"The Desire of Nations" (Haggai 2:1-9)

 

watch here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jfVJefABJM

Sunday, January 17, 2020

 

            When you hear ‘Midas’, do you think of a tire company or a dangerously greedy King from ancient Greece? Or, do you think of a cliché?  He has the Midas touch.  So, he always wins and everything he touches turns to gold.  We kind of envy him.  Should we?  Do we remember the story?  ‘The Midas Touch” didn’t turn out so well for Midas. 

            King Midas was helpful to Silenus, a satyr and friend of the god Dionysus.  To reward the king for helping his friend, Dionysus granted him a wish, and Midas wished that everything he touched would turn to gold.  He got what he thought desired.  Then supper time came.  King Midas had a hankering for a gyro.  He grabbed that pita bread, well, you try it.  Go ahead.  Take a bite out of solid gold.      Dionysus told Midas he would be freed of the blessing that turned out to be a curse if he bathed in Pactolus River.  If you go there today, in Turkey, you’ll find gold in that river.  Please, if you do this, don’t let yourself be taken with desire for that gold as Midas was.

            What do we desire?  Four years ago, a lot of voters wanted to see Democrats out of the White House.  Are they happy with what they got?  In the 2020 election, many of those same voters wanted change again and got it.  Will they be happy, now?  President Trump wanted his supporters to, using his words, “fight for him.”  Is he glad they did? 

            What do we desire?  In my dating life, before my wife Candy came along, I would meet a young woman and convince her to go out with me.  More than once, out on the date, I discovered a new desire.  I wanted the date to be over.  As wonderful as the young woman would be for someone, she and I were not good together.  I got what I wanted, the date with the girl, and then realized, I didn’t really want that, not with that girl. 

            What do we desire?  The high paying job?  What if we have to work twice as many hours, sacrificing family time?  What does the church desire?  More people coming through our doors?  Right now, if that happened, we’d have to close completely due limited occupancy forced by the pandemic.  But let’s say, after the pandemic, with no restrictions, we hold this desire to see immediate, substantial growth.  That might be great.  But what if, someone brings conflict with that makes it harder for us do the what God has given us to do?  Don’t misunderstand!  I do want to see us grow.  I want to reach new people, but numeric growth can’t be our ultimate desire.  We must long for God and his kingdom more than anything else.

            In 520 BC, as the people of God resettled Jerusalem after a 70-year exile, God sent the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, the governor Zerubbabel, and the high priest Joshua to lead the people to rebuild the temple.  In doing this, they would re-establish worship as the central activity of community life.  Everything would revolve around their relationship with God and that relationship was rooted in worship. 

            In Haggai 2, the prophet names a struggle they faced.  The elders remembered their childhood seventy years prior, when the temple stood and was admired by those who saw it.  Visitors brought great gifts from far and wide and gave them to the temple.  The oldest people in Jerusalem listening to Haggai remembered those glory days now long past. 

            Listening to the prophet and watching the young people lay the foundation for a new temple, their eyes filled with sad tears.  “Who among you saw this house in its former glory,” Haggai asked.  After exile, nations were not coming to Israel to see the temple.  They certainly weren’t leaving lavish gifts to show their appreciation.  “How does it look to you now,” Haggai continued.  “Is it as nothing in your sight” (2:3)?  This new temple was less glorious.  The good old days were gone. 

            We believe we know what we want, then we get it, and then, often, we end up disappointed.  Repeated disappointments kill our optimism.  We come to willingly accept diminished glory. We assume disappointment is inevitable. 

            Apart from God, it is!  The world is fallen.  Sin blankets the land because sin rules the human heart. Whatever natural disasters come our way, our worst struggles come from the selfish way we confront the world around us.  Take the pandemic.  The Coronavirus is not the worst happening of the year 2020.  The very worst is our inability to compassionately, cooperatively deal with challenges that confront us.  Sin, makes disappointment inevitable for us when live apart from God.  However we don’t have to live apart from God.

            This is at the heart of Haggai’s theology.  Of the beaten down returnees, he singled out the elders because once he spoke God’s word and turned their grief to joy, he knew the rest of the community would follow.  When the elders rejoiced, the younger people would take the cue and join in the celebration. 

