By the Rev’d Jacky Sewell
Season: Third Sunday of Epiphanytide
Readings: Nehemiah 8:1-10 | 1 Cor 12:12-31a | Luke 4: 14-21
I have here with me today two Bibles. I have about 8 different versions of the bible at home, but only THIS one is read by me now. If I want to compare different versions there are much quicker and more convenient online tools to do so. But these two actual books are precious.
This one is my working copy of the New Revised Standard Version. It’s my go-to reading and study bible for when I’m preparing sermons.
This one – well this one lay in a storage box, at the back of a storage locker, in the middle of Auckland, whilst I spent several years living and teaching overseas. To be honest I had forgotten about it, and the several other versions which were stacked in the same box. When I returned to Howick 18 months ago I rediscovered this little white King James Bible, given to me by my Godmother at my baptism. A couple of days ago, when I got it down in preparation for this sermon, I experienced the same tingling – the same upwelling of tears and nostalgia – memories of people and places long gone – and memories of the first stirrings of faith within me as a child.
Now I’m not going to start using it again as my go-to Bible. Much as this little book holds a precious place in my heart, and much as it contains some beautiful poetic language, as a translation it’s a bit problematic so I’m going to stick to my NRSV.
The point of that story is the huge emotional and spiritual power that a sacred object – this little book – can contain. Something that had been long-forgotten came back to light, along with a flood of memories and deep thanksgivings of the heart. Something of that experience is captured in the reading we heard from Nehemiah, and perhaps to a degree in the reading from the Gospel.
Imagine that you were one of the people gathered that day in Jerusalem. Around you are the newly-rebuilt city walls, and behind you, at the center of the city, the newly-rebuilt temple gleams white. They are newly re-built because 50 years earlier they had been destroyed, and your parents and grandparents had been taken into captivity in Babylon. Memories are still alive of those times and emotion is running high. But now, you and your relatives have been allowed to return. King Cyrus of Persia has personally made it happen and donated great wealth to pay for the restoration of the ruined city. And he has charged the chief priest Ezra and one of his Jewish servants Nehemiah with carrying out his command. Nehemiah has just been made Governor of the newly-established region of Judah and today he’s called together all the exiles to reaffirm their faith and commitment to the Law of Moses.
This is big! For two generations, the scriptures have never been heard or read in public. The scrolls with the Law have been buried under the rubble and are silent. But today, now, the scriptures are being revealed and coming to life once more.
Now my friends I don’t want to be either naive or blind at this point.
Israel lost everything at the Babylonian invasion, including their temple. They then lost the rebuilt temple at the hands of the Roman army after the Maccabees revolt. The subsequent people of the Diaspora in Europe then lost everything under Nazi Germany. They are now determined never to lose everything again.
The local people of these same lands lost all their cities when Moses brought the people out of Egypt, and Joshua invaded the ‘land of milk and honey’. They were slaughtered in their tens of thousands. They have been steadily losing their cities and farmlands again this past century and the people of Gaza have now lost everything in the past 18 months. They are also determined to regain their ancestral homelands.
We cannot help but have the parallels between then and now ringing in our ears.
In addition, this past week has seen an astounding release of captives around the globe. Israel and Hamas have exchanged prisoners and phase one of a peace plan and future restoration for the ruins of Gaza is in very fragile motion. President Trump has released and signed an official pardon for those imprisoned following the assault on Capitol Hill.
It is impossible to hear today’s readings – both the restoration of the captives in Nehemiah’s time, and Jesus preaching on releasing the captives 500 years later in Biblical history – without some emotions surfacing no matter what your political stance. It is also difficult to avoid another thorny issue intrinsically linked to politics both then and now, and running along under the surface of these two scriptural readings.
This is the third Sunday after Epiphany and we are in the season of celebrating how God has been revealed to, and revealed by, ‘the nations’. Those standing outside the religion and ethnicity of the Jewish people. The Gentiles, as they are labelled in scripture.
An Epiphany is a startling moment of revelation of God. In the Christian Church we have attached the word to the Festival of the Wise Astrologers who came from another land and culture and religion, and whose cultural and religious knowledge – how to read the stars – was used by God to lead them to the Christ Child.
