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Between Memory and Hope
Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis November 9, 2003, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Ezra 1:2-4; 2:68-69; 3:10-13 Revelation 21:22-22:5
As we have traipsed through salvation history these past few weeks in anticipation of our celebration ahead, leaning in close enough and lingering long enough to be addressed anew by the God who said “Go” to Abraham, to Moses and to the disciples long ago, so this morning we listen as God’s people set out once again in response to the God who says “Go” through the voice of a Gentile ruler. We encounter Israel at the end of the Babylonian exile. We meet them not as they are pushing on into new territory, but as they appear to be returning home, going back and settling into the life they thought they had lost forever. For generations, the Israelites had been without hope in the world. Exiled in Babylon and so separated from the temple in Jerusalem, from the place of God’s dwelling on earth, they soon forgot how to sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land. There they were strangers and outcasts. Even the story of their exodus had become a faint memory. Hence when Cyrus finally decreed their return, the record shows that many chose to remain in the theological shallows of Babylon. So long had they been kept from the place of God’s dwelling, that they had forgotten who they were and to whom they belonged. Of those who did return to Jerusalem, the Chronicler compiled two lists of family names. The first were those who could "prove their descent from the congregation of old--both lay people and cultic officials." They were the congregation's link and continuity with all that had gone before. Generation upon generation is named in the Book of Ezra. The additional names mentioned by the Chronicler are those who had come from other places to join these returned exiles in the congregation. And though they "could not prove their descent" from the families and the towns which made up the community way back when, nevertheless, they were part of the congregation which now stood, together, in what was left of the temple. The time, says the Chronicler, was the seventh month according to the religious calendar: the time most opportune, say the commentaries, for new ventures. Cyrus, King of Persia, announced that the Lord, the God of heaven, had spoken to him and told him to rebuild the temple. Thus decreed Cyrus: "Any among you who are of his people--may their God be with them!--are now permitted to go up to Jerusalem in Judah and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel." So they went up and began to rebuild. As it happened, the first festival on the calendar after their return was the Feast of Booths--a time set aside to remember God's deliverance of their forbears from Egypt. They constructed makeshift dwellings out of leaves and boughs, sleeping and eating outside for days. There they gave thanks to the God who had delivered them from captivity in Babylon. But there also, living under boughs and sheltered by leaves, they were reminded that their identity in the land to which they had returned was tenuous. No longer was Israel’s religion built into the fabric of Palestine’s pluralistic culture: nothing in place to secure the future of this diminished community of faith amid all the other options. Given Israel’s uncertain circumstances, the Chronicler is masterful in affirming the saints who had gone before them, assuring them of the foundation on which they still could stand. Carefully he chronicles a communal memory with the power to hold them together and send them into a future full of risk and uncertainty. Moreover, because God had decreed that the temple be rebuilt upon what was left of the first temple's foundation, the Chronicler takes pains to emphasize the continuity between the first temple and the one about to be rebuilt. Yet the Chronicler is also very clear: though they had returned to the place of remembered gladness, the past was not a place to which this congregation was destined to return. The ground had shifted beneath their feet. The society was no longer a gathering of like-minded worshippers of Yahweh. The temple was no longer the center of everyone's life. Their religion was but one in the marketplace of spiritual options. So of more import was the word that something radically new was about to unfold in the act of rebuilding. The new thing would require a commitment above and beyond anything ever imagined. As one commentator put it, "In the past, pious kings had themselves provided for the restoration of the Temple, just as David and Solomon had themselves borne the financial burden of the cult." But now things were different. Now there were no longer a few important people to pay the bill. Now for the first time, say biblical scholars, "we see the congregation as a whole, coming together in support of the task." We have seen this congregation do the same. As we mark the end of two capital campaigns, there is no doubt: not just the few, but the many have born the financial responsibility of rebuilding. A few teeth were pulled, many arms twisted, but we are stronger as a people because of the investment that has been made by so many in the future of Christ’s church on the Hill. "That this free will offering," the commentator concludes, "had arisen from feelings of profound gratitude and recognition of God's gracious provision cannot seriously be doubted." But actually these details of place