How Shall We Build Our House?

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.

photo: Men's Sunday School Class in Canton , Ohio 1912.  

By https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2007661751, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33480269

Gathered In

Isaiah 60:1-6       

Matthew 2:1-12

Today is the day of Epiphany, also known as Three Kings Day. Although the gospel of Matthew doesn’t actually say they were kings. 

Americans don’t get into it with the same energy as others do, but Epiphany is a big day in some parts of the world, with a whole collection of traditions around it. The king cakes, where something is hidden inside and whoever gets the piece with the prize becomes the king. Or, in some cultures it means you get to pay for the cake.

There are places where children dress up as kings and go door to door singing songs and collecting sweets – sort of a cross between caroling and trick-or-treating. 

Epiphany, in some places is the day when gifts are exchanged – not on Christmas Day, but Epiphany Day. It marks the end of the Christmas season, 12 days long. 

Epiphany, like all other aspects of Christmas, has taken on a great deal of meaning and expectation that has nothing remotely to do with the biblical story. But, actually, turning the Wise Men into Kings has a certain biblical logic to it. It comes from Isaiah.

In the 60^thchapter of Isaiah, when the exiles are returning to Jerusalem. Over the past century, they have endured much brutality at the hands of bigger, stronger kingdoms. They have seen their brothers and sisters to the north be completely annihilated. Jerusalem was finally captured and destroyed; the people were, en masse, marched away to a foreign land. Babylon. There they remained, in darkness, for some 50 years. 

But kingdoms come and kingdoms go. Babylon’s power waned and they were conquered by the new powers to the east – the Persian empire ruled by Cyrus. Cyrus had different views on cultural diversity, and he encouraged the Jews to return to Jerusalem. Jerusalem, the shining city on a hill; the city that had been a light drawing all the people of Israel to it for hundreds of years. They were now free to return to Jerusalem. For this good deed, the Persian King was named Cyrus the Great.

All the years spent in spiritual darkness, the people yearned for Jerusalem, and now they could finally return. But it wasn’t simple, they discovered. Jerusalem had been under siege for years before the Babylonians finally broke them. The army tore in through the city walls setting fires and tearing down everything in sight. Now, these fifty-some years later, when the Jews return to Jerusalem, they are returning to a site of complete devastation. And they were not prepared for it.

Think about it: They had been carted away from there a couple of generations ago. Children had been born and raised, and had borne and raised their own children, all in captivity. For decades they had sung songs of lament for their beloved Jerusalem, passing them down to new generations. Through it all, telling the stories of Jerusalem, the place where they had left all their dreams.

Most, if not all, of the people returning to Jerusalem in this new age had never been there before. They were not prepared for what they returned to. Nobody could be prepared for it. All the light had left Jerusalem. It was nothing but a pile of rubble. 

And if they had only listened to the prophets way back then – well, you know, things could have been different. But people rarely do heed the prophets.

Biblical prophets are an angry lot. When you open the Bible to a prophetic book – Jeremiah, Amos, any of them – you find words that could singe the hair off your head with their fury. They’re mad. It’s a terrible job, being a prophet. No one likes them because they usually have come to tell you what you are doing wrong. 

And there is good reason for that. People are frequently doing things wrong. But here in the 60^thchapter, as we draw near to the end of Isaiah’s book, we see the compassionate side of the prophet. He doesn’t say, “Told you so.” He speaks to the city of Jerusalem with tenderness:

Arise, shine, for your light has come. The glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Nations shall come to your light. Kings to the brightness of your dawn. Your sons, your daughters, yes, they will return, but also the abundance of the seas, the wealth of the nations – the young camels of Midian, and Ephah, and Sheba. They will all come to proclaim the praise of the Lord.

Into this terrible mess the prophet injects poetry; words of hope and expectation. Look up, he says, your light has come. Not only will you, Jerusalem, be the light of the people of Israel, but you will be the light of the world. All the nations of the world – Africa, Asia, Europe – will be drawn to your light. 

Kings will come, and their camels, to your light. They will bring gold and frankincense and sing praises to God.

This will happen, promises Isaiah.

This is happening, says Matthew. The light of the world is born and it is not a place – it is a person. People come from north and south, from east and west, to be in the presence of the light. The light will shine out and everyone, all the peoples of the world shall be gathered in – all kinds of people! And in this diverse and colorful gathering, in the light of Christ, will be blessings of peace and wellness, because this is what it is to have Christ living in and among us. 

Arise, shine; your light has come. Gather in this beloved community and be blessed by him. 

It will happen, promises Isaiah.

It is happening, declares Matthew.

It was and is and shall be, says the Lord, now and forevermore. 

photo: Frankincense and Myrrh

Searching for Him

Luke 2:39-52     

I think most parents know what it feels like to lose a child. Or, if you have been careful enough to never lose track of one of your children, then maybe you are familiar with the fear of losing a child. I am one of the many mothers of the world who has lost a child in a public place. I have had the mall on lock-down more than once. I know that feeling of panic that comes the moment you realize your child is not with you. But I cannot imagine what it would be like to feel this way for three days.

Three days they searched in Jerusalem, a city packed with Jews from all over the diaspora, on pilgrimage for the festival of the Passover.  Three days he was on his own in a city that was not his home, an unfamiliar place.  Three days Mary and Joseph did not know if their son was alive, didn’t know if he was safe.

And then, that moment when you find your child, you breathe a sigh of relief, and say, “Thank God you’re alive, you’re safe. I’m going to kill you.”

