To God, all are alive.
The ones to whom death draws near? To God, all are alive.
The ones whose world is crumbling around them? To God, all are alive.
The ones trying to rebuild? To God, all are alive.
In a way it’s just simple and quiet good news. It doesn’t always need to be shouted from the mountaintops; sometimes it’s just quiet good news, like when Jesus reminds some devout religious leaders that God is the God of the living, and that to God, all are living. Life gets the last word. And it’s quiet encouragement, spoken by an old prophet named Haggai. Encouragement for those who grieve, for those who struggle to start over, for those living their lives in a broken and beloved world. Keep on, it’s OK. To God, all are alive. To God, all will be alive. To God, all are alive.