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.
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