For Mary, this would be one of those moments she would simply hold, treasure, ponder in her heart. Mary would have many moments and days when she would need to withhold judgment and sit with the wonder and mystery of it all. It had been that way for Mary from the very beginning.

When the Angel Gabriel first came to her; when the shepherds came at his birth and told her everything the angels had said to them – that the child in the manger was a Savior, the Messiah, the Lord. And Mary treasured these words in her heart.

When Mary and Joseph carried Jesus to the temple on the eighth day for the rite of circumcision, and they were approached by Simeon and Anna – two individuals who were near the end of their lives, greeting the newborn Messiah with words of prophecy and worship. A recognition that one age was ending and a new age was beginning. And Mary treasured these things in her heart.

And now, 12 years later, her son is on the threshold of becoming a man. He is figuring out who he is, who he will be, as all children do. He is discovering that his identity is tied in with the temple, perhaps more than for other Jewish boys.

He is drawn to the temple, and while his family and their neighbors who have traveled up to Jerusalem together, are doing other things, he wanders into a quiet area of the temple to converse with the rabbis, ask them his questions. And, as they soon discover, he is not so much a student as he is a teacher to the teachers. They are amazed by his understanding. I wonder: do they, in their amazement, know that he is the one they have been waiting for, searching for?

In the meantime, the caravan from Nazareth are gathering up their belongings and getting ready for their journey back home. Men pack up the donkeys, women pack food for the trip, older girls corral the younger children, and they begin the long walk home.

A day later, Mary and Joseph notice that their son is missing.

I don’t want to fault them for not noticing sooner. I have seen the film Home Alone. You are bound to overlook something when things get chaotic. Besides, I am sure all the children were playing together as they traveled. Mary and Joseph just assumed that Jesus was among them.

But when they did notice, they became frantic and headed back toward Jerusalem. Evidently, they looked in a lot of places before the temple. Where would you look for your lost child? Maybe Jesus made some Jerusalem buddies while they were there, so they checked with those families first. Maybe there were some vendors that were particularly attractive to a boy, and they would have looked there.

When they finally went to the temple, maybe they weren’t even expecting to find him. But there he was, sitting among the teachers like this was the most typical thing in the world for a 12-year-old boy to do.

My sister Katie was prone to wandering away and managed to get lost many times before she turned ten. Once in a department store, my mother arrived in the security office, harried, tired and frantic, to find her child sitting in a chair eating candy, happy as can be. And Katie said, “Mama, why did you lose me?”

Jesus looked at Mary and Joseph, harried, tired and frantic after a three-day search, and said to them, “Abba! Eema! Why didn’t you know where I was?”

Why didn’t you know where to find me? Did you not know I would be in my father’s house?

And they did not understand this. And Mary added these things to all that she held and pondered and treasured in her heart.

That treasure in Mary’s heart would continue to grow over the years to come. It would grow to seem more like a burden, an anguish, than a treasure for Mary. But she was always there, nearby, watching and listening and taking it in. I don’t think Mary ever stopped watching and searching for him – this child she had birthed; this Savior, Messiah, Lord.

In this way, perhaps we have something in common with Mary.

We have heard the prophecies, like Mary did, Anna, Simeon, and all the others. We have heard the angels sing, like Mary did. We have heard the crowds calling to him, crying out, “Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me!” just as Mary would in years to come. So we, like Mary, keep on searching for him.

Like Mary, we are also on a journey, searching for Jesus. Because he has promised to be with us always, giving us that peace he promised, guiding us and giving us hope. Yet much of the time we are not sure where to find him.

Are you searching for Jesus? Longing to be near to him, see him, know him? And do you too often feel that he is just beyond your sight, your grasp? I think of the song from the old musical Godspell, Day by Day.

O, dear Lord, three things I pray: to see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly, day by day.

And yet that nearness is elusive.

I turn to the Gospel of Matthew for guidance here, because Matthew’s gospel was written for just this. Matthew wrote for a first-century group of Jesus following Jews who were trying to figure out how to be a community of faith. They had recently been cut off from the Jewish synagogues, which was like being kicked out of the house, disowned by their family. They were like religious orphans, and Matthew shared some words and episodes from Jesus’ life with a particular intent of guiding them in forming the church.

Jesus says many things in this gospel that helped to shape the church as they established their new identity; in many ways it is like an operational manual. But one thing he said might be particularly incisive today: that where two or three are gathered together in his name, he will be there among them. We may find him most completely among a community of believers.

And this is no insignificant thing today. As quite a few people are wondering: why bother to go to church? What can I get there that I can’t find somewhere else? What is the point?

These are fair questions. We live in a very busy world, where there are a great many opportunities competing for our time. There are a whole host of reasons why I might skip church. Can you give me one good reason why I should go?

And the reason Jesus gives us is this: I will be there with you.

In a community of the faithful, we will find Jesus. He will be here consoling us, enlightening us, strengthening us. He will be here on the good days, but even more he will be here in the most difficult of days. He will guide us through the sometimes choppy seas of being in community together, helping us find the right things to say and do. He will be here to surprise us and challenge us and give us peace. All of this.

And there will be moments that you will find yourself just holding it, pondering it, in your heart. Because it is a great mystery how love can be so profound even in the midst of pain. It is a great mystery how we can draw on the communal strength and persevere through difficulties, how we can find joy in it.

May you find Jesus in our midst – as we serve our neighbors together, as we welcome strangers together, as we learn together, as we eat and play and laugh together, and as we worship together.