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January 24, 2010 Sermon
Live Into Hope (Nehemiah 8: 1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Luke 4: 14-21)
Rev. Sally Harris
These readings are a hard act to follow. First there is the story in the obscure book of Nehemiah, where Ezra stood in a public place for a gathered group of women, men and children and proclaimed and interpreted Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy for six hours straight. Must hold the record for the longest sermon ever! Nehemiah 8 is one of the few places where Scripture talks about Scripture showing us what happens when a community comes together to hear the written word proclaimed and interpreted.
In this dramatic meeting it is reported that Ezra helped the people to understand the Torah. This was a gathering of people of Jewish descent who had been tossed about by the apparent whims of historical circumstance and who had largely forgotten their theological identity in the rootage of Moses. What Ezra did was to re-text this community to turn the imagination and therefore the practice of the community back to its most elemental understanding of the claims of God. And when Ezra does this what happens?
People bless God. People give voice to their certainty, their faith, and their trust. People let the actions of their bodies match the words in their ears and on their lips, lifting their hands to God in petition because they recognize that God alone grants life. People fall to the ground in profound humility, knowing that God alone can lift them up and help them to stand.
When they hear the written word proclaimed and interpreted, people weep. People weep because they do not know how to bridge the gulf that separates humanity from the faithfulness of the God who made them. And Ezra keeps telling the story reminding people that it is God who bridged the gulf by making a covenant with Abraham; who promised to Jacob "I am with you and I will protect you everywhere you go" (Genesis 28:15); who heard the cry of the people enslaved in Egypt and delivered them from oppression; who supports God's people when their strength is gone.
Believing in Ezra’s testimony, every person who leads and teaches this people – Nehemiah, the governor, priests and scribes – all tell them not to weep. Do not mourn, they say, because this day when you have let God's presence fill your ears, your minds, your soul; this day is a holy day. The day when God's people gather together to hear the teaching of Moses can only be a day of drawing near to God in deepest joy: it is the joy of God, the strength of the people. The summons to joy is the great surprise of this passage. How can joy come to this wilderness of broken dreams and fallen walls and forgotten identity. Joy comes because God is remembered – the dream is revived, the walls are rebuilt and their identity is renewed in the promise of God-with-us.
Like the people's embodied expressions of humility, petition, and sorrow, this superabundant joy takes a concrete embodied form in an act of feasting that refuses to stay put. The people are told to eat — not just any food, but rich, fat foods — and to drink - not just any drink but sweet, sweet drink. The abundance spills out as the people are told to send helpings to anyone who has nothing prepared or no means to prepare it. The feast of God's strengthening, joy-filled word exceeds all limit, reason, and expectation; it fills every need and defies all lack of planning.
Nehemiah 8 shows us what it looks like when the people gather to hear the written word proclaimed and interpreted and let that proclamation shape and energize their life in community.
It is this story that helps identify Ezra as the one who formed Judaism into a community of text practice, whereby the lively work of interpretation became the life blood for Judaism, the Judaism of which Jesus is surely an heir.
Which of course brings us to the gospel lesson. Luke describes how Jesus emerges from his forty days in the wilderness, armed with the power of the Spirit. He walks into his hometown synagogue, among his own people and opens the scroll of Isaiah. From his lips flow some of the most powerful words in all of scripture:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because God has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
God has sent me to proclaim
release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of God’s favor.
Jesus uses as his inaugural address to his hometown a reading that combines parts of the book of the prophet Isaiah, but not insignificantly Jesus omits Isaiah's line about "the day of vengeance of our God." We don’t have recorded why he chose not to use this phrase. What we do have recorded is the shortest sermon ever.
Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
Jesus’ very first interpretative word out of the desert is: Today.
This is not religion, as we know it. Not nostalgia for the past, nor a fantasy of the future. It’s not centered in memory or anticipation: next year I’ll do this; in the old days we did that, someday God will set things right.
No, Jesus just proclaims, today.
So what happened? How did the people respond? Pretty well the opposite of what happened when Ezra told the story… but we will have to wait till next week to find out.
For today let us speak of joy and drink sweet wine and eat fat.
For today let us remember with joy the love of God, which is our strength.
For today let us live into hope.
[resources: J. Richardson, W. Bruggeman and S. Miles ]
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