Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Luke 4
21Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ 22All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’ 23He said to them, ‘Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, “Doctor, cure yourself!” And you will say, “Do here also in your home town the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.” ’ 24And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town. 25But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27There were also many lepers* in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.’ 28When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
It should not surprise you that Barney and Friends is on the list of worst television programs ever made. Parents and grandparents with the song “I love you” to the tune of “This Old Man” stuck in their head are not accountable for whatever it takes to get it out.
Also on the list of worst TV shows of all time: My Mother the Car, Homeboys from Outer Space, The Jerry Springer Show, and The Swan, famous for showing and promoting plastic surgery. The list makers even gave us a little Canadian content, adding The Trouble with Tracy, mostly for bad production values.
If I have given you flashbacks or you are newly resolved to head home and get a fresh dose of Barney, you’ll have to wait. The list-worthy show that really intrigues me is Hogan’s Heroes. I’m left to wonder about the initial meeting where someone pitched the show to a network: “It’s a comedy, set in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp, with goofy guards and clever inmates, all working together to laugh at the rest of the war.”
Weirdly, it managed six seasons on CBS and was nominated three times for “Best Series” honours. Equally weird, the show is praised for holding to the original vision (it never “jumped the shark” [see me later for details]) and is also praised for the wonderful irony of using German-American actors who were all Jewish and all served in the US Army during the war.
Overall, I wonder about the psychology of Hogan’s Heroes. Not the willful ignorance of Klink and Schultz or their well-founded fear of the Russian Front, but the timing of a series that depicts German’s in a playful light. The show began in 1965, and that twenty year gap between the end of the war and this odd little show seems about as much time needed to begin to imagine a former enemy in a new way. It would take a few more years (1981, Das Boot) for audiences to accept a dramatic portrayal of action from a German point-of-view.
My father recounts the story of attending a course on navigation through the Canadian Power Squadron some time during the seventies. While the German-Canadian instructor described to the class various ways he used to identify the position of the “enemy,” my father leaned over to the Royal Navy veteran beside him to say “I think he’s talking about you.” Luckily, this is Canada, the place where we can leave the past behind and make new beginnings.
Israel, on the other hand, was not a place where you can leave the past behind and make new beginnings. In many ways it still isn’t. But in Nazareth, the day Jesus decided to accept a preaching gig at the local synagogue, past was still very present to the crowd that day.
It began with last week’s reading, when Jesus unrolled the scroll and announced the Jubilee Year: releasing the captives, sharing Good News with the poor and the rest. The crowd seemed pleased. “So this is Joseph’s boy?” one says, “it seems he can preach!” But Jesus had more to say:
I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian."
Now, stories of Elijah and Elisha were already ancient history, more than 800 years old and already passing into the territory of legend. But that didn’t seem to matter to the good folks of Nazareth that day. They were deeply upset by this young upstart who took pains to remind them that the blessing of God extended to non-Jews. In both stories, the widow in Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian, the blessing of God is extended to someone outside the Covenant, outside what is considered the normal purview of the “God of Israel.”
And so they’re mad. Mad enough, it seems to rush the lad to the edge of a cliff, and threaten to hurl him off. I served two church atop the Scarborough Bluffs, and always kept this passage in mind when writing. But like Jesus, I slipped away, and found safety in Weston, where prophetic speech is welcome and even encouraged.
Years ago I attended a Stewardship Conference held at the Harbour Castle downtown: we were greeted by the Very Reverend Dr. Stan McKay, former moderator of United Church of Canada, and first aboriginal to hold that post. First, he welcomed our American guests to Canada. He welcomed everyone to Turtle Island, the traditional name for North America, and then he welcomed us to the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation. Finally, he reminded the group that all of Toronto, and much of the surrounding area is subject to an outstanding land claim.
Reactions differed. Our guests had that intrigued look when you discover something really unusual and say “huh!” Locals had a more mixed response, not so much anger as polite discomfort and the nagging sense that this was something that would be hard to put out of your mind. I have to say it made quite an impression on me, as it was clearly meant too.
