Nehemiah Sermon Series: Richard's Sermon on 'Assessing The State We Are In.'

 

Rebuilding

Sermon 2: Assessing the State We Are In

Allerton and St Mary’s 13 June 2021

It was that beginning of the weekend coffee catch up that got Lisa and I talking about the allotment. Do you ever have those Saturday morning early doors sit down with a coffee to plan what is happening over the weekend? Well, the allotment often comes up in conversation at this time of the year. The weeds are growing nicely and we need somewhere to put the pumpkins. Shall we use this or that patch? Have we enough compost? – nothing particularly inspiring. What we decided to do was wait until we went up there and had a look for ourselves. We needed to survey the space so that the decision wasn’t just based on theory.

Assessing for himself was what Nehemiah was doing in the reading we heard today. Last week we left him lamenting – weeping and praying over what he had heard about the state of Jerusalem and its people. And that lament spurred him into action. The Persian king notices his sadness and, when Artaxerxes hears about Nehemiah’s concerns, he agrees that he can travel to his homeland for an agreed length of time. Letters of authority are written to ease his passage and Nehemiah sets off on his mission. We are introduced to the baddies of the story – Sanballat and Tobiah who will prove to be a thorn in Nehemiah’s side throughout his oversight of the rebuilding and then at last Nehemiah is in Jerusalem. And what is the first thing he does? – he goes out with a few trusted friends and has a look for himself at the walls, makes a survey of the state of things and ensures that any assessment is based on what he has seen, based on objective analysis rather than the word of mouth.

Nehemiah is doing what any good leader or any good organisation would do in seeking to look at the state of things, gauge what changes might need to be made and capture a renewed vision and a re-energised purpose – make a proper assessment.

You probably know by now that I listen to a lot of podcasts – washing up, hoovering, walking the dog; all good activities for enlarging the mind. My favourite is Simon Mayo’s and Mark Kermode’s film Radio 5 Live film podcast but a close second is Melvyn Bragg and In Our Time. It is like having a tutorial each week from experts in the field from things as diverse as Multiverses to mediaeval Arab poets. Last week I was learning all about Charles Booth. I’d never heard of Charles Booth before but in the 1880s he undertook an invaluable survey of households in London that showed that almost a third lived in poverty. He knew there was a problem but wanted some data. Booth didn’t have much time for Dickens and his descriptions of east end poverty – if things were going to change he needed to find out for himself. And so he began a survey that showed that the state of things was actually far worse than was thought.

In particular his assessment of how poverty dramatically increased for the elderly once they were no longer able to work led a decade later to the first State Pension. In other words his assessment led to renewed vigour in tackling a problem and to some important changes.

There’s only a point in assessment if it leads to change or to action. Nehemiah’s assessment leads to the people crying out ‘Let us start building.’ Booth’s assessment led eventually to positive change. There is so much assessment in our current life, but I wonder how much of it has any real purpose. Schoolchildren are assessed all the time, particularly this year. Those who are or have been churchwardens especially will know that the Church of England, God bless her, is obsessed with assessments – Statistics for mission, Parish Share survey, Archdeacon’s Article of Enquiry, the list goes on. But I wonder sometimes to what purpose. Nehemiah’s assessment arose out of a clear vision. He understood there was something amiss, he believed that change would have to take place, and so knew that action couldn’t happen until a proper assessment had been carried out.

As we continue to live through this pandemic, as we witness the changes it has forced in how we are in society, in community and in our churches, as we wonder where we are and how we can move forward, as we seek a renewed vision and a re-energised purpose a sober and first hand assessment is needed.

So as we do this – here is some good news. My first hand assessment of the congregations I am privileged to lead and to serve is somewhat different to how Nehemiah viewed the people of Jerusalem. When we were looking at last week’s passage and Nehemiah’s prayer of lament in our home group, someone made the perceptive comment that Nehemiah seemed disappointed with the people of Jerusalem. At least I can say that far from being disappointed I am so humbled and proud of how you all, have worked and worshipped your way through these last traumatic months. One of the passages I have spent a lot of time with is from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 4.1-12). It is the guiding passage for this second year of the PMC process and it contains these wonderful words – ‘We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus , so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.’ I think that makes a wonderful assessment of how things have been and how we are. There is much rebuilding to be done but things aren’t lying in a heap in front of us.

And we do have some tools at our disposal to help with our assessment. To turn to PMC again, the formation of the Good Neighbours Scheme was built on listening and assessing – listening first hand to members of the congregation and wider community; not just assuming we knew what people were thinking and looking for but actually spending time asking them. Time again we heard how those who were interviewed appreciated a really good listening to. I wonder whether we might undertake something similar – actually ask individuals how they view the state of our church community and what might need to be some priorities as we grapple with all these new realities.

Some of you will remember a few years ago looking at The Healthy Churches Handbook and using that checklist to help give a spiritual health check for each of our churches. Maybe it is time to revisit that.

