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Are you one of those people who
loves change or hates change? Maybe somewhere in the middle? Maybe you see the necessity of change but you don’t like the discomfort it brings. Maybe you rage against change and then, when you finally give in, you realize you need it.
Everything in life is touched by change. Our bodies change and age, our relationships struggle and grow, and our world is full of change and instability too. But what about our relationship with God? Can our dance with the sacred withstand significant change?
Let’s look at a time in ancient Israel’s history when change rocked God’s people. Israel was exiled by Babylon, and when they slowly made their way back home they discovered that home wasn’t quite what they hoped it would be. Change can do that - it can upend you.
The Ezra and Nehemiah stories call us to prepare, rebuild, and intentionally choose healthy change. So if change is going to happen, let’s at least be ready.
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Walls are functional, but grace is aspirational.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 1:Welcome here. It's so good to see you all here in this room. It's good to be in church together on this long weekend. I always think of the same thing on May, which is if I ever needed a spy name, I would be Victoria Day. Like, I feel like I could pull that off.
Speaker 1:Right? Thank you. All the same, I'm not a spy. But happy May long, everybody. Are you feeling it?
Speaker 1:Are you feeling these long weekend vibes? Yes. I can't tell with you. Anyways, if you're grabbing a coffee or tea, that's totally cool, but we are gathering back together. My name is Bobby, and I serve as one of the pastors on the team here at Commons.
Speaker 1:And it is one of the joys of my life to be a pastor here at Commons, so thank you so much for the part that you play in my joy. And speaking of joy, over the last few weeks, our teaching team here at Commons has been working on our teaching plan for 2019, 2020, and we're getting so excited about what is to come. Every year, we work through parts of the Hebrew scriptures, the teachings of Jesus, some epistles. We track with the church calendar through the seasons of Advent, Lent, and Holy Week. We also dive into themes that we feel kinda nudged to explore, like this series that we are wrapping up today on change and the series on wealth, which Jeremy brings back to you after teaching in Inglewood for the last few weeks.
Speaker 1:And through the teaching, not only do you engage your minds, but you open wide your heart. You engage, you grow, you change, and it is so beautiful. We're honored to be a part of change like that. And as we remember words of Jean Vanier from last week, we appreciate that change is the essence of life. And in our series on change, we are guided with a few questions.
Speaker 1:The first question we ask is, what grounds you in change? And in Ezra and Nehemiah, we see that place place is a really big deal to the people of God. And of course, place is a big deal to them. Their sacred story includes a creation poem which calls the land good, and their sacred story includes an exchange where the divine appears to a man through a burning bush and calls the ground holy. And their sacred story includes a parted sea, promised land, a holy temple, all places where God shows up.
Speaker 1:Place matters to the people of God. So when the people are torn from their place by the Babylonian empire beginning in May, they feel lost. Years later, when Persia's king Cyrus says, okay, you are free to go home, They are pumped to pack up their little wheelie suitcases. Can you picture it? And go.
Speaker 1:Soon, after their arrival, they rebuild the altar. They rebuild their temple. Sure, the people, they have a lot of mixed feelings, but they're home, and they're rebuilding. But the thing about place in these biblical texts is that place is actually never permanent. Place changes.
Speaker 1:And there's something for us here. There's an affirmation that to be grounded in change is to be open to all of the places God will show up in your story. One day, you find God in a worship service, but the next day, you're aware of God's presence in an art gallery. And there's something so grounding about the limitless places God will show up in our own story when we are in the thick of change. So the second question that we ask in this series is what guides you in change?
Speaker 1:Now I argue that as memoirs, Ezra Nehemiah guides through the particular personal experience of others. But as hyped as Ezra and Nehemiah are in the story, they actually don't stick around forever. In fact, we see a significant shift in the text when we compare Ezra and Nehemiah with other central characters across the bible. More than most, these guys fade away. They simply do not do the work of rebuilding alone.
Speaker 1:They just aren't those kinds of heroes. The community is. It's the community who rebuilds. It's the community who rededicates themselves to the divine. It's the community which bands together against all kinds of opposition.