And the impression is not based on the possibility of losing our 12 feet of frontage on a lovely East York street: rather, based on the notion that what seems far away from our experience is really as close as right here. I can tell you that the Mississaugas of the New Credit are close to a settlement, and we won’t be losing our lovely church or Mugwort Manor (our house in EY). Instead, the band will receive an upgraded purchase price from the original 10 shillings paid for much of Southern Ontario (about 65 cents).
I wouldn’t say our prophet Moderator Stan was unwelcome in his own land, but he did use the very same technique as Jesus. Recognition and affirmation, followed by a difficult truth that the people need to face. It was not a conference about aboriginal land claims, it was a conference on stewardship. But Dr. Mackay knew that justice and stewardship go hand in hand, and that giving gifts and using gifts must always happen in the context of right relationships and justice observed. It was Walter Brugguemann who said that justice means finding out what belongs to whom, and returning it to them.
Likewise, Jesus said that freedom for prisoners, recovery of sight, and release for the oppressed, were about to be made manifest. And it pleased the crowd to know that the Year of the Lord was at hand, and these things would come to pass. But them the truth.
Like the parables of Jesus, a world is constructed, then sours, then we are left to figure out our place in this new reality. Jubilee is proclaimed, then sours (the Year of the Lord belongs to everyone, even non-Jews), and the people are left to decide what to do. In this case, they are mad, and vaguely homicidal, but not enough to actually follow through. That will have to wait until later on, three years on, when the combined pressure of all that grace, all that healing, all the inbreaking of God’s Spirit will finally be too much for this sinful world, and Jesus would find himself on a cross. But until then, he will carry on his way, preaching the Kingdom and sharing more parables.
Jesus said, “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town” and in many ways it is still true. Many great women and men traveled to far off places to have their greatness recognized before returning to an adoring public at home. The Nobel Peace Prize is practically based on this principle, which is why a 35 year-old pastor from Atlanta received the prize in 1964, only a few months after writing his famous letter from the Birmingham Jail. Dr. King wrote that, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” a reality he fought until his own murder five years later. There are many reasons the world resists the Year of the Lord, the reign of justice and the end of oppression. May we continue to be a voice for the voiceless, and always prophetic, welcome or not. Amen.
Third Sunday after Epiphany
Nehemiah 8
81all the people gathered together into the square before the Water Gate. They told the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel. 2Accordingly, the priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month. 3He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. 5And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up. 6Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, ‘Amen, Amen’, lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground. 8So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.
9 And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, ‘This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.’ For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. 10Then he said to them, ‘Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.’
Poor Ezra. Moses has Charlton Heston, David has Richard Gere, Noah has Steve Carrell, and even Joseph has Donny Osmond. But poor Ezra, he has no one.
Now, the attractiveness of a story or character makes a movie deal obvious. If Ezra had animals, two by two, fleeing the flood of the whole earth, a movie would be a lock. If Ezra could come up with a really nice coat, maybe of many colours, a movie might happen. If Ezra parted even some minor body of water, or had that snake-staff thing going on, movie for sure.
Poor Ezra. He will have to settle with being credited with the reinvention of the Jewish religion, and by extension the Christian faith too. He will have to take solace in preaching the world’s first sermon, and defining the idea that scripture is always understood in context. He will have to be content with being the number two figure in Judaism, because in our faith, he’s barely on the map.
So for today, it’s time to give Ezra a little airtime, maybe the first draft of a good script, where the true hero of public worship can come forward and get some long overdue recognition. And maybe, we’ll find, he has a thing or two to teach is yet, about the centre of our faith, and the way we live in a community just like this one.
Ezra, to begin, was an exile. He and his family found themselves in Babylon with the rest of the elite from the former Jerusalem and surrounding area. He was likely the son of someone important, and likely received the kind of education reserved for the sons of important people, even in exile.
He came to the attention of some high Persian official, maybe even King Artaxerxes himself, and was selected to return to the Holy City of Jerusalem and begin again. He was given the gold to make a proper start, and the blessing of a foreign occupier to reintroduce the Hebrew religion to the centre of the Hebrew world. How to do this was largely left up to Ezra.
