January 21, 2007
Nehemiah 8:1–3, 5–6, 8–10
Rebirth. While none of can say that we have any
literal experience of any such thing, we’ve seen something like it happen. Politicians come to mind – people like
Abraham Lincoln whose political career was pronounced dead so often the
newspapers stopped writing obituaries, but whose ultimate rebirth as President
of the United States proved to be one of the most decisive chapters in American
history. Or Jimmy Carter, virtually run
out of office by a weary and frustrated electorate, who came back to life as a
humanitarian and statesman. Or
celebrities of one stripe or another whose reputation clouded or faded
altogether, only to be reborn in a later generation. And come to think of it, we have been a party
to something like rebirth that will find expression in music this afternoon.
Rebirth -- that’s the
essence of what was going on in the story we’ve just read. A new beginning on radically different
terms. The story is set in the aftermath
of the Babylonian exile, after the new king had released the Israelites and
sent them home. Nehemiah, from whom this
book takes its name, was the governor of the rehabilitating state, charged with
the task of reassembling life in Jerusalem and rebuilding the historic temple –
a kind of Paul Bremer sent in to Bagdad after the fall of Iraq. And rebuilding was underway, though as it is
in our own experience, it was slow and tedious going – two steps forward, one
step back. Whatever else might have been
weighting down the effort, there was a kind of disjointed malaise that
oppressed the people like a funk. There
was no emotional or psychological center to their efforts; no spiritual
vitality animating their work.
Until -- and who knows precisely
how or when – a movement began to surge; a momentum that swelled into an
insistent, groping hunger.
“Bring the book,” they
demanded of Ezra, the priest. “Bring the
book of the law of Moses, so that we might know, again, who we are.”
It’s hard, I suppose, for
us to understand how a people can lose track of who they are. Corporations realize it often enough – how
they have grown and fattened and acquired their way into all kinds of far-flung
expressions so much so that, realizing it, they determine to sell off this
branch or division to get back to their core business that really defines
them. But whether we recognize it or
not, the same thing happens within communities – even communities of faith. Core principles become so familiar that they
are no longer said out loud. Assumptions
are made; judgments are presumed; values taken for granted and then forgotten;
then shortcuts are taken and innovations conceived. At some point decisions get based on
expedients and popularity and before anyone has really thought much about it,
the center has drifted outward into companionable but scarcely related bits and
pieces and odds and ends. A collection,
but hardly a body. In each other’s way
more often than in each other’s skin.
Eventually, one of two
things happens: the pieces drift off
completely into their own independent orbits, or they rise up with a new
determination to make themselves whole again.
And so it was in that
latter spirit that the people told Ezra to remember, for them, who they
were. “Read to us from the law of
Moses,” they insisted – that formative and defining structure for and testimony
to their common life as Children of God.
Some fascinating details are included about that reading. Ezra didn’t simply climb up onto the wall and
orally turn the pages. We are told that
he read with interpretation – offering not only the words, but the sense of
them, so that the people could understand.
I think that little detail
too often gets short shrift in our conversations about scripture. In fact, I often hear people disavow such a
thing – that scripture, they argue, plainly read, can speak for itself. Read it simply, and then simply do what it
says. But that’s hardly realistic. Any text of consequence deserves careful and
attentive consideration – and ultimately interpretation. And if we are sometimes nervous about the
prospect of interpreting, Fred Craddock observes that we do it all the time.
“Children,” he writes,
“look to parents as much for interpretations as for food and clothes. ‘What was that noise?’ ‘Will Grandma have to stay dead very long?’
‘Do hamsters go to heaven?’ and a thousand other questions are pleas for the
parents to interpret the new and strange.”
But not only
children. Adults, likewise, “look to
those with special qualifications as interpreters of the unfamiliar and
disturbing. It may be…a lawyer, a
minister, a physician, or a psychiatrist.
A pain the doctor cannot interpret is twice as sharp, and no tragedy is
as heavy as one which none can explain.”
[1]
But if the burden of interpretation
is always difficult, that difficulty is increased, Craddock observes, by two
factors – importance, and distance. The
more important we view something to be, the more carefully we tend to its
interpretation. Just consider, for
example, the Constitution of the United States, and how we have devoted an
entire branch of government to its interpretation. And when distance is added to the proposition
– be that distance of time or space or language or culture, or values or
beliefs – then the interpretive process is made even more strenuous. Have you ever tried to follow an old family
recipe handed down from a time when can sizes were different and brand-named
products – common at the time the recipe was written – are no longer
available? Interpretation suddenly
becomes the measure of your dinner!
When we casually and
rather flippantly suppose that we can sit down with the pages of scripture and
effortlessly read and turn and apply them, we are inflicting on them and
ourselves an abusive arrogance that does both a disservice. However simple and straightforward the words
may appear to be, they seldom simply jump off the page as transparent
messengers anxious to take up ready lodging in our practice. They are important enough – indeed precious
and decisive enough, and let’s face it, “distant” enough – to warrant our
careful interpretation.
Ezra already knew
that. And with the help of the Levites,
we are told, who passed among the people with words of explanation, he read
with a patient attention to understanding.
But we might be surprised at the outcome. “Understanding” is mentioned frequently in
the passage – twice we are told, for example, that only those old enough to hear
with understanding were gathered. And we
might confuse the intent with mere intellection – with the rational
comprehension of the brain. But when the
people had heard the reading – all six or so hours of it – their response was
more than a simple nod of the head and a knowing, “uh huh.” Receiving the words as God’s own voice to
them, they not only understood with their minds, they apprehended the core of
it in their souls, and they cried.
Maybe, as many have
surmised, they wept with the realization of how far from God’s intent they had
drifted away. Maybe they wept over the comprehension
of treasure once lost and now found.
Most of us, I suppose, can identify with the experience of remorse and
repentance or grateful relief being translated into earnest tears. But guilt and sorrow and joy notwithstanding,
I can think of another possibility.
Surely we have also come into contact with truth so present and immense,
so throat-grippingly full of power and grace that all we could do was cry.
For clearly what the
Israelites came to know afresh, that day in the square by the Water Gate, was
something about themselves, to be sure, but even moreso something bold and
awakening about the God whose liberating strength and restoring mercies had
breathed new life into their veins. And
worship was the only meaningful response – the worship of their bowed heads and
the worship of their tears; the worship of their obedience, and the worship of
their communal life in each other’s keeping made purposeful by God’s own
keeping of them.
And now if they could only
remember it – if we could only remember it:
that the good life is God’s
life; that we are never so weak as when we glory in ourselves; never so strong
as when we live in the joy of the Lord.
If we could only relish
that joy…
…and remember it.