and time and offering are not at all what caught my mind and heart as I searched the scriptures for a word given now to help us face the challenge ahead on this our 150th year. It was rather the final scene of our lesson. It was the scene of a congregation's heart pulled in opposite directions that stopped my own: "All the people" records the Chronicler, "responded with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of families, old people who had seen the first house on its foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this house, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping...." As with that ancient congregation, we are a people who have been doing business with the rebuilding of a community of faith not only through the renovation of bricks and mortar, but with the renovation of minds and heart. We are a congregation whose numbers have been depleted as the once faithful quietly have opted for secular existence (the 200 non-pledging, absent members), a church whose roll includes generation upon generation of families side by side with members come lately, a religious institution whose social and cultural environment is, at best, indifferent to the claims of faith, a congregation--once supported by a few folks willing and able to fund the church’s life--now left, without their largess, to bear the financial responsibility of being the church, season in and season out, on our own. Raising capital monies to renovate a building is sexy, but being faithful to the daily needs of the church requires the renovation of our hearts and minds! Hence there is a deeper echo in this story, and it is an echo that reaches down to the very soul of this congregation, filling the air with sounds of joyful shouts for the future we have begun to glimpse and sounds of weeping for a time and a place to which we may not return. In many ways, the sound of weeping and shouts of joy divide along the same lines noted by the Chronicler. Of the congregation that has worshipped here generation after generation, some continue to be less than sanguine about the new church being built on the foundation of the old church. Out of duty, there is a reluctant sort of support, accompanied by a weeping and a complaint behind not so closed doors, pulling us back to things as they always have been. Then there is the congregation that has joined along the way, those who have come because this community appeared to be the kind of lively, thoughtful, challenging church they were seeking. They initially shout for joy! However that joy often turns to weeping or silence as the subject of stewardship comes up, because few in this crowd were brought up in households where feelings of profound gratitude and recognition of God's gracious provision issued in financial generosity. Thus at this time of year, the weeping is joined with a profound silence, reducing those who are responsible for interpreting the church’s ministry and mission to begging! Deep down, I believe we want to be the church for succeeding generations on the Hill. And like the Chronicler, I would underline and affirm the foundation on which this church's life has been built. Here for 150 years countless generations have been baptized, hundreds of lives have been joined down the aisles of three sanctuaries, so many frail hands have been held for the last time in death. Because of this people the hungry have been fed and the homeless sheltered, the hopeless given a future and the lonely taken in. Within these walls joyful praises have filled the air and weeping has tarried only for the night. Yet also like the Chronicler, I am here to say that the past is a place to which we cannot return…nor is the present a place where we may linger for long if we intend to be around for our children and theirs. We stand, as the Israelites stood, between memory and hope. We dwell in the time between, when the God who has entered time and history in Jesus Christ, also awaits us beyond time when there will be no temple in the city, for its temple will be the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. In the meantime, which is the church’s time, we live as exiles and strangers in a culture where singing the Lord’s song does not come easy…or cheap! In the last seven years, we have done partial business with the tangible rebuilding of this church home. Now our stewardship must now be about the rebuilding of our common life…about the deepening of the ties that bind our lives to one another and to Jesus Christ…about the broadening of the gospel's reach for the sake of a secular community seeking the God seeking them. What happened to that returned band of exiles long ago had very little to do with the stones and cedars stuck together to erect a building…and had everything to do with the a community reborn into an expansive hope by way of a deep, deep commitment to the tasks at hand, an unabashed love for their temple, and an unwavering trust in the trustworthiness of their God. What I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that as the story of this church's life is transformed from a story in which a few people are remembered as making our ministry possible…to the story which will be told to our children and our children's children, about the eleventh month of the 150th year, when by God’s grace the congregation as a whole came forward, with a free will offering, out of profound gratitude and recognition of God's gracious provision, what I know is that God who says “Go” will not be ashamed to be called our God! Thanks be to God. Amen. |