Sermon: Nehemiah 8: 1-4a,8-12/ Colossians 3:12-17

Theme: Rebuilding the Walls and Drawing near to God

About this

I prepared this talk for a service in my village church in October 2020.  We were going into winter after the first Covid lockdowns – life hadn’t really opened up again.

As I read it again it still felt pertinent.  We live in a damaged world and it is important that we take our responsibility for this.  God’s response when we do this is not one of condemnation.  S/he longs for us to rebuild our walls and draw closer – see the error of our ways and choose the path of love as we move forward.

I have edited it very slightly.  There is a link to the Nehemiah passage: the Colossians passage is the last paragraph of the talk!

Link to Nehemiah:  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Nehemiah+8%3A+1-4a%2C+8-12&version=NIVUK

I’m not sure how familiar you are with the story of Nehemiah.  It is worth putting this passage into context.  Nehemiah worked for the King of Persia – a position that gave him money and power – but when he heard about the situation in Jerusalem – the walls destroyed, the city in ruins - he was overcome with grief and asked the king for permission to leave and rebuild it.  In the chapters leading up to our reading we learn of Nehemiah’s prayers and action, of how he worked with the people of Jerusalem to re-build the city walls – if you read chapter 3 you will find a list of all the people who were working together to repair the wall.  You get a sense of the people all catching hold of Nehemiah’s vision and joining the work.  The work doesn’t come without problems – Nehemiah had to sort out situations which had caused some to be living in poverty, he faced opposition to what he was doing and people tried to stir up problems for him with the king – but Nehemiah held steady and with a huge team effort the wall was completed and ‘by the seventh month the Israelites were settled in their towns’, many of them returning from captivity.

For me there’s a picture here already of our spiritual lives.  Because we lose our way: we get captured by other things around us, and our walls get damaged.  We need to recognise this, as Nehemiah did, and come back to God and rebuild our walls – as a community and as individuals. These are difficult times.  I wonder where we’re feeling damaged at the moment.  I wonder what has captured us.  I wonder what it is we need to return to, and where we need to start re-building?  These are difficult times for us as individuals, as a church, as a village, as humanity.  Are we alert to what is happening in all this spiritually and are we ready to come back to God and start re-building?

Back to our passage.  Nehemiah has returned to Jerusalem.  The people have worked; the walls are rebuilt; the people of Israel are together again.  So, is it time for a party? Not just yet. First, they gather together to hear from the ‘book of the teachings of God’.  From early morning until noon – men, women and children, stand and listen to the teachings of God.  Listening attentively with the Levites explaining to them what was being said.

What struck me as I read this passage was their response.  The people cried as they listened to the words of the teachings.  Why did they cry?  My first thought is that they must have been exhausted with everything that they had been through both in the last few months, and before then.  I wonder if they could really believe where they were and what they were doing.  But from what is said their tears were not tears of joy at the completion of the wall, or tears of relief that they are coming together as a people.  These are tears of regret and repentance.  As they heard the word of God they realised how far they had strayed.  They realised just how far they had gone wrong.  And not just them, but their ancestors before them.

I am struck that we are in a very similar place.  When we gather to hear God’s word does it not show us just how far we have strayed?  And not just us but our ancestors?  The world that we live in is a result of our greed, our selfishness, our desire to be right, our desire to have an easy life.  We live in a broken-ness of our own creating – where many experience loneliness, where there is hate, prejudice and discord, where people suffer from hunger and violence, in which the very planet that sustains us is reaching breaking point.  When we gather to hear God’s word, we see how far we have gone wrong, and -yes – our reaction is surely to cry.

But the second thing that struck me in this passage is the response of the leaders.  They say, in verse 9, “This is a holy day to the Lord your God.  Don’t be sad or cry.”  And Nehemiah in verse 10 says: “Go and enjoy good food and sweet drinks.  Send some to people who have none, because today is a holy day to the Lord.  Don’t be sad, because the joy of the Lord will make you strong.”  The joy of the Lord is our strength – familiar words.

When we come to God, when we listen to his word, when we recognise all that we have done wrong – all the ways in which we have ‘strayed’ - he doesn’t condemn us, he loves us more.  ‘Draw near to God and he will draw near to you’.  The people of Israel had been scattered, Jerusalem had been destroyed, but this was a time of rebuilding and regathering, of drawing near to God.  Even as we recognise all the ways in which we have gone wrong we are drawing near to God.  And when we draw near to him in this way, he draws near to us and brings us joy. 

