November 14, 2022
The Revd. Dr. Brandt L. Montgomery
Saint James Chapel

“Thus says the LORD of hosts…‘I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor.”  — Haggai 2:6-7  

In the Name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.

By the time of tonight’s First Lesson from Haggai 2, some sixty-seven years have passed since the destruction of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonian Empire in 587/586 BC. Israel’s Babylonian captivity ended with the Persian’s conquest of Babylon in 539 BC and Cyrus the Great’s edict permitting the Israelites to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple in 538 BC. Construction of the Second Temple started around 537 BC but wouldn’t be finished for twenty years. Haggai proclaims the Word from God we tonight heard during this period. Those alive who remember Solomon’s Temple are numerically small. Most of the people don’t have any memory with which they can compare the Second Temple being built. Haggai faces a people scoffing at the Temple’s reconstruction.

The prophet’s message is clear: “Quit lollygagging and finish rebuilding the Temple.” By rousing the people to finish the Second Temple, Haggai is furthermore imploring them to recommit themselves to the God who has always been faithful to them. He assures Israel that the Second Temple’s coming glory will be far greater than what Solomon’s Temple was years before. The people’s motives for completing the Second Temple should be God’s own promise of abundant blessings flowing out to His people and His security of Israel’s “faithful remnant.” Though the times may have changed, God has not changed. “In this place I will give prosperity,” says the Lord.

Tonight, we are commemorating William Rollinson Whittingham, who, as the Fourth Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Maryland from 1840 until his death in 1879, was one of the principal founders in 1842 of what is now Saint James School. Much of Whittingham’s life and ministry reflected the message we earlier heard from Haggai. Whereas many of the prophets preached God’s Word in their time but had to wait for years to see the successes of their labors, Whittingham, like Haggai, was privileged to see the successes of his work almost immediately. And what Whittingham was graced to see was only the beginning. What he helped begin here at Saint James God has increased. Though he has now been dead for 143 years, Whittingham’s commitment to God in his time brings to us, the beneficiaries of the bishop’s work, abundant blessings within and throughout this place (cf. Psalm 122:7).

The re-establishment of Saint James in 1869 better than its establishment in 1842 helps us see these themes at work in and through Whittingham. The Civil War had been ended for four years and the School campus, closed down because of the war in 1864, was in disrepair. It was going to take a major fundraising effort to bring the campus back “up to code.” As for Whittingham himself, 1869 saw him as one of the last of the old High Church Party, largely influenced by his mentor John Henry Hobart, the Third Bishop of New York from 1816 until his death in 1830, more than a half century before. The old High Church Party stressed the importance of the historic Apostolic Succession, maintaining the Book of Common Prayer as the essential Anglican rule of faith, and the Sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist as the means of God’s grace.  Many of Whittingham’s High Church Party colleagues were dead and the “Anglo-Catholics,” those who theologically shared much with the High Churchmen but advocated teaching their theology by way of “advanced” liturgy (which Whittingham and his contemporaries were against), were beginning to take over. In many ways, the abandoned institution Whittingham helped establish and Whittingham himself were, for many, symbols of a bygone old-fashioned era. 

There were, though, Maryland Episcopalians who had written to Whittingham asking if Saint James would reopen as they desired their children to receive a quality Church school education. How encouraging this must have been for the bishop. I can imagine these questions causing Whittingham to be a bit reminiscent. Perhaps he reflected upon the School’s triumphs from its 1842 establishment until its 1864 closure. The triumphs were in the alumni—clergy, teachers, business owners, and civic leaders—the School formed for service in the world. I can also imagine Whittingham reflecting on why he endeavored to establish Saint James all those years earlier. He believed that the Church had a charge from God to help educate and raise up its young children. Whittingham conceived of Saint James being a place wherein God’s grace would enlighten one’s mind, stir one’s heart, and strengthen one’s will towards doing good. And he believed that through Saint James’s Anglican Christian identity and liturgical tradition it would foster unity, inclusivity, and hospitality toward others as he believed Jesus did (and still does). I imagine the bishop in his reminiscences seeing his vision for Saint James anew, asking himself, “If it all worked out before, what’s to say that it can’t do so again?” 

So, despite the initial struggles, Saint James reopened in 1869. The School drew students from Maryland and the Northern States, offering them excellent training in mind and body, together with the influence of Christian charity and service. The hope expressed five years earlier by John Barrett Kerfoot, our Founding Headmaster, by God’s grace and Whittingham’s endeavors, were realized: “[Those] that come after us shall see what was well begun, and their consciences and their hearts will compel them to complete it.” 

What a blessing it was for Whittingham to not only found then re-found an academic institution, but to be able to see its successes in both periods. He would live for only ten more years after the School’s second founding. In those last years of his life, as God did for Haggai and the Israelites in their construction of the Second Temple, God proved Himself faithful to Bishop Whittingham. God proved Himself faithful because of the commitment Whittingham displayed to Him, endeavoring to offer ministry that embodied God’s command to love others as He loves us. God rewarded Whittingham’s faithfulness: “The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former,’ says the LORD of hosts.” 

Because Bishop Whittingham kept his hopes for Saint James set firmly on Jesus Christ, God has infused into our School a prosperity that has made it greater than its past iteration. It isn’t a prosperity symbolized by grand buildings and expansive land. It is a prosperity that has been made manifest through the presence of God’s Holy Spirit amongst us. What Haggai said has become true: “I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor,’ says the LORD of hosts.”  
 
Look around you; you can see how God still fulfills that promise amongst us. Not only do we come from Maryland and Northern States, but also from all parts of America and thirty international countries. “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple” (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). You are what has made Saint James better than what it before was and there will be those who come after you who will help make it even better. God gives the increase to this place through us because “we are God’s servants working together” (1 Corinthians 3:9). 

The reason we keep to the original High Church vision of Bishop Whittingham and John Barrett Kerfoot and the Church school vision of William Augustus Muhlenberg for Saint James is because it works. It still works because it is anchored in nothing and no one else but Jesus Christ, the visible face of the invisible God. By doing so, Saint James is a place wherein one sees a cooperative social vision composed of different yet equally important people. From our founders’ vision comes the mission of fostering a school community characterized by social equality, inclusion, and diversity. Thus, as Whittingham believed, Saint James witnesses to the fact that God’s covenant promises are not merely ideas, but they are true and stand forever.

Let us then continue to “incline our hearts to [God]…walk in all His ways, and…keep His commandments, His statutes, and His ordinances, which He commanded our ancestors” (1 Kings 8:58). May William Rollinson Whittingham, our founder, pray for us, that God will continually fill this place and us with His splendor, making all things better than what they once were. 

In the Name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.