We – all of us – millennia ago and now – experience some degree of hostility to those who are different or who threaten us. Call it survival of the species. It is a constant underlying current running through the Bible. Purity for Israel was FOR Israel – not for the Gentiles. Yet time and time again it is a Gentile who acts as God’s messenger or mouthpiece and bringer of good news. Cyrus, King of Persia, proclaims that the God of Israel should be honoured by God’s people. The Wise Magicians who shone a spotlight on a child from the backblocks of Galilee. The Syrophonecian woman who challenged Jesus not to discriminate against her.
Remember how in the Nehemiah reading he called together all the exiles to reaffirm their faith and commitment to the Law of Moses? Part of the problem – in fact the great big huge elephant in the room – was the fact that both Israelites in exile and those Israelites who had not gone into exile had been ignoring Moses’ law about intermarriage, and now a significant part of the population has wives and children from the non-Jewish peoples of the land. And this, as Ezra the priest said bluntly, had caused the wrath of God to come upon them.
My friends, what follows is part of the shadow side of our scriptural heritage. In a previous era, recorded in Deuteronomy, the Law of Moses had commanded that any who marry outside Israel should bring their foreign wives and children to be cast out of the community in an attempt to please God. Here, a thousand years later, Ezra and then Nehemiah order their expulsion from the community – from their homes and their lands and the protection of their husbands, causing a great surge of displaced refugees.
How are we to make sense of this? It’s difficult to justify such things as pleasing to God. But we are still struggling with similar ethical issues today.
It is true that one strand in the Law of Moses is to keep Israel holy by genetic purification and sometimes this led to murder and slaughter. Ezra and Nehemiah judge that this aspect of the Law needs moderation and that casting off family members and creating a mass of refugees is better than other alternatives. Perhaps this aspect of the Law might be characterised as ‘Putting Ideals before People’.
At the same time, another strand of the Law – the desire to do what is pleasing to God – is to be merciful and attend to the needs of the foreigner. The Law of Moses is clear: “Remember the foreigner in your midst and treat them as native-born, for you were once foreigners in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 22). Perhaps this aspect of the Law might be characterised as ‘Putting People before Ideals’.
What about Jesus? How did he handle these difficult aspects of the Law of Moses? And do we have any clues in the Gospel reading today? Well yes we do. Remember I said that this thorny issue – the purity of Israel – was running along under the surface of both readings? There was an elephant in the room that day in Nazareth, also, and it was about to break into a stampede.
Let’s quickly refresh our memories. Jesus is at the start of his ministry and is beginning to earn a reputation as a rabbi – a preacher and teacher. He’s come home to visit mum and dad and his brothers and sisters, as you do. The lectionary reading for the day – yes, Judaism had a lectionary and followed the sequential reading of the scriptures – was from the prophet Isaiah, proclaiming what we now consider a defining mandate for ministry. Preach GOOD news. Bring release for captives. Heal those who need healing. Free the oppressed. Proclaim that God’s favour is upon those who need it most.
Maybe Jesus himself heard it afresh that day, as the people in Jerusalem had done, on hearing the scriptures read 500 years earlier. Maybe that was the moment he realised what his mandate was: “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled.”
What is not in OUR lection this week is what happens next in Luke. Ch 4 continues, not with everyone being amazed and converted by the gracious words of Jesus, but by Jesus suddenly not mincing his words. He deliberately provokes the congregation. He evokes the blessings and mercy of God upon the foreigner – the Widow of Sidon and Naamen the Syrian. God’s healing word was sent to them, not to the people of Israel at all. Well that’s not the way to get your congregation alongside! The people of Nazareth seize Jesus with their hands and take him to the top of the hill of Nazareth in order to throw him off the cliff. It doesn’t get much clearer – Jesus takes Isaiah and the voices of the other prophets to heart. It is compassion and justice and mercy on those that you despise that will make you pleasing to God. Not adherence to a code of burnt offerings.
That, my friends, is now you and I. The Word has been proclaimed – and unpacked – in our midst, as it was for Nehemiah’s community and the people of Nazareth. The question lingers: what are you and I anointed for? What is Good News for those outside the community of faith, today? Do we conquer and convert by insisting upon adherence to a law which might put Ideals before People? Or do our lives and actions and words bring the healing love which puts People before Ideals?
I brought along two bibles this morning, one which was lost and now is found, and that contains a multitude of things to be thankful for. The other keeps me steady when studying and seeking to interpret scripture.
Scripture speaks both to us, and through us. How is scripture speaking through your life and actions, so those who need grace and reassurance of God’s love can find grace and reassurance; and those who need the challenge which love brings, can hear, and receive, challenge?