            Once he named their disappointment, Haggai then slings a flurry of commands the people would be glad to heed as would we.  “Take courage!”  He says it to the governor, to the priest, and then to the people. Three times: take courage!  Ask any therapist.  It does take courage to name our pain, to face it, and then, to declare ourselves free from it.  We become so comfortable in our disappointment that we forget how to live with joy.  We fear the uncertainty of giving up our sorrow.

            Next Haggai commands, “Work!”  Why?  “For I am with you, says the Lord” (2:4).  “Do not fear” Haggai continues.  Why?  “[God’s] spirit abides among you” (2:5).  Haggai’s predecessor in the prophetic ranks, Ezekiel, hit on the worst aspect of the exile and the worst fate any human or society can face: God’s absence.  Exile felt like God had turned His back on his people.  During the pandemic, during protests and riots, and in other calamities, people inevitably ask, “Where is God?”  This question comes from the emptiness of feeling God’s absence.  But in Ezekiel 39:29 God promises, “I will never again hide my face … when I pour out my Spirit on Israel.”  And in Haggai God assures his people, I am with you.”

            After the commands and the promise, God then says through Haggai, “I will shake the heavens and the earth, so that the treasure of all nations will fill this house with splendor” (2:7).  It’s a promise that the very thing the older generation missed and was certain would not ever come again was in fact coming again.  The world will flood into Jerusalem to give glory to God. 

            I read the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which renders verse 7, ‘the treasure of all nations shall come.’  The New International Version renders it “the desire of all nations shall come.” One commentator believes when Haggai wrote this, he didn’t envision ambassadors from various kingdoms bringing gold and silver.  He had in mind the Messiah, the anointed one of God. 

            Whether Haggai and the people understood this promise to specifically anticipate a person, it is intriguing to think about the idea that Jesus as Messiah fulfills this promise because more than any other value or material prize, He satisfies our desires. 

If Haggai didn’t exactly have Jesus in mind, God, who inspired Haggai’s words knew what He was doing.  Haggai, filled with God’s spirit, knew God was going to do something they had never seen.  Sit with that.  We’ve repeated the question, what do we desire?  I hope we understand what Midas learned so painfully, that our desires require more than gold or material riches to be fulfilled.  We need to know God is with us and is for us.  The promise of presence lay at the heart of Haggai’s prophecy.  God says, “In this place I will give prosperity.”  We need to desire God.

God’s presence dramatically changes the world.  “I will shake up the heavens and the earth,” we hear God say in Haggai (2:6).  When Jesus died on the cross, this temple so necessary in 520 BC, shook.  The curtain separating the holy of holies from the people tore in half.  God would no longer hide, but in the risen Christ would walk among the people, giving new life.  When the women approached the tomb, angels came, the earth trembled, the stone rolled aside, and they saw that death had been forever beaten. 

I don’t know how you would answer the question, what do we desire?  I am not completely sure I know how I would answer.  I know that Jesus – God in the flesh, our Savior and Lord – satisfies our desires as only God can.  He is the desire of nations and the joy of our hearts.

Be aware of your striving.  Bring to mind what you desire most.  See it.  Then set it aside for a moment, and in its place pursue Jesus.  Open yourself to Him, all your disappointments, mistakes, broken dreams, and uncertainties.  Hold it all before Him.  Ask Him to meet you right where you are.  Ask Him to lead you to where He wants you to be.  It’ll shake you up.  He does that.  It will rock your world.  You’ll never be the same.  And you won’t want to be.

AMEN

All People are Like Grass (Isaiah 40:1-11)

 

Second Sunday of Advent – December 6, 2020

watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifBp6nMdD9k

Her son, 10, and daughter, 5 look at her with sunken, hungry eyes.  The Babylonian army has besieged Jerusalem for weeks.  Supplies have run out.  The assault begins and does not take long.  They break through the city walls.  The few soldiers who put up a defense are quickly impaled on Babylonian spears.  Families are dragged from their homes into the dust of the streets flowing with Israelite blood.  They watch as the Babylonians burn Solomon’s glorious temple. 

