SunJan242010
NEHEMIAH 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Have you ever stopped to think about how odd it is that on Sundays you come to a building and listen, with a bunch of other people, to words read from an ancient book? Where else in your life does anything remotely like that happen? It doesn’t happen at work or in the middle of a tennis match or while you’re shopping or when you go out to dinner. It’s a weird thing we do here.
But not completely weird. Because stories have a crucial place in our lives. If you have little children at home, you may well read to them at night before bed. Many of us go to the movies or the theater, or watch TV, to hear stories. At family dinners, we may recount the events of the day, and reminisce about days gone by. Work and tennis matches, too, may be the scene of countless stories.
We live by those stories. They remind us who we are and what we believe. They give our lives meaning. In my family, we tell stories about the adventure of traveling across the country in 1993, and how our world was expanded at Devil’s Tower and Mt. Rushmore and the Grand Canyon. We’ll recount dreams and accidents and mistakes we’ve made. We’ll laugh at Mary’s always talking with her hands, or my occasional obsessive compulsive behavior—“occasional” being the operative word here, of course! These stories remind us who we are and what matters to us.
And this is what we do when we read the Bible. We read 3000-year-old stories because they tell us the deepest truths about who we are. Are we just a random collection of molecules? No, say the creation stories in Genesis: we are given life by God. Are we totally on our own? No, says the story of Exodus: God has led us from the prisons that trap us to a new and exhilarating freedom. Is life best lived as a pursuit of personal pleasure? No, say the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount: my happiness and success are intrinsically tied up with yours and everyone else’s. Is there meaning for this life only? No, say the resurrection stories: the One who created you also cares for you after your death. These stories remind us who we are and what matters to us. They situate us and reassure us and give us a sense of direction.
This practice of telling stories has been going on for eons. Both Nehemiah and Luke give an account of the people gathering for worship and hearing readings from the sacred books. In Nehemiah, the people themselves demand to hear from “the book of the law of Moses” (8:1), meaning probably that they were reading from what we know as the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Ezra, the priest and scribe, stands on a platform in a public square and reads to them for six hours and, what may be hard to believe, they love it.
Now this is probably an idealized tale. What it points to, though, is how critical the scriptural stories were, and are still, in conveying identity and purpose. The thing is, though, as important as these stories are, they’re not easy to understand. They were written 2000-3000 years ago, using language and images that are far removed from the way we talk now. There were no X-boxes or satellites or CNN or soccer games. What they invite us to do is to tap into a layer that we often ignore, a mythological layer that calls us back to our roots. But because that layer is so difficult to understand, it needs to be interpreted.
This is what Ezra and the Levites do in this story. They “[give] the sense, so that the people [understand]” (8:8). If you’ve sometimes sat in church and wondered if you were the only one who didn’t understand what was being read, or were bored by it, wonder no longer. Everyone here, including your faithful pastors, scratches their heads at certain passages, is totally dumbfounded by others, and dozes off at still others. Long genealogies, antiquated stories, rules about things we have no interest in—they can make us wonder why in the world we spend time with this stuff. That’s why it needs to be interpreted, why we spend time exploring it.
Because the thing is, even with how difficult and obtuse the words and images can seem, this book is a gold mine. It’s not a rule book or recipe or how-to manual. It’s something much more like the most memorable dream you’ve ever had, or the most awesome painting or movie you’ve ever seen, or the most stimulating book you’ve ever read. If we read it right, we’re not so much being told how to act as we are how to think about our whole lives. When we read the Bible right, it’s not so much an instruction manual as it is a completely engaged conversation.
People sometimes ask, “Why do we spend so much time in worship with the Bible? It’s old and out of touch. Let’s get on with subjects I care about.” And while the question is an understandable one, it misses, I think, the crux of the Bible. The Bible is about everything you’ve ever cared about in your whole life. What it takes is imagination and an openness of heart and mind to let it address us where we are. Concerned about family, or a world moving too fast, or getting a date, or trying to have a baby, or how to deal with “Blackberry-overload,” or what to prioritize at your workplace? It’s all there. It takes simply an openness and a willingness to listen and an eagerness to let your imagination roam.
“This always means that” in the Bible, as a colleague of mine (Verlee Copeland) said in a sermon I heard recently. The words we read there, in other words, always mean something other than, and more than, what we hear on the surface. “The Lord is my shepherd” (Ps. 23:1), for example, doesn’t mean that God walks around with a crook, minding the sheep of the earth. Rather, that image suggests that we have a Caregiver who guides and sustains us. Likewise, today’s reading from Nehemiah, a reading that may not immediately strike you as fascinating, nevertheless has this wonderful outline of worship, and of a life of faith.