Speaker 1:And rabbi and scholar Tamara Eskenazi says that the shift to community expresses the greater democratization of society. Those who had lacked power moved to more empowered spaces, And the scriptures moved from the hands of the few to being understood by all. The guidance that we find in change may first come from the few, but it's meant for more. God's guidance belongs to everybody. So today, the question that we ask in times of change is this, what guards you in change?
Speaker 1:Now we are going to cover 13 chapters in Nehemiah. Woah. So buckle up. But of course, before we do that, we're gonna pray together. Please join me.
Speaker 1:Our loving God, you hold all of creation, and we are so glad to enjoy what you have made. The spring sunshine, the flower blossoms, the flowing rivers through this city. We are grateful for this place, the land shared with us from our indigenous sisters and brothers. Together, we take a moment to reflect on the change in our lives, the things that we are learning, the places we are a part of, the transformation we at times resist, but you patiently and constantly guide us through. Jesus, you share in our human stories, our sorrow and our joy, our struggle and our success, our living and our dying, so we can know that we are never ever alone.
Speaker 1:Holy Spirit, you are at work in and through us, and through all the change, we are able to give you thanks. Amen. So I'm curious. I am curious. How many of you have spent time in Christian school, bible college, seminary?
Speaker 1:All hands together now. Right? A number of you. Well, I went to bible college after my public high school education, and the funny thing to me about bible college was this imaginary wall around the place meant to protect students from the world. You know, from things like drinking and drugs and fornication.
Speaker 1:And this imaginary wall had such a presence at my school that people called it the bubble. As in, the bubble is meant to keep you safe, to protect your virtue and your virginity and your tutelage. And honestly, I didn't care all that much about the bubble. I grew up around drinking, so abusing it for me just didn't feel like a great temptation. I loved most of the things that I was learning, and I was really lousy at dating.
Speaker 1:Frankly, I was more interested in ministry over making out. I mean, gosh, what was wrong with me? But still, I had an epiphany in bible college, which popped the bubble. Some friends had gone to see a movie, and they walked out of the theater before it ended because they found the film just so offensive, particularly when it came to all those nasty expletives. Now you're wondering, what movie could it be?
Speaker 1:And I shall tell you. It was the 1997 Academy Award winning Good Whale Hunting. After friends reported back how offensive the movie felt, I made no plans to see it for myself. And then I took a class on spirituality and culture. And rather than see the culture as harmful, our professor taught us to read the culture from messages that mean something to our humanity and even to our faith.
Speaker 1:So instead of telling us to stay away from those f word movies, he challenged us to watch them. In particular, he said that if we watched Goodwill Hunting, he'd meet us after the movie to talk about it. And he did. And after the conversation, I never watched a movie the same way again. Movies, music, art, all of it was teeming with bigger meaning.
Speaker 1:To this day, Goodwill Hunting is one of my favorite films. I rewatched it again this week. So good. Our relationship with protective bubbles and boundaries and walls is important to change. There are times when you need a protective layer, a buffer between you and someone who hurt you, a bubble between you and an institution that you just do not trust, A guard against the toxic ways that you think about yourself or someone you are trying really hard to love.
Speaker 1:And as we look to Nehemiah, we see the importance of a wall for this community, caught between mighty world empires and feeling under threat. And right right away, you'll notice that Nehemiah is quite a bit more fun to read than Ezra. As a character, Nehemiah is emotional and resolute. And some of the epistles read like or some of the episodes in the text read like an action film with Nehemiah's character played by. And to be honest, I'm not great with action films.
Speaker 1:I find them quite boring. Just like, get on with the story. So I asked Jonathan who would play this character, Nehemiah, in a movie. And after a lengthy text exchange, Jonathan said Nehemiah should be played by Daniel Day Lewis. Other options he offered include Gary Old man, Sirius Black from Harry Potter, for all you Harry Potter nerds, and Tim Robbins.