We get the sense from reading Nehemiah that the population was feeling badly. Consistent with many of the other good stories in the Bible, a lack of direct oversight led to all sorts of problems. Just as Moses had to contend with some golden livestock, Ezra was confronted with foreign wives, and by extension, the religions of foreign wives. He was not pleased.
Ezra’s solution was to read “the law of God” from morning to noon, before the entire assembly, but with a twist. Ezra and the religious leaders added another layer:
So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.
In other words, they preached. There, amid the ruined city of Jerusalem, sometime in the vicinity of 538 BC, Ezra invented something that you’ve been enjoying ever since. Perhaps I overstate. However you see this selfish little time I take each week, the events recorded that day constitute an important starting point in the history of western thought. For it was at that moment that the sacred text of a people was made the subject of wider interpretation.
Put another way, Hammerabi had a code and plenty of people followed the code, but the Law of Moses was a code to be explained so that everyone gathered might understand. They were given the ‘sense’ of the reading, which takes the Law of Moses (Torah) and gives it meaning in a new setting. A product of the ‘early Israel’ that met God for the first time, the Law of Moses had new lessons to teach in the ruined city of returned exiles. And so Ezra preached.
The complete sermon is gone now, and we are left with the Coles Notes version that appears near the end of our passage today. Again, we know that the people were distressed, uncertain what God required in this emerging era, and feeling more than a little guilty over the whole “foreign wives” thing. So the message is unexpected, a new note in the otherwise sad song of return:
‘Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.’
Prepared for a golden calf-style response, this ever-surprising God says “eat like the French and help those with nothing.” You can hear the gasps of relief, the wide-eyed delight of an astounded people. That’s it? We forgot your Law and we flirted with other gods and this is our punishment? Eat butter and drink Spumante Bambino? That’s right, God says through Ezra, eat butter and maybe try something a little nicer than Spumante Bambino. Maybe a Shiraz or a Cab Merlot: for the joy of the Lord is your strength.
For the joy of the Lord is your strength. The strength of our relationship with the Living God is the joy that God finds in us. Think about that for a minute. We have richer lives, deeper meaning, and better work because God is joyful just knowing us. Here is another way of saying it, Psalm 149, still best in the KJV:
For the LORD taketh pleasure in his people: he will beautify the meek with salvation.
Here is same message that Ezra shares. God takes pleasure in us, and will encourage us in the important work of caring for the meek. The meek will be beautified with salvation, made new because this too is the work of God. Take pleasure, be a delight for me, and care for those with empty bowls and lives devoid of pleasure.
So let’s go one step further, and stay on the theme of pleasure. Jesus is tempted in the desert, and wanders his way to John the Baptizer, and submits to baptism in the Jordan. Here we pick up the story:
16As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. 17And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."
This child of mine, whom I love, delights me. And Jesus was just the first. The same can be said about this morning, because God is still speaking: “Owen, this child of mine, whom I love, delights me.” And God said it before: “Ivy, this child of mine, and Pat, and Dave back there, all whom I love, delight me.” Every baptism, throughout time, the message is the same: God takes delight in God’s children, blessing each one and naming each his own.
But poor Ezra. He gave the first (and still one of the best) sermons, and gets no movie, no holiday, no theme park, only the confidence in knowing that he reinvented one of the great religions and helped create our own. He reintroduced us to our God, not the angry, vengeful God that struggled with human disobedience from the very beginning, but the God of new beginnings, of cities reborn and faith rediscovered, the God of enjoying the gifts of the earth, and sharing all we have. Ezra found the Law and made it a gift once more, understood in a new context, and in a new way, as the life-giving Word that only God could share.
Amen.
Second Sunday after Epiphany
Psalm 36
5Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the clouds.
6Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
your judgements are like the great deep;
you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.
7How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
8They feast on the abundance of your house,
and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
9For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light we see light.
10O continue your steadfast love to those who know you,
and your salvation to the upright of heart!
Some people collect hockey cards, I like to collect the foolish things said by TV evangelists.
In electronic form, these comments don’t take up much space. But that doesn’t mean they are few in number—just the opposite—for every time something dominates the headlines, you can count on some conservative TV Christian to say something foolish.