            Then, the march.  Mile after mile they walk to their new home, their new normal as slaves in Babylon.  She does not survive the journey but her son and daughter do.  They will live as people without rights on the bottom rung of the social ladder in Babylon until that little boy and girl are in their 70’s, the elder generation of Jews in this foreign place.  They do what they can to keep memories of Israel alive.

            They tell the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  They remember Moses and the Exodus through the Red Sea.  They tell of Joshua and settling the Promised Land.  They remember the victories of David and the temple of Solomon.  But now the brother and sister are old, tired, broken people.  For decades they have listened as their Babylonian overlords mocked their God.  Is it true?  Are the Gods of Babylon superior to Yahweh? Is their God as dead as they feel?

            A rumor spreads of a new prophet rising in the Jewish quarter.  Young people are talking about what he has said.  At a make-shift gathering where one of the few available scrolls of the Torah is read on the Sabbath (thank goodness the Babylonians allow this), people are saying this Jewish prophet has something new to say. 

            This old man and old woman saw their dreams shattered decades ago, a thousand miles way.  Everything they hoped for was violently ripped from them.  Still, they go.  What else is there to do?  The surprisingly large crowd of Jews listen as the young prophet says,   

Comfort, O comfort my people,
    says your God.
² Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and cry to her
that she has served her term,
    that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
    double for all her sins.

 

            Can there be comfort?  The people of God have been swallowed by the sands of history, buried under the force of an enemy too powerful for God.  No, says the prophet.  Mighty Babylon? Don’t buy it! Babylon was a tool in the hands of the Almighty God, used to punish his people, says the prophet. 

            Exile did not happen because of Babylon’s strength but because of Israel’s sin.  Now the prophet says the penalty for that sin has been paid.  The Lord’s punishment is over.  It’s a new day.  God punished, but did not abandon His people.  God does not do that.  God faithful and sovereign offers a new word. 

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
⁴ Every valley shall be lifted up,
    and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
    and the rough places a plain.
⁵ Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
    and all people shall see it together,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

 

            The first command is “comfort.”  Heavenly beings are ordered by the most-high God to give solace to His people.  Scripture gives glimpses of a heavenly realm that is full of creatures we cannot imagine.  These heavenly beings are mentioned in Genesis, Job, Daniel, Revelation and other places, always in service to God.  “Comfort” – the word we see in Isaiah 40:1 – is a verb in the imperative form.  The heavenly beings must obey God’s order to comfort his people. 

A second command is “prepare.” The prophet prepares the way of the Lord – the way God will lead His people back to the Promised Land.  King Cyrus who will lead Persia to overthrow Babylon is to free the Jews and send them home in a second Exodus.  Centuries later, a wild-eyed prophet named John prepares the world for the coming of Jesus by preaching repentance and baptizing those who come to him. 

We who read the Bible, worship the Lord, and believe that God loves us are commanded to prepare the world to meet Jesus.  We tell our story of coming to new life in Christ.  We tell of His grace and the salvation He offers.  We help our friends who don’t know him clear away the clutter that blocks the pathway into their hearts. 

Comfort.  Prepare.  The third command is “Cry out.”  Proclaim God’s word.  What message is the prophet to announce? 

All people are grass,
    their constancy is like the flower of the field.
⁷ The grass withers, the flower fades,
    when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
    surely the people are grass.
⁸ The grass withers, the flower fades;
    but the word of our God will stand forever.

 

All people are grass.  The King of Babylon is grass just like the blind beggar wallowing in the dust of the street hoping someone will spare a bit of bread.  All people are grass. George Floyd, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, you, me – all people are equal.  All wither and fade.  The wealthy slumlord and the renter trapped in poverty stand before God in the same condition.  Right now, some have it easy and others suffer, but that inequality will end.  Injustice cannot stand before the almighty God.  He puts all things right.

The tears that suffering brings are real and maybe you have hard to bear hurt and loss.  God sees the tears shed by shattered hearts.  God knows death is claiming victims everywhere right now.  God hears our cries. 

Isaiah knows suffering.  The Old Testament knows disillusionment, defeat, and death.  Many 6^th century BC Jews had given up.  But the prophet saw beyond the immediate dire circumstances.  The prophet shows us that God is a deliverer. 

