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Sermon – 26th January

    THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

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    Readings: Nehemiah 8: 1-3, 5-6, 8-10 and Luke 4: 14-21

    We don’t often hear from the book of Nehemiah, but it is an inspiring story. Nehemiah is one of the exiles carried away from Judah into Babylon, and is working as a cupbearer for the Persian King Artaxerxes, in the fifth century BC, when he is overcome by a strong sense of shame for the plight of his people, separated from their homeland and from their religion. He knows the people have deserved their punishment, as they have sinned against God and forgotten the law of Moses. Nehemiah includes himself amongst those who have sinned against God. So he gets permission from the King, against the odds, as you might say, to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the city. Despite opposition, ridicule and constant danger, Jerusalem is rebuilt, starting with repairs to the city walls, completed in just 52 days. The next task is to rebuild a community fit to live in Jerusalem and to be God’s chosen people again.

    Today’s passage from the book of Nehemiah finds a very mixed bag of people in Jerusalem. Some who returned from the exile were the wealthy and independent; some were the poorest of the population who hadn’t been exiled in the first place – or their descendants. Some of the returning people now had wives and families of other nations and religions, and their loyalties are severely divided.

    As a preliminary to the renewal of Temple worship, the priest Ezra reads publicly from the book of the Law. The people have to learn again about their God, and they must do so by learning to live together as a society that is obedient to God. What comes over in the account of this episode is how attentive the people were to what was being said. They stand in front of the Water Gate from early morning to midday – and they wept when they heard the words of the Law.

    So why do the crowds weep as they listen? Partly perhaps with a nostalgic longing for the past; partly because of shame that they had forgotten to keep the holy laws of God. And maybe their tears were partly tears of joy, that this moment of restoration had come. We all know how there is sometimes a thin dividing line between tears of joy and tears of sorrow. It’s perhaps a little difficult to get into the mood of Jerusalem that day. But Ezra is keen to encourage the people. “This day is holy to our Lord; do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

    Maybe we can draw a bit of a parallel with the re-opening of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris recently. There were certainly tears of joy at the remarkable rebuilding and transformation of the cathedral, and it was a happy day for France after the desolation of the fire in 2019.

    But the Catholic journalist Phil Lawlor had this to say

    Sad to say, while Notre Dame has been restored to its former glory, other less prominent churches in France are being closed— or worse, vandalized and torched— every week. Having cheered the reopening of their most famous cathedral, the people of France went quickly back to ordinary daily life in a secular society, a crumbing culture.

    Yes, the faith can be restored, just as the building was restored. But first we need a sober appraisal of where we stand: of the damage that has been done. Then we need the same inspiration that fired the imagination of the original architects and fuelled the dedication of the tireless masons and carpenters. We need to revive the understanding that our goal is not to demonstrate our technical prowess, nor to satisfy popular tastes, but to give glory to God.

    I guess his was not the only voice to shed a few tears about France’s ‘secular society’ and ‘crumbling culture’ as the Notre Dame rejoicing went on.

    But the thing with such religious ceremonies as we read about in Nehemiah, or at the re-dedication of Notre-Dame, is that they should leave you with a focus or a purpose. Just weeping with a nostalgic longing for the past doesn’t get you very far, nor does weeping with loathing for yourself or crying with guilt and sorrow if it doesn’t spur you on to something more positive. And in the case of the people of Jerusalem, Ezra tells them to turn their emotion in two directions: they are to remember to feed the poor, and they are to worship God.

    Come forward five hundred years or so, and we are in the synagogue at Nazareth. The synagogue was the regular place of worship for every Jew. The law said that wherever there were ten Jewish families there must be a synagogue. The service was divided in three parts – worship, Scripture reading and teaching. What I hadn’t appreciated until recently was that in most synagogues and on most Sabbaths there were no professional ministers, and anyone versed in the scriptures could be invited to preach. That’s quite a challenging thought in the different times we live in now, when all of us licensed ministers have to be thoroughly accredited, vetted and properly ordained by a bishop, and such like.

    But to return to Nazareth, we have a very dramatic scene portrayed to us in this morning’s passage from Luke. Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.” Then comes the dramatic moment. He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

    One gets the impression of the people being mesmerised by the figure and person of Jesus, whom presumably they knew, as this was his home town. So here was Jesus giving his manifesto, if you like. Notice that he didn’t claim greatness for himself, nor did he deliver an admonition to people to pull their spiritual socks up, as happened with Ezra reading the Law in Jerusalem. No, Jesus chose to read a passage about bringing God’s favour, and doing God’s justice and creating God’s community. It’s significant that both Ezra in the Old Testament today and Jesus in the New Testament highlight the need to relieve the poor, which has always been an imperative for God’s people.

     Both readings today place a very great emphasis on the Word of the Lord, written and spoken. The people in Jerusalem stood all morning just to hear the word of the Lord, and wept when it sunk into their hearts. And in Nazareth, people were transfixed on Jesus as he was about to unfold the scriptures to them.

    So how strong is our devotion to the word of God? Do we ‘read, mark, learn and inwardly digest’ – as one of the Prayer Book collects puts it? How would we fare if told on entering the synagogue, or church – ‘You give the teaching today?’ And does our Christian witness and bearing bring good news to the poor, and proclaim release to captives – of whatever sort, and provide recovery of sight to the blind, outwardly or inwardly – and help the oppressed go free?

    One writer notes that Jesus’ first proclamation of the kingdom here was in his home town, where people knew him. In many ways, the hardest place to bear witness to God is in our daily lives, among people who know us, warts and all. Yet if our witness is to be effective, it must start with the people of our own community, in our own place, amongst our own people. That is where we find God and where we are called to give witness to God.

    But think also of the effect of Jesus preaching to those people in his home town. They thought they knew him well, but in fact they didn’t. They heard him talking about the wonderful things that would happen with the arrival of the Lord’s anointed, but then he said that the scripture was being fulfilled there and then in their hearing. What then was he saying about himself? A few verses later we read that they became enraged against him and made moves to push him off a cliff.

    How do we react when we hear a difficult bible passage that might challenge us, or when someone tells us home truths? Do we try to push the matter over the cliff, as it were – out of sight and mind? Or are we prepared to face the challenge seriously, and to consider that God might be speaking afresh to us with teaching we need to hear, even if that means the shedding of tears of sorrow, as it did when the people of Jerusalem heard the Law read by Ezra?

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