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Sermon - The Third Sunday of Easter (B) - 26th April 2009
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 6pm - Evensong
Readings: Psalm 18:1-17, Ezra 1:1-11, Revelation 2:12-end
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah were originally considered a single literary work called Ezra. Although this work was already separated into two books by the early Church Fathers Origen and Jerome, the division does not appear in the Hebrew Bible until the fifteenth century.
Ezra and Nehemiah consistently turn up in all canonical lists of Judaism and of Western Christianity, though they and 1and 2 Chronicles are lacking in canonical lists of the Syrian church. In modem Hebrew Bibles the third section of the canon, the Writings, ends with Ezra-Nehemiah and then the books of Chronicles.
The main theological message of Ezra-Nehemiah may be summarized as
(1) the return from exile and the rebuilding of the Temple;
(2) the initial activities of Ezra;
(3) Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the walls;
(4) the climax of the work of Ezra and Nehemiah; and
(5) the final acts of Nehemiah.
The section of Ezra that we have read tonight is part of Ezra-Nehemiah that deals with the return from exile in Babylon and the rebuilding of the Temple (Ezra 1-6). At the beginning and the end of the section, the writer asserts that Yahweh had brought about both the return of the exiles to Judah and Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple through the favorable actions of the Persian kings toward Israel. Cyrus's decree permitted the rebuilding of the Temple and the restoration of its vessels that were removed from it and Darius reinforced these privileges and added to them a curse against anyone who would attempt to countermand them.
The book fails to mention the Davidic ancestry of Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel or the governors of Judah except in materials drawn from the author's sources. The work of Cyrus fulfills the prophecy of Jeremiah and contemporary prophets like Haggai and Zechariah merely encourage the building of the Temple without setting forth any additional promises about the future.
According to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the community in Jerusalem is made up only of those who returned from the exile, who constitute the true Israel. In order to maintain continuity with the great pre-exilic traditions, all the temple vessels captured by Nebuchadnezzar are returned to Jerusalem through the agency of Sheshbazzar and both the altar and the Temple are re-erected on their former sites. The return from the exiles and the rebuilding of the Temple show similarities to accounts of the first exodus and the construction of the First Temple respectively. The celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles after the completion of the altar in chapter 3 anticipates the joyful dedication of the Temple in chapter 6 and the equally joyful observation of the Passover a few months afterwards.
The delay in the completion of the Temple is blamed not on the people's concern for their own comforts, as in Haggai, but on the actions of the people of the land, who persistently opposed the work in Jerusalem and disheartened the returned exiles and who later enlisted Artaxerxes in their efforts to stop the building of the. The laying of the foundation for the Temple was also a time for weeping for the older members of the community, who compared the foundation to that of the First Temple. Their adversaries heard the great noise produced by these emotions and it spurred them on to a deceptive offer to help with the temple building.
In many respects the restoration of the Jewish community in Palestine was a more or less insignificant event in one comer of the vast Persian Empire, which stretched from Greece toward the east, beyond modem Afghanistan. The account in this chapter ignores the contributions to the post-exilic community of those who had never gone into exile and who had maintained worship of the Lord in the meantime back home. Instead, the author saw in the return of the exiles the providential hand of the Lord, the same Lord who had been the power behind Israel's captors. In judgment and in grace, the author experienced the same God, who had been faithful in both of these actions.
The restoration of the community was a sign that the prophetic word of God remained true and reliable. That word had also been important for the deuteronomistic historian who edited the first five books of the Old Testament and especially for Second Isaiah, who affirmed in Isaiah chapter 40 that the word or promise of God would stand forever. When church and government are as impermanent as the grass that withers and the flower that decays, there is sometimes no evident reason why faith should still be the best alternative and why God's promises should be trusted. The author of Ezra-Nehemiah confessed that Yahweh had faithfully fulfilled the word spoken through Jeremiah and had enlisted the great Emperor Cyrus in the divine plan.
God's actions and God's word lent legitimacy to the struggling and tiny community in Judah, whose uneven history is recounted in the following chapters of Ezra and Nehemiah. Despite all its warts and blemishes, despite failures by leadership and individual members, this little community, gathered around its Temple, was God's people. In going up to Jerusalem it had repeated symbolically the trip out of Egypt taken by its forebears. Unbelieving neighbors back at the time of the exodus and now at this return from exile recognized the legitimacy of the community through financial and material support.
While continuity is established theologically by God's words and actions, human faith also needs tangible signs or cultural expressions to experience true continuity and a feeling of being at home. The temple vessels, so familiar and yet obscure enough to have the meaning of most of their technical terms forgotten, linked together the pre-exilic and the post-exilic communities.
The government of Cyrus permitted, even encouraged, the return home. Sometimes Cyrus has been hailed as a unique individual, a cultural breakthrough, whose generosity toward the captive Jews went beyond any expectations. However, it has been suggested that his policies of restoring people and cults were also in his own best interest and were designed to keep peace within the empire. All the restored gods were to "pray daily to Bel and Nabu for my (Cyrus's) length of days".
In a number of ways his imperial policies continued those of the Assyrians, who have a well-deserved, almost universally negative public reputation. Still, without Persian state support, humanly speaking, the restoration would never have happened. There were dangers in the cooperation between the Persians and the Judeans as there always are in the interplay of church and state. The priestly community was willing to go along with the status quo and to live dependently within the Persian Empire. Perhaps that was a wise course; perhaps it was the only feasible course. One wonders what had happened to belief in the old promises of the land or the promises to David. Acceptance of the political status quo can also be a sign of little faith.
Those who returned were affected by public displays of divine initiative and political permission, but they were also people whose inner spirit God had stirred up. Some of their colleagues stayed behind in Babylon to retain their acquired status, perhaps because they had lost the vision and some said yes to the invitation to go home. In this combination of divine empowerment and human decision among those who returned is reflected the paradox that Paul expressed so memorably:
"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure".
Our claim to being saved by grace alone carries with it the corollary assumption that God's grace empowers us actively to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God as the prophet Micah wrote.
Sheshbazzar, the leader of this returning group, was no Moses. Whether appointed by the king or elected by the people, he had achieved leadership and responsibility. He was "prince" and "governor"; he was the person responsible for receiving the temple vessels and carrying them home and his tasks included initial work on the Temple. Sheshbazzar never makes a speech in the Bible, apparently delivered no law or performed any miracle. We do not even know how his career ended. Yet, without him, would the community in Judah have ever restarted at all? Such nondescript leadership is often significant for the people of God today. Each week Christians gather in congregations across the world, without fanfare or public notice and then go forth into ministry in daily life to turn the other cheek, to care for the lonely and the marginalized, to forgive as they have been forgiven, to love their enemies. The second stanza of an old missionary hymn “Hark the voice of Jesus calling” by a writer called Daniel March, points out the significance of such Sheshbazzars:
If you cannot be a watchman,
Standing high on Zion's wall,
Pointing out the path to heaven,
Off’ring life and peace to all,
With your prayers and with your bounties
You can do what God demands;
You can be like faithful Aaron,
Holding up the prophet's hands.
This sermon produced using The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol III, Abingdon Press, 1999 Nashville, pp 663 ff.