Get you up to a high mountain,
    O Zion, herald of good tidings;^[a]
lift up your voice with strength,
    O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,^[b]
    lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
    “Here is your God!”
¹⁰ See, the Lord God comes with might,
    and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him,
    and his recompense before him.
¹¹ He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
    he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
    and gently lead the mother sheep.

 

We know Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of these words.    

The birth of Jesus reminds us that God sees the inequalities and injustices of our broken the world.  God has done something about it.  In Jesus, God empathizes with us and takes upon himself the worst of us and nails it to a cross.  Our sins, our pain, our grief, our loss – it has been crucified with Christ.  In Him, we are no longer slaves to sin.  We are new creations and we have a mission.

We are witnesses.  In this age, the people of God, we who are in Christ, tell our story about how we have come to know God through the salvation we have received in Jesus.

Withering grass and fading flowers reminded Isaiah that in the end, all are equal before God – equally small, equally sinful, equally lost.  The wealthy, the poor and everyone in between, we all fade.  Isaiah reminds us that God gathers in his shepherd arms, holds us, feeds us, and lifts us to where He is. 

Jesus uses different metaphors, a table, and a cross.  At that cross, we are all dead.  He invites we who are dead to the table – all of us.  Everyone gets a seat.  The imperfect, the defective, the broken – we sit together in a community of love. 

We serve each other bread – his body broken; our sins covered.  We serve each other wine – his blood shed; eternal life given to us. 

As we walk in the promises of Isaiah, acknowledging that pain is real but has been defeated by the power of Christ, we walk to the table, guests of our loving Heavenly Father.  We are invited to be at home at this table.  We dare to believe that God is real, can be trusted, and will make the world right.  We dare to live in that belief.

Once we’ve eaten, we go out and tell our story of life in Christ. We walk in the light and we spend our lives inviting others to come with us as we enter the story of the God who comforts, heals, makes us whole, and gathers us in His shepherd arms.

AMEN

God in Exile (Jeremiah 29:1-14)

Sunday, October 13, 2019

            It doesn’t feel like exile, this life I am living.  Do you feel like you live in exile? 

            Some might.  In our community and our church family, we have brothers and sisters who are far from home and cannot go back.  Life here may be wonderful, but it’s a life they been forced into, not one they chose. 

            How the heck would I know what exile feels like?  I’ve lived in this country my entire life.  “American” is all I know.  I feel safe here.  Some here have lived in Chapel Hill or Carrboro all your life.  What could be more like home than this?  Yet, here, even if we love it here, we’re far from the home God has for us. 

The flesh is the part of each of us prone to sin and reject God’s goodness.  Sin lurks and sooner or later we give in.  All human beings do.  The fallen state of the world is the outcome of generations of humans sinning.  Look at the horrors happening to immigrants at the U.S.-Mexican border.  Look at the evils of the Jim Crowe south.  Look at the ways addiction wrecks people’s lives.  These are but a few examples of the effects of sin.  Wherever on earth “here” is, when we feel at home here, that’s the flesh at work.  In addition to leading us into the sin, the flesh also prevents us from seeing the good God has for us.

            God did not intend for us – we who are made in his image – to live with cancer, opioids, mass incarceration, divorce, aborted pregnancies, corruption from our leaders, war, and hunger.  These little hells are manifestations of the fallen state of the world; God never meant for it to be this way.  Yet, it is this way, and we, the church of Jesus Christ, live in the world as it is.  God has placed us in the midst of the misery.  Why?

            Jeremiah prophesied for 40 years in Judah: 40 years of ominous forecasts for the nation.  He warned of coming calamity, punishment for Judah’s rebellion God.  This rebellion was seen in Judah’s willingness to worship false gods.  It was evident in the way Judah’s elite class abused and took advantage of the poorest, most vulnerable people in society.  Judah trampled those at the margins, so God, sent Judah into exile in Babylon.  The wealthy and educated of Judah, the governing class, became people on the margins in exile.  The Lord declares “I have sent [them] into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon” (Jeremiah 29:4). 

History says the Babylonians defeated Judah and destroyed Solomon’s temple.  Babylon overwhelmed many ancient peoples, Judah being just one.  That’s the ‘objective’ historian’s assessment.  By faith we know the Babylonians who appeared to be so mighty were nothing more than tools God used to get the attention of His people.  A century later those same Babylonians were be routed by Persia.  Unwittingly, they served God’s purpose.