Speaker 1:Guys with some grit. Right? So Nehemiah, he is this gritty guy with his feet in kind of two worlds. Nehemiah is a cup bearer in the Persian empire, and he's a Yahweh worshipper who cares about the Jewish remnant back in Palestine trying to rebuild Jerusalem. Only trouble is it's not working out so well back in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:In the first chapter, Nehemiah finds out that his people in Palestine are in great trouble and distress because the wall around Jerusalem is broken and the gates are burned. Nehemiah is torn up by the news. He weeps, he fasts, he prays, and here's how the prayer begins. Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments. Let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel.
Speaker 1:Now this prayer goes on for several verses and borrows heavily from Deuteronomy. It's an ancient and trusted way to speak to God. It begins with these lofty expressions to the divine. To God, so other that we can hardly speak your name. To God so great that you dwell above us.
Speaker 1:To God, so awesome that we plead with you day and night so you will simply see us and hear us. And this language for God is good. It's fine. It's beautiful. I mean, when you need help, don't you want a God mighty enough to crush your enemies?
Speaker 1:Worthy enough for all your praise, all knowing enough to hear your confession? Yeah. Maybe you do want a god like that. But is that all you want? And more, can your lofty language about God actually build a wall that puts distance between you and the divine?
Speaker 1:Dorothy Sowell argues that lofty language can limit our life with God. Saul was a German theologian who took a great care with her theology in the shadow of the holocaust. Both Nehemiah and Saul lived in the shadow of incredible tragedy and trauma. But where Nehemiah looked to heaven, Saul looked around on earth. The two of them pray very different prayers to the same God.
Speaker 1:Soul speaks of God who was powerless and friendless when people did not stop the death camps in Nazi Germany. A God whose spirit had nowhere to dwell, whose righteous sun did not shine. A God who is minority, laughable, politically suspect, and from a pragmatic perspective, unsuccessful. Now before you freak out about descriptions of the divine like this, remember, the face of God we see in Jesus, one so unpopular, so despised, so frustratingly humble that he would rather die than fight back. Don't get me wrong though.
Speaker 1:There is a time when your lofty language to God will guard you in change. But there is a time when all of that lofty language can result in you waiting for your higher power to act when really your higher power is waiting for you. Thankfully, Nehemiah is actually pretty active in participating in his own prayers, so let's check-in with his action. In chapter two, king Artaxerxes notices how distraught Nehemiah is over the news of a tattered Jerusalem. So the king permits Nehemiah to go to Jerusalem to see about this crumbling wall.
Speaker 1:Nehemiah heads home. By chapter three, Nehemiah rallies the people and puts them to work to reconstruct Jerusalem's broken down wall. What we find in chapter three is a long list of names and families who work together to rebuild the wall. Now before a long list of names in the bible puts you to sleep, know this. Theologian Johanna Boss says that all these lists of names in Ezra and Nehemiah actually work like cement to hold the structure together.
Speaker 1:And in this particular list, we have a repeated phrase that you can't help but notice. 14 times in this chapter, we read the phrase next to them. Here's a sample. Meremoth, son of Uriah, the son of Hakotz, repaired the next section. Next to him, Meshullam, son of Bereqiah, the son of Meshezebel, made repairs.
Speaker 1:And next to him, Zadok, son of Baha'a, also made repairs. And check this out. In verse 12, we find this cool detail. Shalom, son of Halohash, ruler of a half district of Jerusalem, repaired the next section with the help of his daughters, women, construction workers. Pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Right? Work is work. Now the NIV uses the pronoun him in the phrase next to him, but the Hebrew syntax is literally third person plural them. And I love this. It highlights the shift back to the community.
Speaker 1:No one builds the wall alone. Not Nehemiah, not the holy priest, not some unconventional family with really tough daughters. They built the wall together. It's them. And there's wisdom in building protective walls together.
Speaker 1:Maybe your friends warn you about your relationship to jealousy and envy. So together, you work to build a wall that protects contentment and welcomes gratitude and settles you into simplicity. Maybe your partner reflects to you that your colleagues at work are turning you towards bitterness and petty grievances. So together, you and your partner work to establish a signal that in the day comes to you through a text. The message reminds you to walk away from conversations that make you smaller than you really are.
