Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-7, 8-10
Luke 4:14-21
“Do Not Weep”
We are gathered together this morning to do something that God’s people have done for millenia. We have come together, as we do every week, to read aloud from God’s Word and to interpret it for one another. There are other things that we do in our worship. We sing, we pray, we share Sacraments, and we make offerings. But the central part of worship in our Reformed tradition is the reading and preaching of God’s Word.
The Scripture passages that we read aloud today included two stories about God’s people doing something similar. First, there was the text from the Book of Nehemiah. After the Exile in Babylon, as the Israelites were re-settling in Jerusalem and Judah, the people gathered together in the square before the Water Gate.
They hadn’t yet rebuilt the Temple, and yet it seemed important to gather and listen for God’s voice. They met in one of the busy gathering places, where everyone went in and out of the city to get water for their households.
Ezra, the priest and scribe, took out the Book of the Law of Moses, and began to read. He didn’t read three or four short passages as we tend to do, but he read from early morning until midday. And everyone listened and paid attention. As we do, in sermons and children’s messages, Ezra interpreted what he read as well. The goal was for everyone to understand what they were hearing.
About five hundred years after that reading of God’s Word at the Water Gate in Jerusalem, Jesus joined a gathering at the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. Going to the many synagogues around Galilee, reading God’s Word, and teaching was a regular part of Jesus’ ministry, and he usually received a positive response from the people.
But in Nazareth, where he had been raised, he stood up to read a passage from the Prophet Isaiah. Jesus read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor: He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The people in the synagogue were all looking at him, waiting for his interpretation of the text. And that’s when he said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” In other words, he said that the text was about him. The Spirit of the Lord was upon him, and he was anointed and sent to do all these things for the poor, the blind, the oppressed, and all who were suffering.
The Gospel text we read today stopped there. But if we kept reading, we would see that the people’s initial response to what Jesus said was positive. They were amazed by what he said, and maybe they were thinking that he was going to do some great things for them.
But when Jesus went on to explain that his hometown would receive no special privilege or priority, and that his healing power would be shared with foreigners rather than reserved for friends and neighbours, they got angry. “All in the synagogue were filled with rage. They 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.”
The response of the people in Nazareth reminds me a little of Donald Trump’s response to the sermon preached by Bishop Mariann Budde at the Inaugural Prayer Service in the Episcopal Cathedral in D.C. earlier this week. Perhaps some of you watched the video of her sermon, or at least the last couple of minutes of the sermon that were openly directed at the President.
Bishop Mariann addressed the President, and made a plea to him. She didn’t accuse him of anything, or scold him, or even speak harshly to him. She simply made a plea to him “to have mercy on those who are afraid.” She mentioned members of the 2SLGBTQI+ community who would be affected by his proposed policies. And she mentioned immigrants, refugees, and their children, who are not criminals, but hard-working people who only want to make a life for their families. She didn’t suggest policies or criticize policies, but simply asked a powerful man “to have mercy.”
Her message was deeply rooted in Scripture, referencing both Old Testament laws commanding the Israelites to show hospitality and care for strangers, as well as Jesus’ clear boundary-crossing love for the poor and marginalized from foreign lands and cultures.
I don’t think anyone has tried to push the bishop off a cliff yet, but there has certainly been a mean-spirited, disrespectful, and threatening response to her clear and challenging preaching of the gospel. Trump has demanded an apology, and called her “not very good at her job,” and all kinds of hateful things have been said about her in the media and online.
Now, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that the President didn’t attend the Inaugural Prayer Service with an open mind and heart. His intention was never to carefully listen to the reading of God’s Word, to strive to understand its meaning, and to pay close attention to the interpretation given by a learned member of the community.
But it makes me wonder about how we all approach our regular practice of reading and interpreting the Word. Do we come into worship with the feeling that we know it all already? Or are we listening for something new from God?
Do we pay attention only for statements and ideas that confirm our present thinking, or are we willing to question our prior assumptions and long-held opinions?
Are we listening only for good news for us, or are we ready to rejoice when there is good news for strangers or even people that we might consider enemies?
And are we staying humble enough in our walk with God that we will hear when the Scriptures call us to change, to be merciful, to love our enemies, to give ourselves for others as Jesus gave himself for us?
Just briefly, I want to go back to the first Scripture story from Nehemiah. The Israelites gathered and listened together to the reading of the Law of Moses, and they paid attention as the priest Ezra interpreted the reading and helped them to understand. And then they began to weep.
We aren’t told exactly what caused them all to start crying, but it seems likely that they heard the commandments and became aware of the many ways in which they weren’t living up to them. They heard about God’s faithful covenant love for them, and realized that they weren’t doing their part to love God and their neighbours in the same way.
Perhaps they read some of the parts of Scripture that called the people to care for the poor, welcome the stranger, and show hospitality to the foreigner, and they were aware that their recent focus had been on their own success and the re-establishment of their temple and their city.
I wonder how often our hearts are broken in a similar way, as we read God’s laws of love. I wonder how often we read about God’s great love for us, and weep because of the magnitude of God’s goodness, or because of our seeming inability to love in that same way.
But Ezra said to the open-hearted, vulnerable people that day: “This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.” Then he said “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.”
You see, if we open our hearts to listen to God’s Word and let ourselves be challenged, changed, and instructed by it, we won’t only hear judgement and correction of our faults and failings, but we will hear about the love and mercy of our God who forgives, restores, and empowers us to love.
After worship, we are sent out on our way to eat, and to share, and to be strengthened by the joy of the Lord that is ours through Jesus Christ our Saviour. May this be our pattern as we continue to gather Sunday-by-Sunday to listen for God’s Word to us.