How long would God’s people have to stay 1000’s of miles from home, in exile among godless heathens?  In the letter he sent, Jeremiah told the people not to listen to the prophets who promised exile would be short and they’d be home quickly.  Jeremiah was no second Moses telling the foreign king to “Let my people go.”  His message was very different.

“Build houses and live them.”  How long does it take to build a house?  “Plant gardens and eat what they produce.”  Ok, we’ll be here at least an entire growing cycle.  What edible crops come to harvest the quickest?  “Take wives and have sons and daughters.”  Whoa!  That’s a minimum of 9 months.  Well maybe the growing of the crops and the building of the house and the gestation period can all overlap. 

“Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there and do not decrease” (Jer. 29:6).  This exile will last until you become grandparents.  Grandparents are not mentioned much in the Bible.  Lifespans weren’t what they are now.  People often died before they ever became grandparents.  How long with the exile last?  Your entire life.

God did not create Israel or Judah for the purpose of rejecting Him.  God did not set up Babylon to be an imperial power that ravaged and enslaved her enemies.  God doesn’t cause human beings to be evil to each other.  God gives us free will.  Wonder why evil has run amuck in the world?  Remember, God allows humans being to choose his way or their own way.  When, in the flesh, they choose to reject Him, God allows the consequences to play out. 

However, God also works in the brokenness of the world to save it; to save all of us.  God didn’t create the evil conditions, but God doesn’t abandon us to evil either.  God uses exile as the moment He begins creating something new.

We exist to live in relationships of love with God and each other.  We don’t have what God intends for us right now, in the world as it is, fallen in sin, and certainly people who don’t know Jesus are not living the life God intends for them.  So, God places us – his church - in the midst of the world’s pain as his agents pointing hurting, lost people to His light.  Our purpose is to go to before God on behalf of our city, and to go to our city as agents of God’s goodness.  God has set us here for everyone’s benefit.

The entire story arc in the Old Testament flows from God leading Abraham to the Land to flight from the Land during famine to Moses leading the people out of Egypt back to the Land.  It appears that the land is at the center of the story, but that’s not the case.  The holiest of moments come when Moses receives God’s word for His people while they landlessly wander in the wilderness.  The pinnacle of life with God in the Bible story comes in the wilds of Sinai when all the people have is their complete dependence on God.  The Land is just a fulfillment of God’s promise.  God will always make His word good, in any land, anywhere on earth.

Landholding is rebellion against God, claiming for ourselves what God has given as a gift of grace out of His generosity.  Clinging to the past or holding tight to the life we know and control – that’s idolatry.  We think that past, known life is so great that we forget to trust that God’s tomorrow is infinitely better than our cherished yesterday.  We put more faith in what we know than in what God promises. 

So, God lets us fall into exile.  God leads us into the valley because God wants us to meet Him there.  When we thought life was so good, or at least understandable and manageable, we didn’t see God.  We forgot we needed Him. 

Land-loss is whatever it is that you or I lose when we decide we will not look back to the past or try to make our way to a past life.  What your life used to be; what the church’s life used to be; what the community used to be; we don’t look back. Moving forward from the past and from the life we had, good or bad, is an act of faith.  Walter Brueggemann writes, “Exile is the way to new life in new land.  One can scarcely imagine a more radical, less likely understanding of history.  In New Testament categories, death is the way to new life” (Luke 9:23-27; Romans 6:1-11).[i]

Last week we took comfort in Lamentations 3 and the promise that God’s mercies are new every morning.  Even with new mercies, we’re in exile, and that’s no accident.  The only way for the people of God is the way forward from right where we are.  There’s no going back, and when we truly understand what God has done in nailing our sins to the cross and giving us new life in Christ, we won’t want to go back.  Made new in Christ, we embrace the call to exile. We’re made for the Kingdom.  As we live our lives answering the exile call, God prepares us for our eternal home, the one we’re missing so much right now, even if we don’t fully understand it. 