Verse 12 says: Then all the people went away to eat and to drink, to send some of their food to others and to celebrate with great joy. They went away to celebrate, and to share with each other.  Do you see that already they have understood something different?  They don’t want anyone to be missing out – all are included.  So, verse 12 finishes: They finally understood what they had been taught.  They understood, and they went with a new energy to live in a new way. 

When I hear God’s teaching in the context of all that is currently happening in the world, in the reality of my daily failures and disappointments, I think I begin to understand.  I am so thankful that God is greater than I can imagine; I am so grateful that God is love; I find peace and joy in knowing that I can’t fully understand God but that doesn’t stop him being with me and opening my eyes to see him at work.  And my understanding gives me energy to live in a new way – not to keep God’s love to myself but to share; to grow through connecting with others.

How do we make the joy of the Lord our strength, in such an uncertain and difficult time?  I think we begin by recognising where we have gone wrong.  We listen to God, we rebuild and restore, we live in a new way.  And we keep doing that: each time drawing a little closer to God.

The New testament reading for this week could have just been read as todays talk.  It is a clear passage about how to live.  I’m going to read it just now and I would ask that we let it show us where we have gone wrong, and encourage us to live in a new way because God loves us.

Colossians 3: 12-17 

God has chosen you and made you his holy people.  He loves you.  So always do these things: show mercy to others, be kind, humble, gentle and patient.  Get along with each other and forgive each other.  If someone does wrong to you, forgive that person because God forgave you.  Do all these things; but most important, love each other.  Love is what holds you together in perfect unity.  Let the peace that Christ gives control your thinking, because you were all called together in one body to have peace.  Always be thankful.  Let the teaching of Christ live in you richly.  Use all wisdom to teach and instruct each other by singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.  Everything you do or say should be done to obey Jesus your Lord.  And in all you do, give thanks to the father through Jesus.

 

Musing #2:  Soul Searching

Last Sunday I was listening to the news on the radio.  A reporter was talking to a man in Derna, Libya, where the catastrophic flooding took place – as I write it is known to have taken 11,000 lives.  The man had travelled to Derna with a group of his friends.  They were taking a boat out to sea, diving and looking for bodies.  They were bringing the bodies back one by one.  The reporter asked how he was coping with what he was doing.  He talked about his spirit being broken but he added: There’s something inside that keeps us going.

I’m not totally sure what I understand the human soul to be.  It is not a physical organ and, as far as I am aware, it is not something that psychologists have named as such.  What I notice is that there is this ‘something’ inside us as human beings.  And if you’re listening, and noticing, you start to see it and hear it: you start to become aware of a whole world that is going on at a different level – a deeper level.

I love words, and the word soul is one to look out for and savour.  If you are someone who reads the Bible look out for the word soul.  Consider how it is used; what it is meaning.  But you don’t have to open a sacred text to find soul: soul-mate; soul music; soul food.  When I hear the word soul I find it is good to ponder why it is being used – what is it getting at.  There is, of course, a dictionary definition but I’m not sure that really helps us feel what soul is about.  As we ponder its use I think we edge around it – gradually closing in on it; we add layers to its meaning and give it its intrinsic depth; and we feel it in our own souls.  Our souls echo back that understanding.

Yesterday I was cleaning, and I spotted a spiders web.  Not the pretty kind – the kind that hang around like an elongated piece of dust.  Once I’d removed it I spotted another, and another… I’d tuned into spider webs and suddenly I saw them everywhere!  I think we can do the same with soul.  Noticing it in one place will help us to observe it in other places.  And observing it ‘out there’ in other human beings will encourage our own soul: in some intangible way that eternal part of our self will know it is seen and cherished.  Which speaks of our connection, as human beings and creatures, at a soul level…

Is it something you feel?  I’d love to know!

 

PS Had to go and listen to this wonderful song by Labi Siffre:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B-4Lsrx8IA

 

 

All is Well: A Journey in Contemplation

b. Inner World - Inner Work

A journey on the contemplative path inevitably takes us into our inner world.  We travel into our own interior and what we seek there is ‘God’.  Many mystics and spiritual teachers have written about this incredible truth: we find the divine within ourselves. I believe a piece of the divine will always be within each one of us – God promised to never forsake us.  But if we want to find the divine and enable her to flourish – and not diminish - we need to be committed to exploring our inner world and doing our inner work.