But for now I am going to take you on a balloon ride for a few minutes. Sorry, I haven’t got the real thing – this is all about using our imaginations to gain an overview for ourselves of our community and our church. In a moment I’m going to lead a guided meditation and as you are on your balloon ride I am going to ask you to notice what is happening in this community from your perspective as a member of this church, notice what is there, notice what is not there, notice who is there, notice who is not there, notice what is going on – and then to write down any insights down.

So to begin, make yourself comfortable, find a position that leaves you relaxed and yet alert. Close your eyes. Take a few slow calm breaths….

In your imagination, think where are you standing in this village – outside your home, outside church, middle of village, cricket field etc.

In front of you there is a large hot air balloon waiting invitingly for you. You clamber into the basket and as the ropes are cast off and you hear and feel the whoosh of the flame filling the balloon with hot air, you feel the basket slowly rise into the air. Gradually you rise up and gradually the community begins to stretch out below you.

What do you notice? Is there anything you hadn’t spotted before?

Is there anything that has changed over this past year?

Is there anything good happening? Is there anything amiss?

What is God drawing your attention to?

Spend some time making your first hand assessment.

What might need some rebuilding?

 

Now the balloon is starting to descend. Down, down it goes until with a gentle bump you are back on the ground again. What insights do you bring with you? Why not take some time just to jot them down.

We have lamented what has been lost, we have assessed the state of things – next week some principles for rebuilding and for beginning to look forward.

NEHEMIAH 2.11-18

So I came to Jerusalem and was there for three days. Then I got up during the night, I and a few men with me; I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. The only animal I took was the animal I rode. I went out by night by the Valley Gate past the Dragon’s Spring and to the Dung Gate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that had been broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire. Then I went on to the Fountain Gate and to the King’s Pool; but there was no place for the animal I was riding to continue. So I went up by way of the valley by night and inspected the wall. Then I turned back and entered by the Valley Gate, and so returned. The officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing; I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, and the rest that were to do the work.

Then I said to them, ‘You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burnt. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we may no longer suffer disgrace.’ I told them that the hand of my God had been gracious upon me, and also the words that the king had spoken to me. Then they said, ‘Let us start building!’ So they committed themselves to the common good.

 

Questions for Discussion or Reflection

1.      When have you been involved in some assessment that led to positive change?

2.      Why do you think Nehemiah went out ‘at night’ to make his assessment?

3.      What tools of assessment do we have to help us think about the state we are in?

4.      St Paul writes to the Corinthians about being ‘afflicted in every way but not crushed.’ In what ways is this a fair assessment of our Christian community?

 

5.      What insights did you gather on your balloon ride?

Nehemiah Sermon Series: Richard's sermon on Lament

 

Rebuilding

Sermon 1: Lament

Holy Trinity and Christchurch 6 June 2021

 

‘By the Rivers of Babylon, where we sat down, where we wept when we remembered Zion.’

These words from Psalm 137 are perhaps the most famous lament in the Old Testament and are difficult to say without Boney M’s music ringing around in my head. But they are just one example of a cry that fills many of the psalms. ‘Look at the state we are in Lord? Things aren’t right, Lord! Something terrible has happened, Lord! I wish this had never happened, Lord! I’m in trouble, Lord!’ All across the Old Testament there is lament – Job sits in sackcloth and ashes and weeps for a life that has fallen apart (little knowing that he is but a pawn in a bet between God and Satan); David laments the loss of his beloved friend Jonathan and later his son Absalom; Isaiah and Jeremiah lament the path that the people have taken. In the New Testament Luke writes words of lament for the slain children of Bethlehem and Jesus cries out on the cross ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’

And today we have heard another lament – the prayer of Nehemiah on hearing about the state of the Jerusalem and its people.

This is the first part of a sermon series which I hope will give us some tools for us, as God’s people in this place to come to terms with what has happened and some tools to move on.

Why use the book of Nehemiah? After all, here is a book which seems to be largely a number of spectacular lists of some truly spectacular names written millennia ago in the first person by someone – and I’ll let you into a secret here – I find it very difficult to like. Nehemiah comes across as something of a self-justificatory and self-righteous prig, someone who can tolerate little dissent and for whom purity is crucially important. And if that isn’t doing a very good selling job, he is also someone with a great sense of calling, a deep faith in God and the ability to get things done. He leaves the people of Israel in a much better state than he found them – and for any minister that’s a pretty good thing for which to aim!

 

When the book opens, the people of Jerusalem are struggling. The exile is over and the longed-for return to their homeland had taken place almost eighty years ago. Life should have been better. And yet they have still not recovered from their trauma. Life post exile is not the same as life pre-exile. They are still struggling to come to terms with what has happened, leading a meagre existence in a city whose walls lie in ruins. Rebuilding is needed and Nehemiah proves to be just the man for the job. The focus is on rebuilding the walls and ensuring that the city is once more defensible against those enemies that are gathering but really this is all about the rebuilding of the people, helping them move on and giving them fresh vision and purpose.

And here we are, back in our churches after exile, struggling to come to terms with what has happened over this past year or so, wondering how the landscape might have changed, looking to recapture some vision and purpose, knowing that some rebuilding is going to have to take place and suspecting that we can’t just sit around and wait for the old ways to return.