So, if the world is broken and we’re called to live in the middle of the mess, what do we do?  Conveniently for us, Jeremiah answers that question directly.  Build houses.  Plant gardens.  Get married.  Have families.  Be rooted in the world.  Expand, do not decrease.  Don’t sink into holy huddles praying for the end of time.  Live!  We are active participants in the life of Carrboro and Chapel Hill, Hillsboro and Pittsboro,Durham and Raleigh.  We are God-worshiping Jesus followers who live to draw others to Jesus. 

But, building, planting, and living daily life is just the beginning of how we answer the call to exile.  What else does Jeremiah instruct?  “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you, and pray to the Lord on its behalf.”

HillSong church, soon to be Hillside Church, seeks the welfare of the city.  Physical disability makes life hard in ways God did not intend.  Jesus associated physical pain and sickness with evil from Satan.  Earlier this year, we built a ramp on someone’s home.  We plan to do similar projects in the future.  It was a collaborative effort that resulted in a wheel-chair bound individual having an easier time. We believe this contributes to our city’s wellbeing and our part in story is an expression of our obedience to the God who is at work in exile.

More recently, we opened a food pantry in our church because we believe hunger is evil.  No one in our city should have to deal with food insecurity.  Here in exile, we want to show our neighbors that God cares about them.  God wants all bellies to be filled.  By hosting the food pantry, we join God where God is at work.

Through hospitality we seek the city’s welfare, whether hosting the food pantry, the scout troop, the preschool, another church’s funeral service, or other groups that come in.  We welcome them with friendliness as we share the message that we care.

In addition to building, planting, and living, and seeking the wellbeing of the city by joining God where God is at work in the city, Jeremiah says, “Pray to the Lord on the city’s behalf.”  Jeremiah told the exiles to work for and pray for the very enemies who had dragged them into exile.  Jesus says the same thing.  “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).  The Jews in exile may have feared that the Babylonian God had defeated Yahweh.  Jeremiah exploded that reasoning.  You’re not in exile because God lost.  You’re in exile because God sent you there.  God is God in exile.  God is God everywhere.

That neighbor you cannot stand?  Pray for him.  You’re both exiles.  The president who makes your skin crawl, either the current one, the previous one, or the next one?  Pray for him (or her).  Jeremiah’s call to prayer called on God’s exiled people to care deeply about the “other” even though that other was also “enemy.”  Jesus extends that call to us.  To meet God in exile, we have to plant ourselves in exile, work for the good of the city, and pray for those around us. 

In a couple of months, we become Hillside Church, a community that follows Jesus, loves others, and shares hope.  God has given us a mission to bring people in our town to Him that they might know him, turn to him in faith, and join us in the journey out of exile and to our true home in his Kingdom.  We’re planting our church in exile as a step of faith, trusting we will meet God here and He will lead us to where we need to be. 

AMEN

---

[i] Walter Brueggemann (1977), The Land, Fortress Press (Philadelphia), p.122.

Rejoicing in the Word (Nehemiah 8:1-12)

          On October 10 of last year, I began reading through the Bible.  I read The Message, an English version translated by Eugene Peterson.  He said his intent was to translate the Bible into “American English.”  Read The Message and you will realize how quickly language shifts.  What he calls “American English” is very much 20^th century “American.” A few phrases and idioms are out of vogue.  Even so it is a delightful translation and I read all the way through by the end of the year. 

          Not everyone would want to do that.  Not everyone has the freedom.  That’s a lot of scripture in a short time, but not as short a period when author Margaret Feinberg read through the entire Bible during the 40 days of Lent last year.

          Why would she or I or anyone try to digest the entirety of scripture this way?  In such large chunks, it is hard to narrow in and meditate on specific ideas in the Bible.  What is the benefit of this approach to reading?

          It helped me condition my thinking according to the world of the Bible.  I felt the story.  The journey through 1^st and 2^nd Kings alone is exhausting and painful.  Over and over the kings of Judah and Israel worship false gods, ignore the prophets of the one true God, exploit the people, and find themselves at the mercy of foreign monarchs who abuse without restraint.  By the end of 2^nd Kings, the reader is depressed. 

