NRSNehemiah 8
1all the people gathered together into the square before the Water Gate. They told the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel. 2Accordingly, the priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month. 3He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law.
5And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up.6Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, "Amen, Amen," lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.
8So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.
9And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, "This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep." For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. 10Then he said to them, "Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength."
In the words of this morning’s psalm let us pray. … Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of each heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Mostly we listen quietly. Sometimes we stand, sometimes we sit. Typically we follow the lector by silently reading along with him or her in the bulletin. Sometimes, of course, our minds wander. Sometimes something in the reading triggers a memory that carries us off on a tangent. Every once in a while, we may find ourselves thinking about lunch, or looking at our watch, or checking our smart phone. Sometimes we just stare blankly at our shoes. When the reading is lengthy, our hearts will occasionally sag as we wonder, “Are we ever going to get out of here?” As one who both reads and is read to on Sundays, I think I’ve just about seen it all. But what I’ve never seen during the reading of the Sunday lessons is a whole congregation break into tears.
Now and then I’ve seen a person tear up during the reading of a Sunday lesson, usually because it’s a favorite verse of theirs or perhaps of a loved one long deceased. Sometimes we might smile over the cleverness of a reading, or over a lector’s mistake, but have you ever seen a congregation standing for hours on end weeping throughout at the sheer power and glory of the Word of God? Me neither. In fact, many churches are today reducing the Sunday lessons to a single reading offered by the preacher because, according to research, people get bored listening to other people read. So how do you go from people bored to people openly weeping over the Law of Moses?
That’s exactly what happens in this morning’s First Lesson. At the behest of the people of Jerusalem, the priest Ezra reads from the Book of the Law of Moses to the men and women assembled outside the Water Gate. (By the way, that’s the public square situated in front of the gate to Jerusalem’s main water supply, and not the office and apartment complex in Washington, D.C.) Ezra reads and interprets from early in the morning to midday, while the people listen and weep. And I guess I don’t need to tell you, there’s a story as to how all these people were brought together to stand for hours on end while Ezra expounds on the Law of Moses.
At the beginning of the 6th century b.c. the Babylonian Empire took control of the Kingdom of Judah. Within three years, and contrary to the urgings of the prophet Jeremiah, Judah revolted, calling down the wrath of Babylon. In short order Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar, of the Hanging Gardens fame, laid siege to Jerusalem and promptly sacked the city and its Temple. Judah’s King Jehoiachin and his court and most of Jerusalem’s elite – the princes, soldiers, and craftsmen, i.e., anybody who could help mount a counterattack – were deported to camps outside the gates of Babylon, some 700 miles away. Ten years later, in 587 b.c., Judah’s King Zedekiah decides to take on the Babylonians in another revolt. Very bad idea. Nebuchadnezzar again marches his army through Judah, this time destroying every fortified city in the land, and when he gets to Jerusalem, he burns it to the ground, including of course the Temple. Zedekiah is captured, his eyes are put out in a public display of humiliation, and, along with whatever remained of Jerusalem’s elite, is also deported to Babylon. And there they stayed for another 50 years, nearly two generations.
These exiled Judeans were not under lock and key, because, after all, where could they go. The prophet Jeremiah told them to settle in for a long stay, and they did their best to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land. Without the Temple for the offering of sacrifice, Judah’s priestly class put their efforts into assembling the various written and oral traditions of Israel. What we know as the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, were in all likelihood assembled and edited in Babylon. But mostly Judah spent its time in exile pondering the imponderable: how had they fallen so low? How had they gone from singing the Lord’s praise in the beauty of the Temple to sitting beside the bitter waters of Babylon? How had they gone from a nation, mighty, prosperous, and populous, to a bare remnant hanging on by the skin of their teeth? How could the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have abandoned them to the boot heels of Babylon? How could the Lord Almighty, who swore to David a kingdom without end, send the descendants of David into exile so far from the Temple of the Lord? Fifty years they pored over the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs. Fifty years they pounded their heads against the hard words of the prophets. Fifty years they gave their hearts and minds to understanding the heart and mind of God revealed in the law given to Moses. And then…
In the year 538 b.c. Cyrus led the Persian Empire in the overthrow of Babylon. There was a new sheriff in town, and wanting to win over the favor of the people, Cyrus embarked on a program of religious tolerance. He issued a decree for the revival of the worship of Jehovah and opened the way for Judah’s exiles to return to Jerusalem. Some of those exiles stayed in Babylon, for many the only home they had ever known. But for people who had their whole lives long heard songs of the glory of the Temple, the lure of Jerusalem was too much to resist. Over the next twenty years the exiles made their way back to blessed Jerusalem, where they found a wasteland. The Temple was a burned out shell, the walls of the city were in ruins, and the people who had seized the lands left by the Judean exiles were none too thrilled to welcome them back. Eventually, the Persian king sends first Ezra , a priest and scribe, then Nehemiah, a governor, to rebuild the faith of Israel and the walls of Jerusalem.
Under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, the time came for Jerusalem to face the ugly secret it had been denying for the previous fifty years. Was it God who had abandoned them? Was it only the cruelty of Babylon that had brought them so low? Was their fate merely the result of bad kings, bad luck, or bad stars? Or was the truth a little closer to home?
That day, before the Water Gate, with Ezra reading and interpreting the Law of Moses, the truth begins to dawn, and as the lights come on, the tears begin to flow. Under the brilliance of God’s Word, the returned exiles come face to face with their own culpability. It was not God who had abandoned them, but they who had abandoned God. It wasn’t only the wrath of Babylon, but the wrath of God that consumed them when time and time again they turned deaf ears to the words of the prophets. God had not left them, but they had left God without even knowing it. So preoccupied were they with the minutia of religion that they had forgotten the essence of faith. But now, in the light of God’s Word, they could see, and at last they could weep. They could cast off the lies they had told themselves, they could forego the accusations and recriminations, and they could, finally, come home.
This is what it’s like to live under the Word of God. It’s like the lights coming on and it’s horrible because you can see everything. You see yourself, your world, your life for what it is, without illusions, without all the stuff we do to hide our desperate need for God. And it’s horrible. It makes you want to weep, but the only thing sadder or more horrible would be to continue living in the fool’s paradise you’ve made for yourself.
As Israel attests and as the saints confirm, living in, with, and under the Word of God is to be laid bare. It means being stripped of our self-deceptions and bereft of our fantasies. But the good news is that where God’s Word shines, we can see. Even if what we see of ourselves makes our skin crawl, at least we can see, and with God’s Word as a lamp to our feet and a guide to our path, we can finally see the God who loves us as we are. Only when the light of God’s Word pierces our cloud of delusion are we able to see the God of our deliverance, our rock and redeemer, who will lead us from out of deadly exile to our true home where neither moth, nor rust, nor thief can take from us the blessing of God.
When Nehemiah sees the people of Jerusalem weeping before the Word of God, he orders them to stop their crying. "Go your way,” he tells them, “eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." So if your mind is wandering to what’s for lunch, consider feasting on the Word, “for the joy of Lord is your strength,” too.
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