Whether or not you like Nehemiah the person, the book that bears his name speaks to our situation and can help us move forward.

And why begin with Lament? – well on one simple level, that’s where Nehemiah begins and that is somehow important. When he hears that the people of Jerusalem are in a parlous state we are told that ‘I sat down and wept and mourned for days, fasting and praying before the God of heaven.’ Nehemiah pours out his pain into this amazing prayer that takes up most of the this first chapter. He cannot move on to plan for the future until he has wept for the past and the present. He cannot be of any use until he has been real about the pain that is in his heart. He cannot address the state of the walls and the people until he has offered it up to God in compassion.

There has been so much to sit down and weep about over this past year – the images of overwhelmed medical staff who have been stretched beyond their limits and whose agonising choices have left their scars; those images from India of people left to find their own oxygen; the Covid memorial wall on the Embankment in London, each heart marking a life lost – 127000 and counting; the lost opportunities for children and young people worldwide. In our own small community there have been the deaths that we haven’t been able to mark properly, the numbers in our congregation who have grown used to online worship or no worship and whom we may struggle to see again, the baptisms and weddings we have been unable to celebrate; and the children we have let down as we have struggled to connect with families.

 

But here’s the rub about Lament – it is so much more than an introspective ‘Woe is Me’ cry of despair, so much more than a complaint to a higher power to get things done and Nehemiah shows us the way.

When Nehemiah pours out his heart, he begins with God and he begins by praising God – ‘O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love…’ Nehemiah’s lament is a prayer, a prayer of trust in God, a prayer of trust in his faithfulness. And so must our lament be also. How often in the psalms does lament and praise seem to go hand in hand! Nehemiah begins with God because he knows that he has a loving Father who will hear him.

Contrast two scenes – one of the saddest visits I undertook was in Romania. Over twenty years ago I spent a week at an AIDS hospice for children which my church supported. The hospice was a place of hope but I remember one bitter January day struggling through the snow with some of the volunteers to take part in a weekly visit to some small orphans at the local hospital. We were with them just over an hour – two little girls aged between two and three – but they barely made a sound the whole time. This was probably their only meaningful human contact all week and they never cried because they had learned that no-one cared enough to answer.

Last week one of our guinea pigs died, the second in just a few months. They have been well loved by my daughter, they are hers; and when Pepper died Melissa’s first instinct was to come to her Mum for a hug. She was able to be with someone she trusted as she made her lament. Children who are confident of the love of a caregiver cry. For the Christian, our lament, when taken to our Father in heaven, as Nehemiah does, is proof of our relationship with God, our connection to a great Caregiver.

Nehemiah’s prayer is one for his people. It is a prayer of the heart, a prayer of compassion. He may be doing just fine. After all, he is a cupbearer to The King of Kings, living a well to do life, far from Jerusalem. And yet he bears the pain of the people on his heart. I know that, thankfully, our churches have been left relatively unscathed by the full effects of Covid – no deaths, no hospitalisations, few, if any, redundancies. And yet we know that so many are in pain and our lament is not only for the suffering; it is for solidarity with the suffering. We love our neighbour when we allow their experience of pain to become the substance of our prayer.

Nehemiah owns up to his own part in what has gone wrong. He offers up his sorrow for the times he has offended God or failed to keep the commandments. He offer sup his sorrow for the corporate or structural sins that have affected events for ill, asking forgiveness for the people of Israel and his family.

 

Now, I’m not saying at all that the Covid pandemic is our fault and certainly not that it is a punishment from God, just as Nehemiah, serving as a cupbearer in the heartlands of Persia is hardly personally responsible for the woes of people in Jerusalem. But if Covid emerged by crossing over from animals as a result of humanity’s abuse of the environment, then that needs acknowledging and lamenting if change is to happen. In our own situation, it is particularly on my heart that , though much has been dealt with well, we, I, have particularly failed the children and families who are part of our church family and am worried about how they can ever be incorporated again. Will they come back? That failure needs to be acknowledged and lamented if a rebuilding is to be truly effective.

Finally, in his lament Nehemiah appeals to the faithfulness of God. He reminds God of his dealings with his people in the past and asks him to act now. In the end any lament is a prayer of trust, trust in a God who is faithful, trust in a God who loves us, trust in a God who always wants what is best for his children. Our lament is not passive, not a venting of frustrations or simple sadness because our lament is a prayer that has its foundations in God’s faithfulness. Our lament instead is to be a call to action – from ourselves and from the God who is faithful. As Bishop Tom Wright writes – when the Spirit dwells in us, then somehow, God is praying within us for the pain around us

Lament is not our final prayer. This is not the final sermon. It is a prayer in the meantime. Most of the lament psalms end with a “vow to praise”—a promise to return thanksgiving to God for His deliverance. Because Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, we know that sorrow is not how the story ends. The song may be in a minor motif now, but one day it will resolve in a major chord. When every tear is wiped away, when death is swallowed up in victory, when heaven and earth are made new and joined as one, when the saints rise in glorious bodies…then we will sing at last a great, “Hallelujah!”

For now, we lift our lament to God as we wait with hope. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.