First out of the gate this week was Pat Robertson, the same Pat Robertson who famously suggested that the terrorist attacks on 9-11 were caused by American pagans, abortionists and feminists. True to form, Robertson gave voice this week to what many conservative Christians were thinking: that the people of Haiti brought this on themselves. He reminded his audience that Haiti began with a slave revolt, and repeated the oft-told story that the leaders had made a deal with the devil. Google “Pat Robertson quotes” or “stupid Pat Robertson quotes” for the full text.
Now, it’s easy enough to mock TV evangelists and conservative commentators and anything said on Fox News, or anything that comes out of the mouth of Sarah Palin, but the sad truth is that people are watching and listening and taking note. People seem to find some strange form of comfort in the quick analysis, and will readily accept what these seemingly learned people say.
And at its heart, the desire to understand transcends left and right. There is a primal need among humans to put events into perspective, to comprehend the incomprehensible, because to simply leave the reason aside seems to compound the pain.
So we ponder. We ponder and we theorize and we listen to the various voices that fill the airways and we decide. We decide who gives the most credible “why” and we follow. There seems to be an equally strong impulse to adopt a point-of-view, to leave the marketplace of opinions with one we can own, something that we can repeat when the subject comes up.
So for Pat Robertson, who imagines the devil lurking behind every tree and inside every non-evangelical Christian (who doesn’t hold his exact point-of-view), it’s not surprising that he would find the devil amid the destruction in Haiti. His search for why—the same impulse we all share—always seems to come up with the same answer. And while most people apply some sort of filter before they say completely inappropriate things on TV, Pat Robertson does not.
The wisdom books of the Bible, Psalms, Proverbs, the Book of Job, each wrestle with the “why” question. Sometimes it comes in the form of a question, or a series of questions, but most often it comes as declaration, the abiding belief that the good will prosper and the wicked will suffer. This is the heart of the wisdom tradition, sometimes called “classical wisdom thinking” and found throughout scripture.
We read together part of Psalm 36, and the tradition is there: “O continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your salvation to the upright of heart!” The reward for righteousness is prosperity, and wickedness, destruction. You can read this in dialogue form for most of the Book of Job, as his comforters encourage Job to think harder about his misdeeds, because he undoubtedly caused his own suffering.
The problem comes when we mix hope with heavenly legislation. I think it would be accurate to say that most would want some reward for following the rules. Being upright should come with some sort of compensation, even if it is limited to the admiration of others. It seems very intuitive, just as the opposite does too. We hope that those who commit evil deeds will come to an ignoble end, because to have it otherwise seems completely unfair.
The disciples live with the same set of assumptions, best displayed in John 9, when they ask Jesus saying “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus says neither, but it is never really clear whether the disciples are convinced. They, like we, seem hard-wired to find fault, to assess blame, and assume that misfortune is usually self-imposed.
They want to know that the universe is ordered based on wisdom principles, that they will be rewarded or punished based on an existing set of rules, and that chaos is banished from the picture. And this is where they are wrong. Chaos is still very much in the picture, and the universe God made unfolds quite apart from the divine hand. In other words, God did not cause the earthquake, or the hurricanes, or the poverty. The first two were “acts of nature,” and the last the work of some very human people.
Through Latin America and the Caribbean, the patterns set in colonial times continue. A small elite, often with the blessing of the church or other outside forces, rules the country with little regard for the plight of ordinary people. Examples abound, with Haiti the most glaring. One percent of the population controls 50 percent of the wealth, with the rest sharing the lowest standard of living in the hemisphere.
There is little incentive among the one percent to make change, with corruption and mismanagement making the whole situation worse. Something as simple as a building code that does not require metal to reinforce concrete accounts for the vast majority of deaths in Haiti. Ensuring that buildings are constructed properly requires a measure of cooperation and greater equality. We live in hope that both may come to Haiti in the face of this disaster.
For those keeping track, I couldn’t resist coming up with my own “why” to the question of suffering in Haiti. There is no devil in this analysis, one I learned at that radical place called York, and one I saw while visiting those who experience inequality in places like Nicaragua and Mexico and Chicago. Like everyone else, I find comfort in fixing a little blame, finding the root, and trusting the situation can change.