In this I would encourage you to see psychology – the study of the mind - as your friend. Psychology can help us to understand some of our internal structures and this understanding can take us nearer to the divine within.  Psychology seeks to understand how our minds work – faith teaches us that our internal world is much bigger: we are commanded by Jesus to love God with all our mind, all our heart, all our soul and all our strength.  Our minds are a bridge into a much bigger internal world where we find the divine.  Psychological understanding takes us by the hand and helps us cross that bridge so that we can go deeper.  It brings wisdom, clarity and direction as we begin to explore within.

I am not an expert in psychology but some of the insights I have gained from it have helped me to understand myself and my faith more deeply.  For example, my understanding of the ego.  I think the concept of the ego is one with which many of us are familiar – it is a word that is used a lot in everyday discourse.  Our ego is our sense of self: it is what gives us our identity.  It is also the part of us that responds to the world around us, enabling us to function effectively in the different settings we find ourselves.  Our ego is essential to get through life and yet it can get in the way of our relationship with God.

Let me try to explain what I mean! I think all of us will have met someone, or know of someone, who has an ‘inflated ego’.  This person will be more concerned about how they appear as a person than about what is really going on inside.  They will project an identity into the world which is designed to make them ‘look good’ rather than be true to their interior world.  This can be a way to cope with reality, or it can be a way to find success in the eyes of the world.  What we need to recognise is that we all do this to some extent.  In coping with ‘reality’, we are not completely honest with ourselves.  We project a self that can cope with our circumstances and we end up investing in that ‘false self’ rather than facing the realities that dwell within and around us.  We build up our ego to cope with the world and become individuals who are increasingly self-reliant.  It is this individual that gets in the way of us finding God. Our ego urges us to be self-reliant; to prove that we can cope.  God urges us to rely on her; God is about connection, and we need to surrender ‘the self’ if we are to find true connection with the divine.

Jesus said: For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.  What does it mean to ‘lose our life’? How do we understand this problematic teaching?  I believe the life that we need to surrender is that damaging aspect of our ego.  This can be a very painful process because our ego is what has enabled us to function in the world.  But I believe that it is only when we can give up this false identity that we will find our true identity in God.   Jesus teaches us again and again that death leads to life – his life on earth is the model of this.  It seems to me that our ego needs to ‘die’ so that we are free to find who we truly are in God - in love.   It is scary to let go of your identity but there is something in this journey that is very much to do with letting go and falling into God.  It is in God we find our true selves.  

As we journey into our inner world we need to be aware that we may find damage.  Unfortunately, being unaware of our interior world does not stop us from causing damage to it or being damaged by others.  As we journey inwardly we may come across scars, or even open wounds, and they can hurt.  Be aware that you will need help on this journey and, as you uncover things internally, you may need the help of a spiritual director, or a counsellor.  Remember that seeking help is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength.  Having someone walk alongside you can deepen your journey and help you to recognise what you find. 

A lot of the damage that is done to our inner world is done through a lack of love – more severe damage being done through abuse.  This can be self-inflicted or other-inflicted.  I do not want to downplay in any way the damage that can be done – it is real and it is painful - but I believe that the healing of all these wounds comes through love.  A lack of love was the cause: an ‘application’ of love is the cure.  Look at the impact of love on people.  Think of the impact of love on yourself.  Love is a healer.  Love can heal the deepest scars and wounds.  That is what love does.  As we do our inner work, we find God and allow her to expand. God expanding is love expanding and with that expansion comes healing.  When we learn to love and care for ourselves – not at the expense of others, but in a humble, awed way - we are letting God love us and some of the wounds we have lived with will begin to heal.

Our journey in contemplation will take us into our inner world and here we have work to do: to surrender the part of our ego that stands in the path between us and the divine; to allow the divine to expand and bring love and healing (that will spill out of us into the lives of others if we let it!).  This is not easy work and we will find that we will become distracted in oh, so many ways.  This is NOT easy work and we may well have to reach out and ask for help. But as we intentionally walk this path – picking ourselves back up again, re-orientating ourselves again, setting our eyes ahead again – God will honour our intentions, and give us glimpses of the ‘heaven’ that awaits us.