Speaker 1:Maybe your therapist helps you to see that your family system is getting in the way of your emotional health. So together, you justify the space that you need to take for your healing. I'm so thankful for the ways that people have built walls with me in my life. Establishing these walls have brought about new chapters in self awareness, big steps in personal growth, and even some new beginnings. But when we are healed, when we are a little more whole, do we still need these walls?
Speaker 1:Is the point to hide out behind the wall forever? Or is there a time to step outside the wall that you have built? Maybe even add a door or a window or more radically, to tear the whole wall down. Yes. The wall in Nehemiah protects God's people from harm.
Speaker 1:Yes. The sacred story of our faith includes walls that define identity, but the walls do not keep God's people safe forever. In fact, the one who shows us the face of God in human flesh challenges everything we think that we know about walls. Walls will protect you in a time of change. They will.
Speaker 1:But there will come a point in your relationships, in your interpersonal world, where walls actually start to do more harm than good. When walls just aren't needed anymore. When you actually get to tear those bad boys down. But there's more change to come in Nehemiah, and this change involves a threat that lurks in Nehemiah's much bigger world. It's not as simple as brick and mortar for our boy, Nehemiah.
Speaker 1:First, he faces some pretty catty opposition. So in chapter four, we read, when Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became angry and was greatly incensed. He ridiculed the Jews, and in the presence of his associates and the army of Samaria, he said, what are those feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices?
Speaker 1:Will they finish in a day? Can they bring those stones back to life from those heaps of rubble burned as they are? So in the face of this mudslinging, Nehemiah does a few interesting things. First, he prays a prayer for vengeance. And you can find it in verses four and five.
Speaker 1:Nehemiah's prayer sounds like the prayers of the Psalms which go, oh God, my enemies mock me. Oh God, fight for me. And next, Nehemiah works with his people to protect themselves if they are under attack. Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon with the other. And each of the builders wore his sword at his side as he worked.
Speaker 1:And finally, Nehemiah gives this signal. Wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet, join us there. Our God will fight for us. So we've got prayer. We've got swords.
Speaker 1:We've got trumpet blasts. And throughout this episode, the threat actually grows. Sanpolat gathers more powerful men from the region. And Nehemiah and the Judans, they are surrounded. And when you evaluate the defense of Nehemiah's people and all the work they did to guard themselves, it actually it seems to work.
Speaker 1:At least it works to keep their enemies away, but it's also so dang tiring. They work day and night. They are always at the ready. They never put their weapons down. I mean, it's good to be ready to protect yourself with a solid argument, with a stockpile of resources, with a scenario you are ready to put into action.
Speaker 1:But guarding yourself from opposition is exhausting. So in a time of change, we really need to ask ourselves, how much threat am I really under here? Am I so busy guarding myself with words and walls and weapons that I actually have no energy to take care of the hurt and the pain within my walls, within my own heart? Because it's within Jerusalem. A city Nehemiah works really hard to protect where the struggle of the community gets real.
Speaker 1:There's poverty and oppression, and those are the enemies within. In chapter five, now the men and their wives raised a great outcry against their fellow Jews. Still others were saying, we have had to borrow money to pay the king's tax on our fields and vineyards. Some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but we are powerless because our fields and our vineyards belong to others. Mary Laith says the ancient world we are looking at was characterized by incredible social inequality.
Speaker 1:The majority of the population consists of peasants and artisans along with, get this, itinerant workers who lived off of their wits and charity. Ethnographers and historians suggest that the governing class averaged about 1% of the population, but controlled as much as a quarter of the national income. Sounds a little bit like a world, I know. Nehemiah is sensitive to this outcry. He's angry even, and he institutes mosaic law.
Speaker 1:He says, quit collecting interest. He says, give back the fields and the vineyards. He says, take an oath and do what you promise. What's off kilter is that while the people prepare to fight the enemy outside their walls, they ignore who they are meant to be in the world. These are the people who see themselves in union with God, a God with endless love and kindness.