The Psalms, scholars remind us, began as prayers written to God. Over time, as the religious life of Israel unfolded, believers became aware that they were divinely inspired words, that they represented a fond hope of heaven and a glimpse of God. We became convinced that if it were possible to express God’s desire for us, it would sound entirely like Psalms.
Psalms also represents the same “working out” of heaven that deep thinkers have struggled with from the beginning of time. Psalm 36 begins by describing the scandal of sinful people, what they are like, how they function, and moves on to contrast this with the ways of God. Lament becomes praise, because we cling to the hope that the world’s ways are not God’s ways, that there is no inequality in the divine economy, and that God’s primary desire is to save.
5Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the clouds.
6Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
your judgements are like the great deep;
you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.
7How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.This is the hope of heaven, that the broken and the broken-hearted may take shelter in the shadow of God’s wings, that the homeless may find a home in God alone, and that God is suffering with the people of Haiti, not the cause, never the cause.
Christ-like figures abound in Haiti, those who set aside their lives for the sake of others, and those who risked life and limb in a dangerous city long before the danger was from an earthquake. Countless victims left the comfort and security of the developed world to bring medicine or security or know-how to the people of Haiti, making small sacrifices and then making the ultimate sacrifice. And just when it became obvious that danger only grows, more flock to this broken place, adding more sacrifice, armed only with a desire to help and the sense that God blesses their work.
We pray this morning for the dead and dying in Haiti, those who suffer and will continue to do so. We pray for the many who left comfort to bring aid, and give thanks for them. We pray for the families of the missing and the dead, and we ask God to comfort them. And we give thanks for God’s steadfast love for those who suffer, knowing that this love extends to the heavens, and faithfulness to the clouds, now and always, amen.
Epiphany
Isaiah 60
Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
2For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.
3Nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
4Lift up your eyes and look around;
they all gather together, they come to you;
your sons shall come from far away,
and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses’ arms.
5Then you shall see and be radiant;
your heart shall thrill and rejoice,*
because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you,
the wealth of the nations shall come to you.
6A multitude of camels shall cover you,
the young camels of Midian and Ephah;
all those from Sheba shall come.
They shall bring gold and frankincense,
and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.
We appear to have survived the holidays. Presents unwrapped, wrapping discarded, cookies eaten, leftovers finally thrown-out, potential regifting analyzed (come on, we all do it), toys played with that initial time and set aside until “oh yeah” moment later on, empties returned, resolutions made and that new calendar hung on the wall.
That makes it time to confess: I gave at least one self-serving gift this Christmas, and I don’t regret it. In moral terms, that makes me ‘finally impenitent’ and that’s never good. The gift in question, the one that puts my soul in potential danger, is Season One of Mad Men, the award-winning television series. I say ‘self-serving’ because I gave it to my brother for Christmas, knowing full well that we would find time over the holidays to watch it together.
And we did: we watched 13 episodes of the ‘golden age’ American advertising, as recreated by director Matthew Weiner. The story begins in 1960, and explores the ‘hinge’ between the Eisenhower 1950’s and the new decade yet to be defined. It shows all the vices of the day, and how the “Mad Men” of Madison Avenue managed the tension between the office and the world at home.
And, of course, the series looks at the nature of advertising itself, with many of the mainstays of the ad world having been developed in the era portrayed. These men (and an emerging group of women) used an expanding sense of the world, the popularity of what we now call ‘pop psychology’ and the so-called American Dream to sell cigarettes, lipstick and a host of other products.
Through it all, they are busy creating and exploiting myth. They are using cultural touchstones and the things people hold dear to market products, things they don’t really need, until an ad tells them they do. They create need, and a strong desire to meet that need, and try to do it without it being too obvious. In the era before the ‘marketing department,’ these men and women would take a product and turn it into something else, something more desirable than a toaster or a bar of soap.