 

 

 Poem

The Heart of It

Let my heart open

Broaden

Deepen.

That it may hold

all

that needs to be held.

 

Let the thoughts that hurt me

Drop into my heart.

And be loved.

And be healed.

 

Let the hurts that surround me

Be held in the hope

Pulsing through the depths of my heart.

Let hope expand.

Pushing the walls of my heart wider.

Let me hold the suffering of the world

and…

be.

Feeling the pain that love brings.

 

And when my heart becomes heavy

and I am close to falling

Let the seed of Infinite Love,

buried in the crevices of my soul,

Awaken.

 

Let it grow

Until it cradles my heart

and I sink into its embrace.

Dissolving into the love

that has always held me.

 

 

Sermon                 Genesis 1 and Psalm 24                       Theme: Global Stewardship

About this:

I prepared this sermon for the URC church in my village, for a service about Global Stewardship, in the pre-Covid world.  In thinking about which of the talks I have prepared to share first on ‘Words and Musings’ I was drawn to this because it is about how faith and our care for planet earth are intricately linked.  This is something that I feel and know at a gut level. 

The fear that a lot of us experience as we think about the future of our planet is very real.  I have tried to be honest about this.  I have also recently listened to a podcast that didn’t talk about living beyond the fear but about not being afraid of fear.  Our fear is there to teach us, and I think part of my current learning is to listen to my fear and learn from it.

The sermon has been edited so that, hopefully, it makes sense as you read it. There are links to the Bible passages in case you want to refer to them.

Please comment and share.

Links for the Readings:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1&version=MSG

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+24&version=NIVUK

Our theme for today is global stewardship.  Stewardship is to do with our responsibility to look after what we have been given, and in thinking about global stewardship we are focusing on the fact that God gave us this planet on which we live, and he gave us the responsibility to look after it. 

We don’t have to look too far in the news to see that we have not done a good job of this.  Unfortunately, there are many problems that we are facing because of our lack of care for the planet. 

In our Genesis reading we find that at the end of that sixth day of creation:

³¹ God looked over everything he had made;
        it was so good, so very good!

These words remind me of the tales of Narnia when the children go back with Aslan and witness the beginning of the world.  We overuse some words, but witnessing creation surely was awesome.  Seeing the beauty that God created come into being.  And even though we weren’t there we can, and do, experience that same awe.  When we look at the immensity of God’s creation – the beauty of mountains, rivers, the ocean, the stars – and when we look at the detail of God’s creation – the markings on animals, the intricate structures of flowers, the shine of a conker.  God looked over everything he made, and it was so good, so very good.

That is where we started, and this is where we have come - to the world we live in today.  A world where fires are raging; animal and plant species are becoming extinct on an alarming scale; where pollution is everywhere – in the air, the water, the land; where people suffer from the ravages of war, from natural disasters, from poverty, from the effects of climate change.  It is not good, it is not very good at all.

The story of creation in Genesis is familiar and it clearly states that God gave us responsibility for his creation.  When God created human beings, he said (in the Message version of the Bible):

“Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!
    Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air,
        for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.”

God gave humanity the responsibility to look after the creatures that he had created.  And Genesis chapter 2:15 builds on this when it says that God put man in the Garden of Eden to ‘work it and take care of it’.  God put his creation in our hands – we were put in charge.

We should remember at this point that being put in charge is not the same thing as owning.  We have a responsibility here. God didn’t give us this amazing planet and say – it’s yours, do what you like with it.  God put us in charge to look after the planet.  Psalm 24 begins:

The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it,

The world, and all who live in it.

The earth is not ours: it does not belong to us.  The earth is the Lord’s and we are stewards of this amazing place.  And unfortunately we have made a right mess of it.

It does make you think – why on earth did God put us in charge? Out of all the creatures why did he choose us?

To find the answer to this we need to go back to our Genesis passage.  When God decided to create mankind he said:

“Let us make human beings in our image, make them
        reflecting our nature
    So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea,
        the birds in the air, the cattle,
    And, yes, Earth itself,
        and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.”

The reason God put us in charge is because he made us in his image and to reflect his nature.  That is how he made us: that is how we are made.  And that doesn’t just go for those of us sat here this morning, it doesn’t just go for those who call themselves Christians, that goes for every human being on the planet; those alive today and those who have lived.  Each one made in the image of God with the ability to reflect his nature.

