Our first reading today comes from the Book of Nehemiah. We do not hear much from the Book of Nehemiah in the three year Sunday lectionary. I'm pretty sure, although I did not double check this, that this is the only Sunday we get a reading from Nehemiah in the lectionary. I could be wrong about that, but I'm not far off. This is a very rare book for us to read.
The book that is read more than any other for this first reading slot is the Book of Isaiah. If you add in the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the other prophets who are writing around this same time as Isaiah, which is right before the exile and in the exile, that is the plurality of readings we get. This is especially true in the seasons of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. We have been hearing a lot lately from Isaiah, and we are going to hear more from Isaiah during that period of the exile.
As you remember, that exilic period, that period of exile, was very difficult for God's people. The Babylonians had ransacked Jerusalem. They destroyed the walls, they destroyed the Temple, they kicked the people out. It was a time in which the Psalmist wrote that they wept by the waters of Babylon. It was a very hard time for the people, not just because they were forcefully removed from their homes and lost their livelihoods. It was a hard time because their very identity and their understanding of God and God's identity, and the relationship to God was all disrupted. They didn’t know what to make of this time and why God had allowed this to happen. It was a very hard time and we get a lot of readings about how difficult it is, and a lot of readings of the prophets trying to offer hope to the people during this time. They desperately needed that hope in the midst of so much difficulty.
Our reading today is interesting because it comes right after that time. We don't get many readings from this period right after the exile. The Persians have come in and kicked out the Babylonians, led by Cyrus. They have allowed the people to return to Jerusalem. They have allowed them to rebuild the walls, they have allowed them to rebuild the temple. That is the time today's reading takes place, after the return, the restoration, the rebuilding of the physical infrastructure of their lives and their faith. But they need to do something more. They need to rebuild their relationship with God. So they gather together by the Water Gate to renew their Covenant.
In order to do that, our reading says the first thing they did was to pull out the Book of the Law of Moses, and read from it. At first glance, that sounds rather boring, but the Book of the Law of Moses is not a book of laws. It is not like reading the city building code. That would be dreadfully boring. But the Book of the Law of Moses is a book full of stories. There are some laws, rules, and regulations interspersed in there, but it is primarily a story of God, and God's relationship with the people. It is the story of their ancestors, of Abraham and Sarah, who left behind their home, families, and friends in order to follow God on a rather ridiculous promise. It is the story of Joseph and his brothers and their entrance into the land of Egypt. It is the story of Moses and Miriam and Aaron and how they left Egypt, how they were led out of their bondage and their slavery and led through the desert wilderness. It is a story of God's faithfulness to them through all of their complaining and whining. It is a story of God nourishing them and giving them water in the desert. It is a story of their entrance into the Promised Land.
This is the story of their ancestors. It is important for them to read that story because in that foundational identity forming story, they begin to understand better who they are today, who God is, and what their relationship with God should be. Even those boring rules and regulations are laying out God's dream, God's vision for this world. A world in which we love our neighbor, take care of the stranger. A world of Jubilee, the year of forgiveness of debts, the year of the Lord's favor. All that is laid out in the Book of the Law of Moses. That is what they are there to do that day. After this great period of disruption, this period that has undermined the understanding of their identity, of God, their relationship to God, they are coming back in order to review it, to understand those stories, to understand who they are, who God is, what their relationship is all about, and God's vision for this world. They read those stories because that is their story, and they are gathered by the Water Gate that day in order to begin the next chapter in the story.
That story, of course, gets added on to. This very event at the Water Gate becomes part of the story. The words of the Prophets get written down and added to the story for future generations to read and they become part of the story as well. That is what we find with Jesus. Jesus takes the story heard at the Water Gate, and their addition to the story and it becomes his story. In our Gospel reading today he takes part of that story, a reading from the prophet Isaiah, and reads it out loud. He reads the words of the Good News to the poor and the release of the captives and recovery of sight to the blind and freedom for the oppressed and the proclamation of the year of the Lord's favor, a euphemism that means the year of Jubilee when debts are forgiven. Jesus says today this has been fulfilled in your sight because that story is now our story.
We are the ones now who get to rebuild our relationship with God and try to bring about God's vision, God's dream for this world. The story at the Water Gate, and the story of the people at the synagogue that day with Jesus is also our story, your story and my story, the story of our ancestors, the story of God's dreams and God's visions for this world. We are writing the next chapter in that story.
It is not exactly like the exile, but this pandemic has been, in a sense, like an exile. It has exiled us from so many of our understandings of how things were, of what we did. It is a time for us to rebuild, although we can't fully do that because we are still in the pandemic. We hope we're near the tail end of it, but we don't know. But even now we need to begin to think about how it is that we rebuild our identity, our understanding, how we rebuild our faith and our relationships to God and our relationships to each other. In the isolation all of that can so easily be strained or weakened, just as it was during the exilic period.
We need to do that work that Nehemiah is doing, that work of rebuilding. Rebuilding the physical structure, which we are doing now at St. Mary's with our new HVAC system, but more importantly, rebuilding that spiritual infrastructure, to rebuild those relationships with each other and with God. To do that we need to go back to these stories, the stories that we read every single week when we gather together, whether in person or virtually. We gather together and we read these foundational stories of our faith, because in them, in that story, we find our story. In their story we find our identity. In the story of God's love and mercy and grace we find that God is loving and merciful and gracious with us as well. We better understand how it is that we are to move forward, to move forward in faith with God and with each other. Not to go back, you can never go back, but to go forward, pulling that story forward just as the people did by the Water Gate, just as Jesus did in the synagogue, and just as you and I are doing right now on our computers as we gather and worship and hear these stories.
These stories aren’t' always easy for us to understand. Do you remember in the reading where it says they read the Book of the Law of Moses with interpretation? We do need interpretation in order to understand it. There are confusing things in there, there are contradictory things. We have to interpret it. And when we do we understand more fully the greatness of God's mercy and love.
So, my friends, as we move forward together, even as we are physically distant, we can start this work of rebuilding our relationships with each other and with God. To renew our covenants and move forward in faith and love and grace and mercy, just like they did by the Water Gate that day when they all said Amen, Amen.