This morning’s reading may well have been written, or at least repackaged, on the Madison Avenue of Babylon. Israelites were experiencing their own hinge moment, when the Babylonian Captivity was ending and many in the community were transitioning back to the ruined city of Jerusalem. They were pioneers, returning from the land of exile and struggling to make their way in amid the fallen Temple and the city destroyed.
At least, that’s one telling. There were others, history tells us, that didn’t make the journey back from exile, that decided to remain in the capital city of the leading empire and make a life. It’s impossible to know how many, but we do know how long, because as recently as the first Gulf War, there was a sizable Jewish community in Iraq, the successor state to Babylon.
We also know from an ample supply of biblical literature, particularly the Book of Daniel and the Book of Esther and other works from this period, that remaining Jewish while serving in the court of a foreign king was a well-explored theme. Jews were literate and had skills that made them excellent administrators, and therefore employed wherever the wealthy and powerful needed to manage their wealth or power.
This also led to some irony. The religious Jews who remained in Babylon were also wealthy, and because of this wealth they were able to support a community of scholars. The community of scholars were supported in what became voluntary exile to create a message that encouraged their patrons in that place. At the same moment they were promoting return, and hope for those on their way back to Jerusalem.
The question for the scholars was how to encourage return without offending those who were unwilling or not ready to return: how to create a message that didn’t offend they people who were ultimately footing the bill for all their writing and interpreting. The answer is in Isaiah 60:
Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
2For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.
3Nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn. The strategy is to repackage Jerusalem, not as a spiritual home or a place to be rebuilt, but as a rival to the greatest cities of the earth, the place where nations and kings will gather to see the light of the Most High. It took the impulse to return to the holy places, twinned it with the taste for wealth and power that so many experienced in Babylon, and created a new destination: the centre of the world:
5Then you shall see and be radiant;
your heart shall thrill and rejoice,*
because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you,
the wealth of the nations shall come to you.
6A multitude of camels shall cover you,
the young camels of Midian and Ephah;
all those from Sheba shall come.
They shall bring gold and frankincense,
and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.In some sense, they were not describing a New Jerusalem so much as a new Babylon. The life that the exiles came to enjoy would be recreated in the ruined places, and the exile could truly end. No more would the lure of capital and international trade exist in a far away place, but in the hole city herself, among God’s people, with God at the centre.
One of the primary impulses in the Christian Church is to be a ‘light to the nations.’ I met an architect who made a convincing argument that the theme ‘light to the nations’ or ‘light to all people’ can be seem in church design. One of my Scarborough congregations, Cliffcrest, was designed on this principle, without stained glass, so that the light of the Gospel could shine on the streets that surrounded the church. Or another Scarborough example, Wexford Presbyterian, built in the 1950’s to resemble a giant lantern to shine in all directions.
The theory here was that the church was a light shining in the darkness, and people would see the light and enter. The church was regarded as the centre of community life and also the place where you could find ‘enlightenment,’ or illumination. We functioned this way for much of the last 50 years, with the corresponding sense of privilege that comes when you imagine yourself the source of light to a community.
Then, sadly, people turned away. Like the wealthy exiles in Babylon, who heard the message of return, and may even have paid for the message to be produced, they weren’t buying it. The generation that followed the church builders of the 1950’s were unimpressed by the mortgage burning and the scout troops and the fowl suppers and looked away, some never to return.
The problem, to my mind, was light confusion. We were promoting the ‘light of all people,’ a message consistent with our best tradition, but we were busy imagining that the church was the light and not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We gave into the idea that friendly, busy, well-meaning communities of faith were the light, and not the true ‘light of the world.’ We thought that all we needed to do was shine our light through large windows and into the neighbouring streets, rather that the light of the glory of the Lord.
The exile continues in our time, an exile that many think is ultimately healthy for the church of today. The end of privilege, the end of the “if you build it they will come” assumption, the end of the blurring between the church and the dominant culture: all these endings are positives for the Christian Church.
As exiles, seeking the true light, we are free to meet our neighbours as equals, as fellow travelers, and not as a privileged group with something to share. We have a common message to hear, and a common mission to make, that God has entered our world to make us brothers and sisters, to find our humanity and our equality, and live in God’s light once more. Amen.
