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Reading the Book: And All God’s People Said .
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A sermon by Dr.
Scott Spencer
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Nehemiah 8:1-10
And all God’s people said . . . . It’s OK. I’m
not a big Amen-er either. But we’ll have another chance later on.
Whatever our reserved natures and
sense of decorum might dictate, the ancient Israelites were not so constrained.
In our text, a huge assembly of 50,000 or so men, women, and children (numbered
in the previous chapter) shout out together the double exclamation: “Amen,
Amen.”
Deriving from a root suggesting,
“It is firm; it’s established; it’s trustworthy,” the Hebrew Ah-mane came
to be used as a rousing expression of affirmation: “Yes indeed. Absolutely.
No doubt about it.” Whether Ah-mane, Ay-men, or Ah-men—the same basic
sounds carry over from Hebrew to Greek to English and other contemporary
languages. God’s people have been saying “Amen” a long time.
But not to everything. “Amen” is
an appropriate response to banner occasions, to significant experiences of
revelation. What we sometimes call “Ah-hah” moments are, in religious terms,
“Amen” moments. So what is that moment, which elicits a rousing, double “Amen”
from the multitude in our story?
A crowd of 50,000 is comparable
to a packed house at modern sports venues. What gets everybody on their feet,
shouting a sports equivalent of “Amen” (Yeah, Woo-hoo . . . or something like
that)? Something BIG—a walk-off grand slam home run; a “Hail Mary” touchdown
pass (as it’s called) to win the game with time expired (you might actually
scream “Amen” to a “Hail Mary” pass, I don’t know ...).
What BIG event gets these 50,000
Israelites on their feet and Amen-ing? Some brilliant epiphany, maybe, like
thunder and fire at Mt. Sinai; or some mighty miracle, like parting the Red Sea
or toppling the walls of Jericho. Now those are Amen-moments. So what’s the
BIG shebang in our text, we ask with excited anticipation?
It’s a reading. A what?
IT’S A READING—a SIX-hour reading—from sun-up to noontime—on the first
day of the seventh month, which became the beginning of the Jewish New Year
(Rosh Hashanah). It’s a six-hour New Year’s Day reading. Ohhh … I mean
Amen! ... I think.
Have you been to a reading
lately—a poetry reading or an author’s reading excerpts from her novel or
short-story collection—in a local bookstore or university? Some of you have
done that, I’m sure. But let me ask—did you have to fight for a seat? Were
there 50,000 eager listeners there with you? You’re lucky if there were 50.
Public readings don’t quite have the lure of the Super Bowl or a Rolling Stones
concert or Disney on Ice for that matter.
And can you imagine attending a six-hour public
reading on New Year’s morning, after a night of New Year’s Eve festivities?
This must have been some
reading. Well, yeah it was.
It was a reading of the book of
the law of Moses—the Torah—which by this time comprised a version of the entire
Pentateuch, the first five Bible books from Genesis to Deuteronomy. THE BOOK
was actually a five-“book” set written on several scrolls (not the codex book
form that we know). In any case Genesis through Deuteronomy is a lot of
material. You couldn’t read it all in six hours—but you could get through a big
chunk of it.
But why would anybody want
to—even among the most spiritually-minded? Isn’t there a better way to spend
our time and serve the Lord than to read (even God’s word) for six straight
hours?
To appreciate the importance of
this reading event, we need to understand its context. These were critical
times in Israel’s history. We spoke two weeks ago about Babylon’s invasion
toward the end of the sixth-century B.C., resulting in Jerusalem’s fall, the
temple’s destruction, the slaughter of thousands of citizens, and deportation of
the rest to Babylon.
Now, with Ezra and Nehemiah, we
find ourselves in the first generations on the other side of exile. By
this time, Persia had taken over Babylon’s empire and brought a more tolerant
policy toward subject peoples. For the Jewish exiles, this meant they were
permitted to return to their homeland and rebuild their lives and society. Ezra
and Nehemiah were two leaders among the returnees—Ezra, a respected
priest and scribal official; Nehemiah, an accomplished administrator and
builder.