Speaker 1:A God who never breaks promises. A God who invented justice for the poor. And in union with God, we are meant to reflect. They are meant to reflect God in every part of their communal life. And they frankly do not do this.
Speaker 1:If a brother is in need, they walk away. If there is a debt, they demand severe repayment. If they feel insecure, they take it out on their daughters. Rather than become a community of grace and likeness of their God, they are a people with walls and debts and fear. We can get pretty stuck when we are just thinking about ourselves.
Speaker 1:So maybe it's time to challenge our question. Maybe the question to ask should be less about what guards you in change and more about your willingness to guard each other. Can you sit quietly enough to listen to a person speak out their doubt and their pain and their anger? Can you stomach the way that the people you love do hurt each other? And can you not look away?
Speaker 1:Can you stand and say no? No to harmful decisions, No to a political posture. No to power that is used to make people feel small. Of course, you can do all of this. But will you?
Speaker 1:Within the sacred story of scripture, there is a place for walls. Nehemiah and the community build one, and it keeps them safe. It maybe even saves their culture, but they never flourish with walls. Walls are functional, but grace is aspirational. And the Eastertide word for what guards us in change is not a wall, it is resurrection.
Speaker 1:That you can be healed and whole even after everything that you have lost. That you can protect yourself, but there's something even more profound when you suffer to protect each other. That you can look back and see that the worst change in your life actually shaped the very best part of who you are. And now, you actually have something incredible to give others. And in a strange turn of biblical events, Ezra steps back into the scene, either on account of an editing error or a more intentional message.
Speaker 1:And the reading of the law by Ezra in Nehemiah eight is pretty beautiful thing, except it's a bit, shall we say, idealistic. It's kind of utopian. Yes. Ezra says that the people listen to the law and worship Yahweh. And yes, Ezra says that God gives life, is faithful, and keeps promises.
Speaker 1:And yes, Ezra says that every part of their story has been shaped by the divine. Ezra says that God came down and was made known. Ezra says that God forgives and is gracious and compassionate. And yes, always, God acts faithfully even when we are wicked. But still, Ezra ends with this admission.
Speaker 1:We are slaves. Our bodies are ruled. Our livestock is not our own. We are in distress. And even further, the entire Ezra Nehemiah saga finishes with Nehemiah trying so hard to reform the people of God and finally just throwing up his hands to say, you know what?
Speaker 1:Just remember me with favor, oh God. Walls do not make for happy endings. So in the final scene of Good Will Hunting, the movie I told you about at the beginning, we are left with the image of a horizon. And the main character, Will, has faced the trauma in his life. He has torn protective walls down, and he's finally ready to let love in.
Speaker 1:Now, we don't know what will happen with Will. Is this his happy ending? Maybe. Will Will get hurt again? It's likely.
Speaker 1:But once you've worked to build a wall and you see that the wall is just not needed anymore, you can actually withstand anything. And the image of the horizon is really helpful for us in a time of change. It's open. It's indefinite. A horizon invites the possibility of what is actually just beyond our reach.
Speaker 1:Change will rock you. It will refine you, and it will save you. Do not be shy of change. And know there is a time to lift prayers to heaven, and there is a time to drag your words down to earth. There is a time to build a wall, and there is a time to tear that wall down.
Speaker 1:There is a time to fight and defend. There is a time to suffer and to share. Through it all, may change bring you life. May you work with whatever is ahead to make you more whole. And may you sense God's infinite pleasure in all of the ways that you get to change.
Speaker 1:And may you share that freedom to change with each other. Let's pray together. Loving God, you give us the breath of life and bodies that break and heal and minds that forget and remember. For all of this, we say thank you. Jesus, when we think of how you lived, not threatened by challenge, not abusive of power, not prescriptive in redeeming every life that walked or crawled to you, We are mindful that you are so creative.
Speaker 1:You will bring all things to their rightful place. The poor will feast. The hurting will heal. The powerful will be humbled to help. So spirit of the living God present with us now, will you enter the places of change in our lives?
Speaker 1:And in all of it, will you heal us of what harms us? Amen.