As people of faith - people who recognise a creator God: recognise him in his creation from the smallest creature to the magnificence of the highest mountain - as people of faith we have work to do here.

We have individual spiritual work to do.  Because God has made you and me in his image: we have a piece of God inside us and we have the potential to reflect his very nature.  And do we do that?  Do people know you are a Christian by your love?  The honest truth is that we fall short.  Love is not something that you can manufacture; it is not something that you can pretend to have.  We need to do that deep spiritual work so that we can reflect God’s love which will never come back empty.

I am struck by how Psalm 24 develops, going from:

“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it”

To:

“Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart…”

The earth is the Lord’s and if we are to fulfil our responsibility to care for it we need to work on our spiritual lives.  We need to seek God’s face.  We need to come to him with clean hands and a pure heart, so that we can reflect his love.

But please don’t stop there, and please don’t think that your first responsibility is your spiritual health and until you have that sorted out you can’t tackle the other problems that we face.  Because, ironically, in order to come to God with clean hands we may have to get our hands very dirty.

Life is very complicated, everything is tied together, and as much as we want to be able to separate things out and deal with them one by one, that is just not the way things are.

Our spiritual life and our spiritual health are tied up with our everyday life.  And our everyday life is tied up with the everyday lives of every single creature on this planet, every human being, and the future of the planet itself.

So as I work on my spiritual health I also need to actively engage with my God-given responsibility to care for this planet and all who live on it.  As my relationship with God deepens my care for the planet will grow, as my care for the planet grows my relationship with God will deepen.  The two things are intricately tied together.

The responsibility we have is overwhelming, especially in the light of the current state of our planet.  I think that’s the reason why many of us shy away from thinking about it too much, from taking on what it really means, from making the changes that we need to make.  But as people of faith we need to grapple with these issues if we are serious about wanting to reflect God’s love.

I don’t know how much you know and understand about the climate emergency that we face – I don’t want to assume knowledge or lack of knowledge, so let me talk briefly from a personal perspective.

The future that we face on our planet earth scares me.  I do my best to not live in that fear, but it does scare me.  And when I listen to the news – which to be honest I do less and less – it makes my heart break to hear of the destruction, pollution, extinction of the natural world, and to hear of desperate lives – people in slavery, in poverty, in conflict.  It is bleak.

And yet I know deeper within me that God is love, and God lives in me.  And perfect love drives out all fear.  My deep desire is to live beyond the fear, to live in God’s love and to act in order to bring that love into the world.

I’m not in that place so I am working on myself spiritually – I know I need that work – to understand myself better and to nurture the kingdom of God which is inside me.

And I am doing my best to not turn my back on the news and to take action where and when I can, be it: joining a demonstration; changing my shopping habits; having a difficult conversation; writing to my MP.  I am aware that we need to be acting locally and on a global level.  I am aware that there are things I can do as an individual and times I need to join with bigger groups of people.

I cannot believe that God – who is love – likes what is going on in our world.  I cannot believe that God would wish us to carry on regardless, whilst other humans suffer, whilst the planet burns and creation groans.  I believe that God calls us to reflect his nature, to reflect love and to act to manifest his love.

This is a hard message but please don’t ignore it.  Please don’t think it’s all too much and it’s all too frightening.  Because God loves you, God is at work in you and he wants you to take this seriously.  Because in doing so you will not just be making an impact on the world around you, you will be making an impact on your own spiritual health.

We are made in the image and likeness of God – let’s do the honest spiritual work to nurture that likeness.  We are given responsibility for this planet and the whole of creation – let’s take our responsibility seriously.

The end of Psalm 24 says:

Lift up your heads, O you gates; Lift them up you ancient doors, that the King of Glory may come in.  Who is he, this king of glory?  The Lord almighty – he is the king of glory.

Lift up your heads, open your ancient doors – let the king of glory in.  Reflect his love.  Take on the responsibility he has given you.

The spiritual work that needs to happen in you, you need to do.  Please don’t forget that challenge – don’t put it to one side – it is so important.

But hopefully you’ve seen that that work is tied up with the way we live day by day, in a way that takes responsibility for our planet.  That can be overwhelming, but can also start with small steps: is there a small step you can take today?