Nehemiah 8:1-10 ; Luke 4:14-21
Last week I reminisced a bit about the old days when the churches were full on most Sundays – when the ushers were responsible for helping you find a place to sit, when Sunday school classes were bursting at the seams, both children and adult – like the photo above! It isn’t like that anymore.
The last time I remember people flocking to houses of worship as though it meant something important to them was in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. They didn’t exactly fill the sanctuaries, but that was a time when many people returned to church after a period of absence. It was a time when casual worship-goers came in looking more purposeful than usual, like they were actually looking for something that mattered. It was a time when we were startled out of our complacency; a sharp reminder that we are not in control of all aspects of our lives.
But I also recall that this didn’t last long. We all sort of calmed down and went back to our usual routines. And if church wasn’t a part of your routine before 9/11, it probably fell by the wayside.
It is inspiring to read the book of Nehemiah, to see how all the people of Israel pulled together. It was during the time after the Babylonian exile, when the people had returned to their homeland, and began the process of rebuilding. Remember, as we spoke about during the Christmas season, that the Babylonian army had ravaged the land years earlier, destroyed everything in their path, then marched the people off to exile where, by the rivers of Babylon, they sat and wept when they remembered Zion, as the Psalm says.
It is inspiring to see that when returning to such devastation years later – and remember the ones who returned were the next generation, those whose only memories of Israel were the songs and stories told to them – they found the will to begin the long difficult process of rebuilding. Rebuilding the wreckage of their homes, planting and cultivating their fields, and then finally repairing the broken walls of Jerusalem and restoring the temple.
It is particularly inspiring to read that after they rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem all the people gathered together, out in the open, to hear the reading of the scriptures. ALL the people. “both men and women and all who could hear with understanding.”
And the priest Ezra stood before them and read from the scriptures to them “from early morning until midday … and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law.” In fact, they stood up, they lifted their hands in the air and bowed their heads to the ground and cried out, “Amen, Amen!”
That’s six hours of worship. And if we take Nehemiah at his word, all during that time no one nodded off. No one wandered off to the bathroom or suddenly remembered that they had to take care of something in the kitchen. Amazing, isn’t it? Where did they find that energy, that focus, for the word of God?
It was a really critical time for the people of Israel. They were restored to their homeland, but they weren’t restored to the good old days. In fact, they would not be restored to the good old days, ever, because it was a different time – even though it was the same place.
Too much had changed. The kingdom of Israel was gone. The kings were gone. When they were taken away to live as exiles, they had to find new ways to be the people of Israel, outside of Israel. Old traditions were no longer possible; new traditions had to take their place.
They no longer had the old house, but they built a new house made not of stones or wood, but of the written word of God and the worship of God.
So now as they return to the old place they are, in some ways, a new people. And it is not entirely clear who they will become. They were in a time of being in-between.
It was a highly emotional time and place to be in. They hungrily listened to the word of God. They hung on the words of their leaders who taught them how to understand what they were hearing, and they wept. They wept, I suppose, because they knew their need. They were looking for something that mattered.
There are rare moments in life when so much of what is trivial gets washed away and we can see clearly that there are some things that really matter. 9/11 was such a time. Facing a critical illness or potential loss can be such a time. Sooner or later, we all face such times.
In our gospel passage, it may be that Jesus is facing such a critical moment.
Look at where he is. Baptized in the river by John, he spent 40 days in the wilderness, alone with the tempter, and when he emerged he began his ministry. And now, full of the power of the Holy Spirit, he is returning to his hometown – but he is not the same man he was when he left there. Too much has changed.
He walks into the synagogue, into a well-established routine, one that began several hundred years earlier. He steps up to the front of the room, he is handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He reads:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
And then, just as the priest Ezra had done, Jesus begins to teach the people – interpreting, giving them the sense of the meaning, as Nehemiah puts it. This was the custom that had been established. All eyes were fixed on him, waiting. But I think they were not expecting the brief sermon that they heard from him.
Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
Isn’t there a sense in which Jesus is trying to bring the focus, the urgency, to Israel that they once had and needed to have again?
Isn’t there a sense in which he is provoking his listeners to break out of the old established routines and open their eyes to what is possible?
Isn’t it possible that the people have grown too comfortable with the in-between time they were in? and now, Jesus is saying to them, the new age has begun. Today.
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We are in this new age. Yet we too are in an in-between time. We exist in the time after Jesus ushered in God’s kingdom and before the fullness of the kingdom. And what happens sometimes when you are in an in-between time is that you stop looking for anything else.
Jesus said to the people, “Today!” but they were not ready for anything to happen today.
We know something about in-between times. We are living in a time, an era, when the church is trying to see how we can best be the church as old traditions fall away and new ones seem to be taking their place. It is, I suggest, a time when we are challenged to figure out what are the things that really matter, and then live accordingly.
The question this raises is: How shall we build our house in this particular time?
How do we meet people where they are and help them to understand the word of God? How do we help each other grow in discipleship? How do we clear away some of the distractions so we can more clearly see how God is calling out to us to be his children?
How do we respond to the words Jesus read that day in the synagogue, that he was sent to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor?
How do we reclaim our purpose as the church of Jesus Christ?
These are questions our session has begun to ask. In trying to articulate our purpose, we begin this journey.
The statement of purpose that we have written has three parts:
We are a Christian Community striving to grow spiritually. We acknowledge that we want to be disciples of Christ, staying close to the Spirit, increasing our understanding and faithful response to God’s word.
We share and care – both for ourselves as a congregation and the world outside our walls, knowing that God exists out there as well as in here. And God’s heart aches for the sorrows of God’s children, wherever they are.
And we devote ourselves to welcoming all those whom God sends to us. Remarkably enough, even when we don’t know what we are doing, God’s Spirit will send some strangers through our doors. They come here looking for something that matters. And sometimes we are surprised by them, especially if they look or act different, in some way, from those of us who have been here a while.
Yet, we know it is not a mistake that they are here.
You know, we can run all kinds of programs and events. We can rehab our Sunday school rooms and sanctuary, update our technology. We can send out postcards or flyers, put up new banners, install a new sign out front. And maybe we should do all these things – or at least some of them. But all of these things pale beside the one thing that really matters: that we welcome whoever God sends to us, caring for them, sharing ourselves with them, loving them.
There are times when the people of God need to determine how they will move forward, how they will build their house for the times in which they find themselves, so to speak. We are in a time of discerning how we will build our house. One thing I know is this: we must build it with wide-open-hearted love.