          But then, exile comes as the last King, Zedekiah, is blinded and led off to slavery in Babylon.  And then, we see God’s people in Babylon and Persia and we realize God is there too.  Even as the layers of disobedience pile up, God never leaves.  Esther, Nehemiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel show God’s faithfulness and grace as second chances are given over and over.  Reading through it all gives the reader the arc of the story, a sense of God as God moves with humanity through the eras of history. 

          Another book I read in 2013 is The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel.  Wangerin is extremely creative in his telling of the stories of scripture.  Max Lucado too is an author who brings passion to his depictions of the Bible narratives. 

          I am recommending as a pathway into the Bible that we read it as a great story.  Ignore chapter and verse and simply get into the story.  A translation like The Message may facilitate this.  So too might a novelization like the writings of Wangerin or Lucado, to name just two of many outstanding writers who reflect on scripture.  This year I am going to go through the Contemporary English Version.  Like The Message it is in language patterns similar to our every day speech.  I won’t cram it in in less than 3 months like in 2013.  I’ll read a chunk, leave it, then go back to it.  For me, the exercise is a way to live in the story world. 

          This approach to the Bible as story helped me tremendously in reading Nehemiah.  Nehemiah is situated in the time of exile.  Israel has fallen to Babylon.  Then Babylon falls to Persia and the Israelite slaves go from one master to another.  Yet all is not lost.

          We see in the Bible the Jewish people cling fiercely to their role as God’s chosen even when they appear utterly defeated.  Other ancients assumed when they were defeated that the gods of their conquerors were superior to their own gods.  Not Israel.  No matter what happened, Israel claimed the uniqueness and superiority of Yahweh as the only God. 

          In the book of Genesis, Israelite Joseph, son of Jacob is a slave who rises from death row to become governor.  He runs the empire and through his divinely inspired wisdom the Egyptians survive the famine.  Similarly, Daniel rises in Persia to great authority, a slave ruling over the nation.  Nehemiah, also in Persia, becomes the cupbearer to the King.

          This slave from Jerusalem is so important that the Persian emperor a man with enormous responsibilities pays attention to Nehemiah’s emotions.  Nehemiah receives reports that Jerusalem, the city of David, lies in ruins.  He is overcome with depression and the king takes note of his sadness.  The king grants Nehemiah permission to leave his service as cupbearer, travel to Jerusalem, and rebuild the city. 

          By the time we arrive at the book of Nehemiah, chapters 8 and 9, the priest, Ezra, has come from Persia, to join the rebuilding effort.  Israel will not be the people of God without worship and not just any offering to the Lord, but proper worship.  This is crucial to know in the story world of Bible.  Worship matters.  The identity of the great “I AM,” Yahweh, the God of Abraham, demands that worship be at the core of who Israel is.   

          With this sense of story, we realize what is happening when we open Nehemiah 8 and see Ezra addressing the nation as they gather.  They are starting over.  After slavery, after the destruction of the temple and the city, they once again gather, turn their hearts to God, and worship.  We would not get all the undertones of the story by just opening up Nehemiah and beginning our reading at chapter 8, verse 1. 

          British preacher Peter Mead says, “I often ponder the fact that the Bible men and women whom I most aspire to be like are not those with a ready quiver full of pithy proof-texts, but those who know the God of the Bible because they are washed in the Bible as a whole, book by book.”[i]  Are we so washed in the Bible so that we get a sense of what God is doing both in the Bible story we are reading and in our lives as we read?  Or do we just whip a verse or there with no connection to all God is doing in history.  Dangling Bible verses quoted out of context do a disservice to God.  When we quote without a sense of story, we deceive ourselves into thinking we are being Biblical when in fact we’re just self-righteously drawing to our own abilities to memorize.  Quoting is fine and is good, but only when it is connected to story – God’s and ours.

          In Nehemiah 8, worship stands as the highpoint marking the moment the nation re-forms as God’s people.  In the center of the worship is the Torah, the law, the word.  Torah is the content of the first five books of the Old Testament.  It is what God gave Moses on Mt. Sinai as God called his people out of Egypt in the Exodus.  Before they could go to the Promised Land, they had to understand God.  The Torah is creation, 10 commandments, the story of deliverance, and the review in Deuteronomy, the entire law revisited to prepare the nation to enter the land. 