In our staff meeting on Wednesday, Bill Foley quoted a song by a Jewish singer/songwriter named Sean Altman. It’s a song about the whole sweep of Jewish history, and Altman sums up that history of war and slavery and exile in a refrain that goes like this: “They tried to kill us; we survived; let’s eat.” I’m going to reframe it in a slightly less paranoid way, and add an explicit mention of God. So it comes out in its slightly modified version as this: “We almost died; God saved us; let’s eat.” That, in a way, is what our reading from Nehemiah says. In reading from the Torah, the law, the people essentially hear the story of almost being killed and, by God’s grace, surviving. And then, says our text, after they hear the tale of God’s care for them in the worst of times, they’re to “Go home and prepare a feast [of] holiday food and drink” (8:10, The Message). To properly rehearse the story, we tell of our danger and God’s love, and then we celebrate.
Celebrating in this country is something of a mixed bag. We’ve all been to parties that seem to have no heart, and are much more about numbing than they are about real celebrating. There’s an underlying sadness, it seems to me, in that sort of anesthetizing. I suspect that’s not what the Bible has in mind when it suggests preparing “a feast [of] holiday food and drink.”
Real celebrating may be unrestrained and noisy and giddy and manic. But it’s more about joy than it is about escape. It’s more about affirming life than avoiding it. It may or may not involve alcohol, but it’s not about the alcohol. It’s fundamentally about laughter and affection. It’s about connecting and delighting. It’s about killing the fatted calf because God has never let us go.
When I was a pastor in Vermont a number of years ago, a colleague of mine and his wife used to go home after church on Sunday and make a feast. Every Sabbath menu began with the decision of what to have for dessert. It was always something made with fresh ingredients, fabulously delicious and made from scratch. Then they would build the rest of the meal around that, with delicious appetizers and main courses and salads. It was their way of marking the day off as holy, of making it a feast rather than simply one more humdrum meal. They would eat slowly and appreciatively, with lots of talking and laughing and singing. I hear the echo in their meal of that great parable of the prodigal son: “‘for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate” (Lk. 15:24). That’s what we rejoice in: the God who has given us new life in the face of all that beats us down and threatens us and discourages us. “We almost died; God saved us; let’s eat.”
There’s one thing that catchy ditty misses, though. And it’s a basic part of the story we tell and hear over and over again. It’s a crucial dimension of the Jewish story and the Christian story. In the tale from Nehemiah, when everyone is gathered listening to the reading of the law, the instructions are, as we said, to “go home and prepare a feast [of] holiday food and drink.” There’s another part to this celebration, though, and that is the need to “share [this meal] with those who don’t have anything” (8:10). A big part of a full response to God’s grace is our giving to those who have less.
“We almost died; God saved us; let’s eat; and let’s share.” That, in a nutshell is the story of our faith. No life is complete that hibernates in its own cocoon and forgets those who struggle. To really be touched by God is to know that there is no other way to respond but to offer our selves and our things to others. We don’t give just because it might seem like a good thing to do. We give because this is how we believe God acts. And if God acts that way, maybe we ought to, as well. When things are right, we don’t work at St. Paul’s Church because we’re bored, or give money to Seeds of Literacy because we’ve got some spare change, or send money to Haiti, through the United Church of Christ, because we ought to. We do those things because if we really want to be in tune with God’s plans for the universe, we’ll share our resources.
When the church talks about giving, it’s never intended as pressure: “you’d better give or else.” Sometimes people say, “The church pushes too hard. There are too many requests for money.” And I suppose that’s possible. What the church is really doing, though, is simply providing innumerable opportunities for people to give back. We know that no life is complete unless it has a substantial component of generosity. The church provides that opportunity. Here, you can support an environment in which, from day one, babies know that they are special children of God. Here, you can provide opportunities for people to grow in faith, to pray, to share in a special community. Here you are presented with countless venues in which to share your gifts—by ushering, or taking a meal to someone who’s grieving, or joining in an offering to help illiterate Clevelanders learn to read. Here, you can be reminded, week after week, that God leaves you not alone, and that there is a place for you at the table. There is no better place on earth for us to “share . . . with those who don’t have anything.” So, no, the church doesn’t expect it. But we do invite it, with all our hearts. Because that giving is a crucial part of a full life.
During all of what we’ve been through, God has been good to us. In our reading from Nehemiah, the people acknowledge this by shouting, “Amen, Amen” (8:6). To celebrate God’s love and mark our call to go forth and share, would you join me now in singing those same words, “Amen, Amen,” starting very softly, almost as a whisper, and growing with each verse until we sing it jubilantly and gratefully. [Sing “Amen, Amen.”]
“We almost died; God saved us; let’s eat; and let’s share.” Amen.