Gathering at the Water Gate

This Sunday, I am again with the people of St. Luke's, Worcester. They will have their Annual Meeting today. Normally when a rector is in place, it's an opportunity to offer an Annual Address and to reflect on past, present, and future. Although I know the congregation well, I'm not their rector - nevertheless I tried to offer some thoughts about past, present, and future. The readings for the day can be found here.

When Jesus returned to Galilee to teach in the synagogues, he entered the synagogue where he had been brought up to do some teaching. When he stands up to read there is a tiny detail I want you to notice with me.  

We are so used to people standing up to read from the Bible that it is easy to imagine Jesus opening up the King James Version of the Bible to find his lines in red letters! But of course that isn’t what he does. What he does (in a world before the printing press) is to unroll the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.

The Bible that Jesus learned, marked and inwardly digested wasn’t a bound book; it was a library of scrolls. And in today's gospel reading, he unrolls one of those scrolls...

Of course, you say. Big deal, Simpson. But I think if we mean to take the Bible seriously, that begins with knowing what it is. In our bound Bibles, Ezra and Nehemiah appear as two distinct books. But in a much earlier time, they were one single scroll. So I want us to unroll that scroll today and rediscover what is there…

In the very first lines of that scroll we read that “it is the first year of King Cyrus of Persia.” (Ezra 1:1) We should remember that these ancient empires of Persia and Babylon have modern names: Persia is Iran and Babylon is Iraq. Essentially what has happened is that Iraq has ceased to be a threat, but now Iran is because Cyrus of Persia has defeated the Babylonian army. In the logic of the Middle East (where the enemy of my enemy is my friend) this has the potential to be good news for the exiles who are still living in Babylon. (In fact it is in just this same context where the word “gospel” or good news does in fact first get used, by the prophet Isaiah.)  

Cyrus issues an edict that allows the exiles to return home. He almost certainly does this for his own benefit, not because he is a nice guy. His advisors tell him that it doesn’t make sense to leave these exiles in Babylon, but rather, that if he allows them to go home, they will rebuild their temple and their homes and their lives and then they’ll have to pay taxes to Cyrus. So this is Realpolitic on Cyrus’ part—it’s imperial economics, not theology.

But who cares? If you are a refugee who has lived for decades in exile, what do you care what Cyrus’ motivation is? As far as the scroll of Ezra-Nehemiah is concerned, the hand of God is at work in all of this. This is the dawn of a new day.

And who are we to say that they weren’t right?

It is very difficult to know how exactly God works in and through our failed global policies and at a much more personal level, sometimes our bad decisions, our mistakes, our broken relationships. But if we trust the message of Christmas—that God-(really)-is-with-us—then don’t we also need to trust that God is even now made “manifest in gracious will, ever bringing good from ill…” as that great Epiphany hymn puts it. (“Songs of Thankfulness and Praise.”)

And so the exiles do return home. As you unroll the scroll of Ezra-Nehemiah, the story unfolds. They rebuild the temple. They rebuild the city walls. And then they begin to repair the other breaches too, the city itself. They restore streets to live in. Dare I say that they try to “build back better?” Most of all, in the process, they begin to re-build their lives. They can’t go back in time, so they begin to move forward. Let me say that again because maybe that is important for us: they cannot go back in time. They can only move forward. Do you see where I’m going?

Building programs always create some conflicts and the scroll is honest about those. One of the conflicts is that some people are more focused on building their own homes and need to be prodded to take care of the temple. Another is that the old-timers who remember what the temple was like before the exile aren’t convinced that the new plans are an improvement over the old tried and true ways. These conflicts are a reminder that there is nothing new under the sun. People are people, and that fact always makes life interesting. Faith communities are challenging in the best of times, and nearly impossible in the worst of times. Why? People! 

I’ll be honest: I don’t think this scroll is the most riveting in all of scripture. In many aspects it is quite mundane. But I’ve also found, in these years of pandemic we find ourselves in, that I’m discovering and rediscovering gems in Holy Scripture I either never knew were there or had forgotten about. I also appreciate, the older I get, the mundane. I am, the older I get, less patient with lofty goals and pie-in-the-sky thinking and more interested in asking what is the next step we can take. And then the one after that.

Our current experience, now two years of pandemic with some ups and downs and some twists and turns along the way, opens us up to hearing good news in new ways and new places. So I bet you haven’t heard a lot of sermons on Ezra-Nehemiah but hey – I bet no one here has lived through a global pandemic before, either.

We have not been in exile for seventy years even if it feels like that some days. But the metaphor is more powerful after two years of isolating and masking and vaxxing than it was a few years ago. We are all tired. The most introverted and least social of us are weary of all this and yearn for human connections. So those words from another exilic prophet speak to us across the centuries: comfort, comfort ye my people. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem. (Worcester, too…)

So, in the chapter we heard read from this Ezra- Nehemiah scroll today, we heard these words. Listen again, with some context, for a Word of the Lord:  

All the people of Israel gathered together into the square before the Water Gate. They told the scribe Ezra to bring the scroll of the Torah of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel. Accordingly, the priest Ezra brought the Torah before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month. He 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 scroll of the Torah. And Ezra unrolled it in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he unrolled it, all the people stood up. Then 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. So they read from the scroll, from the Torah of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.

And 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 Torah. Then 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."

This is about an assembly, a congregation gathered to hear and read and mark and learn from the Torah. But it’s also and even more importantly about the God who is ever bringing good from ill, the God whose best days are not in the past but lie ahead. In this little scene we see the beginnings of a re-formed community dedicated to the Torah and prophets. It’s the dawn of a new day but there are still the same core principles. And so it was a long long time ago when the Israelites crossed through the Red Sea and then at Sinai, Moses first brought the tablets down. But it is, at the water gate, in a new time and place, suddenly real again: not as a distant memory but as that which enlivens the faithful for the work that lies ahead. My friends in Christ: this is indeed “good news.”

Annual meetings are not always considered “high holy days” in this diocese or anywhere, really. They usually draw in only the most dedicated of insiders. You know who you are – the “usual suspects.”

But that’s ok – it’s where we begin again. As St. Luke’s prepares to welcome an interim very soon, what are some of the ways this parish can build a community focused on mission and purpose – not purpose from the good old days of Elvin or Stoddard or Hicks or Burger, but in ways that recognize God-with-us now? How will this parish find ways in the days ahead that bind this community together in love? What does that work look like and if that sounds too much like a diocesan bureaucratic question then let’s get even more mundane: what’s the next step? As you welcome your interim, what do you yearn for in the first 100 days? Maybe that’s far enough to try to think ahead right now. But in those days, in this next quarter, how can relationships be deepened: with God and among God’s people?

How is God bringing good from ill, even now – and what does the Lord ask of you? Annual meetings are about mundane things like budgets and elections. But both of those also serve a larger purpose. A budget is a plan for ministry. And elections are a recognition that in our polity, all the people share the work of ministry. The year ahead will not be a time when everything naturally just “falls into place.” If we’ve learned anything over the past two years I submit it is that. After the exile we do not and cannot return to innocence. Rather, the invitation is to rediscover the God who is in our midst, the God who is ever bringing good from ill. The God who is about to do all kinds of new things.

I can hardly wait to see what unfolds. Always with God’s help.