          Nehemiah 8:3 reports that the people, men, women, and children, stood at the Water Gate in Jerusalem while the priest Ezra read.  I thought about having us all stand throughout the sermon this morning.  They stood there from early morning to midday, maybe as long as 4 hours without sitting.  They stood and listened as Ezra read and explained the Torah. 

It had been so long since the people of Israel lived in the land and live in the word that many had even forgotten the language.  They needed priests to translate Ezra’s teaching from Hebrew into Aramaic (8:7-8).  But they patiently endured the lengthy session because they could not think of anything that mattered as much as being in the word.  Their return to God would be founded upon the word.  The Torah was how God communicated and on it they would stand. 

          Walter Brueggemann comments that “remapping and reconstruction becomes the ongoing work of Judaism.  It is clear,” he writes, “the work of Judaism is always postexilic [after fall in sin and restoration by grace] and is always on the horizon of Yahweh’s gathering, healing, forgiving, loving propensity.”[ii]  In our lives as followers of Jesus, we remember that he is the Jewish Messiah and that in Him, as we read in Romans; we are grafted into the people of God.  But this is only so because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross.  Our story cannot be told without the cross and the resurrection.  Israel had to begin with Torah and continuously return to Torah.  We have to begin with the Gospel and continuously return to it.  This ongoing work of reconstruction is ours as we commit ourselves to repentance (turning from our sins), receiving forgiveness, and giving it.  As the New Testament puts it, the Gospel is new wine and we are new creations.

          In Nehemiah 8, when the law was being read during that four-hour stretch, people began weeping.  They were overcome by their own guilt.  However, the governor, Nehemiah, and the priest, Ezra, stopped the lamentations.  The people felt their sin, the weight of it, the filth of it, but Ezra and Nehemiah wanted to introduce a new emotion – joy.  We weep in sin because we are cut off from God.  We grieve our sins because sin rips us away from the good that God created us to be.  We become something less than fully human.  At the cross, Jesus took it all on himself.  In Him, in the waters of baptism, the sins are washed away.  Isaiah 61:3 – He gives beauty for Ashes, gladness instead of mourning.

          Nehemiah 8:10: “This is a special day for the Lord your God.  So don’t be sad and don’t cry.  Enjoy your good food and wine and share some with those who don’t have anything.  … This is a special day for the Lord, and he will make you happy and strong.  This is a sacred day, so don’t worry or mourn” (8:10b-12).

         

          A few weeks ago, we talked about the sin cycle that is so prevalent in the book of Judges.  The people worship other gods and fall away from the Lord.  The Lord gets angry.  The people fall into domination at the hands of cruel invaders.  The people cry out and the Lord responds by sending a hero, a judge.  Through the judges, the Lord brings salvation.  After the salvation, the people live in peace, joy, and faithfulness.  This is bliss until they forget and in disobedience, they abandon the Lord and it starts all over.

          Nehemiah lies within the story of this cycle of sin, fall, and deliverance.  Chapter 8, verse 1, the deliverance has come.  Ezra stands and reads the word because the story is important and nothing can happen between God and the people until they locate themselves within it.  They hear and they realize their place and they weep. 

          Sin.  Restoration.

          And then, as Ezra and Nehemiah insist, not weeping, but rejoicing.  God has given the word, which speaks who He is and it – the word – is able to hold us up and make us new. 

          To be human is to live with our own failures.  Dreams die.

          It does not mean we die with them.  It may feel that way.  But no.  We can’t wallow in sorrow because a story is beneath us and around us and the God of that story lifts us. Fallen, we rise because he raises us.          When we start again, after the fall-out and deep pain has infected our souls, we stand on the Gospel.  We stand on the truth that God spoke to the world through Israel, and then again through His son our Savior Jesus.  The Bible draws us to Jesus and Jesus lifts us to our feet.  Failure is not the end of our story.  We belong to Jesus, risen one.  Because of Him, the sin cycle is broken and in all circumstances, we have joy.   

AMEN

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[i] Peter Mead (2014), Sermon Central website - http://www.sermoncentral.com/pastors-preaching-articles/peter-mead-why-bible-reading-is-down-at-your-church-1801.asp?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=scnewsletter&utm_content=SC+Update+20140130

[ii] Brueggemann (1997) Theology of the Old Testament, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, p.444.