Sounds great—we’re going
home—many happy returns. Yes . . . but that’s not the whole picture. What were
they were returning to? Destruction, devastation, destitution. Think refugees
coming back to New Orleans after Katrina. The storm was over but the damage
remained.
It’s not always easy to go home
again for a lot of reasons, not least when there’s not much to go to home to.
How do you pick up the pieces and begin again? Initially, the returnees to
Jerusalem started rebuilding their personal residences—which is understandable:
you need a place to live.
But certain prophets during this
period, like Haggai and Zechariah, remind the people that there’s another
important house meriting their highest attention—the Lord’s house, the sacred
temple, which Babylon had reduced to rubble. Haggai gets a little testy about
the matter:
Is it a time for you yourselves to live in your
paneled houses [he thunders], while [God’s] house lies in ruins? Thus says the
Lord of hosts: Go up to the hills and bring wood and build [my] house, so that I
may take pleasure in it and be honored, says the Lord. . . . [M]y house lies in
ruins, while all of you hurry off to your own houses.
Look, the prophet says, as much as you need a
place to eat and sleep and share family life, you need a place to pray and
worship and share communal life as God’s people. Disaster and displacement have
exposed your vulnerability, the limits of your resources. You can’t do this on
your own. “Not by [human] might or power,” Zechariah chimes in, “but by my
spirit, says the Lord of Hosts.” Acknowledging and receiving God’s strength,
God’s Spirit—that’s what worship in God’s house is all about.
So they rebuild the temple from the ground
up—the Second Temple, as we call it—not on the grand scale of Solomon’s original
structure—but they do what they can.
But they also need to rebuild something
else—for national security in fact. Troublesome enemies still lurk about in the
area wanting a piece of Jerusalem and control over the restoration effort.
We’ve had enough of being overrun by outside forces. We need a strong wall of
defense—a literal wall of bricks and stones around the city with fortified gates
at strategic points. This was Nehemiah’s principal project—and he succeeded in
mobilizing the people and getting it finished.
So we’ve got new homes, a new temple, and a new
wall. Not bad—things are looking up. We’re on our way to revitalizing our city
and community. It’s exciting. But still something’s missing.
We’re doing well improving our
architectural and institutional environment—building solid structures for
survival and growth. But that’s not all we need. Surviving and thriving
peoples also need a strong sense of their relational and ideological bonds—who
they are and what they believe—together.
And that’s where these Torah
scrolls come in. In material terms, they’re nothing compared to cedar-paneled
homes, limestone walls, and gold-gilded temples. Written on brittle papyrus or
parchment tattered and worn through years of handling, ink fading and smearing
with time—ancient scrolls were not the most durable commodities—they could be
easily damaged or destroyed. But the ideas inscribed in scrolls inspired by God
pulsed with eternal vision and vitality. Never underestimate the power of ideas
to galvanize and energize a community.
For these post-exilic Israelites, this book of the
law provided granite-like (1) historical, (2) covenantal, and (3) ethical
foundations upon which to rebuild their society.
History:
This people had been through a lot together—going back hundreds of years to
the rough and tumble days of founding ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and
Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, when the nation was nothing more than one extended
family struggling to survive. And then as it grew into a small “nation” (if we
could even call it that) it suffered through bitter slavery in Egypt and then an
arduous forty-year trek through the desert on the way back to its “promised”
homeland.
Such is the history of God’s
people narrated in the Torah—a powerful testimony to God’s sustaining a fragile,
fledgling people. Hard times are nothing new for Israel—in fact the root of the
name “Israel” connotes “strife” and “struggle”—struggle even with God, who
through the struggle provides strength and courage to persevere.
But Israel’s history is not just
about God’s helping them out of tight spots now and again. It’s about a deep,
developing, personal relationship between God and God’s people. In a word, it’s
about—
Covenant:
The Torah reveals the special covenant God makes with Abraham and his
descendants: I promise to be your God, and I take you to be my people. It’s a
family thing—akin to the bonds of parenthood and marriage: I adopt you as my
children, God says; I take you to be my spouse for all eternity. I will cherish
you, care for you, be ever faithful to you.
But there are two sides to this
covenant deal. Though God initiates the covenant by grace, God desires love and
faithfulness in return and also among one another as covenant partners together
with God. Here’s where ethics comes into the picture. History . . . .
Covenant . . . . and finally—
Ethics:
It’s in the Torah that we find the Ten Commandments and other instruction for
living as God’s covenant people. Not a list of rules and regulations to tick
off, but a framework, a mission statement, if you will, to live out epitomized
in two great commandments: Love God with all your heart, mind, soul and
strength; and love your neighbor as yourself. Those will be the two main
principles governing Jesus’ life and teaching—and he gets them straight from the
Torah—Lev. 19:17 and Deut 6:5 if you want the references.
Live lovingly and faithfully with
God and with one another—that’s the way to build—or rebuild—a family, a
community, a nation. The people of Israel knew all too well the flip side of
this arrangement—too often, they had dallied with other gods, run off on their
own, neglected and exploited one another—and they had suffered the consequences.
HISTORY . . . COVENANT . . .
ETHICS—that’s the stuff of Torah, the book of the Law. And that’s the stuff of
community “building” in the truest sense. That’s the stuff of congregational
health, vitality, and renewal.
And to their credit, the people
of Ezra and Nehemiah’s day knew this. They’d had it with disloyalty and
injustice. It was high-time to get back on solid ground, and physical building
projects were not the ultimate answer. Many a towering, seemingly “invincible”
human-made structure has fallen to the march of time and terror, as we know all
too well in our post-9/11 day. Only God’s dynamic, creative word lasts.
As the Psalmist so eloquently
put it:
The Lord exists forever; your word is firmly fixed
….Your faithfulness endures to all generations …. Oh how I love your law! It is
my meditation all day long. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,
for it is always with me (119:89-90, 97-98).
If that’s true, if God’s steadfast word is
worth meditating on “all day long,” a six-hour reading at the beginning of the
New Year is not too much to ask. After fifty-plus bitter years in exile, six
hours of remembering the history, the covenant, and the values that bind us
together and make us strong are hardly time wasted.
And so the people assemble in a
large public square near one of the city’s gates and summon Ezra to bring
God’s book of the law and read it out loud. Did you notice that this was a
congregation-initiated event? This was not a clergy-planned activity that the
people had to be coaxed and dragged to. The narrative stresses that the
people—men, women and children “who could understand”—the whole lot demands to
be read to, to hear God’s word.
And they want it broadcast out
here in the city square, rather than the temple, so everybody can hear
it, regardless of age, gender or ritual status. Come on Ezra. Get out here
and get yourself on this platform we’ve built—and read, man. We need to know
who we are, where we came from, why we’re here, what we should do. Read it,
brother . . . and he did.
And such reading soon ignites all
kinds of responses:
Ø
Ezra gets excited and “blesses the Lord, the great God” who had so
graciously given these words
Ø
Then the people, overwhelmed with the experience, not quite
knowing whether to laugh or cry, look up or down—do both: lifting their hands to
heaven in thankful surrender AND bowing their faces to the ground in reverential
awe.
Ø
And then a staff of Ezra’s lay assistants, known as Levites, begin
moving among the crowd to explain, discuss and interpret the morning’s
readings—setting up small Bible study groups, if you will, throughout the
congregation, probing: what does this book, this reading, mean for our lives and
community now?
Ø
Incredible energy sparked by God’s word, all topped off with a
double affirmation shouted through throats choked with swelling emotion. And
all God’s people said . . . Amen and Amen.
And then it’s time to go. But
the celebration isn’t quite over. After reading, Ezra announces: This calls
for joyous festivity, a lavish banquet (it’s 12:00 and it’s time for lunch—it’s
a bit more than that). Ezra knows his people have a long way to go to live up
to God’s Torah. And there will be a time for fasting and confession.
But we’re going to start with feasting and celebration—and sharing our
choicest meats and sweetest wines with those who have nothing.
We’re going to get a jump on this
love business—this building a just and caring community according to God’s
Torah. And we’re going to do it with joy and hope. “The joy of the Lord is
your strength,” Ezra exclaims. Keeping God’s law is not a burden, it’s a
blessing; it’s not a duty, it’s a privilege—enabling us to live in fullness of
joy as God created us to live.
And to that we can only
say—again—Amen and Amen.
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