People of the Book

Nehemiah 8:1-12:

Ken Whitt                       January 21, 2007

The Reverend Dr. James Harrington is a pastor, denominational leader and Christian author whose books focus on the theme of the transformation of the church. His church is in the inner city of Houston, Texas where he works among the urban poor. They call the neighborhood around their church their mission field. Harrington’s church serves among the homeless and the alcoholics and the working poor of their city.

So, Harrington knows a territory somewhat similar to ours. One of his commonly restated phrases in his books is, “The church has two choices: “deep change or slow death”. He believes that about the church which he pastors and about churches all over our country. I believe those words, “deep change or slow death” are true about First Baptist Springfield. The church we love has two choices, deep change or slow death.

Slow death isn’t difficult to define. Over a period of fifty years, or forty years, or thirty years, or twenty years, there is a very slow, at first, almost imperceptible slide downward as we no longer know how to find the people that we need to keep the church growing and thriving. Older folks die, people move on, the budget gets a little tighter. But especially in this process we loose our sense of how to get the word out to people about who we are, who God’s people are in this place, our mission, our purpose, the value of what we do.

And so Harrington and other writers and speakers on these topics talk to us about deep change. What in the world is deep change? Well, we could look around us. For instance, I could draw your attention to this altar. I love the flowers, the cross, the candles; it’s a beautiful center point of our worship. When I came here as your pastor, the custodian asked me where I wanted the altar. And I thought about it and I said, “Back there”. I was uncomfortable with the altar sitting in between the choir and the people. It just didn’t feel good, but what I did in giving Ray permission to move it to the back didn’t feel good to some other folks and they let me know that. I’ve learned a few things through the years, and one of them is to listen and to be sure I don’t cause unnecessary conflict. I simply said, “Discuss it with the choir, they’re the people most involved; let them decide where they’d like to have the altar”.

And with a little bit of support for my position, but not much, the altar moved to its current location. Now, they have a good reason. They don’t want the choir to be the center of attention up here; they want the altar, and especially the cross, at the center. You might agree with them. It’s taken a while, but I pretty much agree with them, too.

But you know, we could put this altar here, or we could put it back there, or we could put it over there, or on occasions we could move it out of here entirely in order to have a stage for the kids to do a performance. And you know, except for personal preferences, it really wouldn’t change things a whole lot. Some people like it this way, and some like it that way. Some like it hot; some like it cold. We have preferences about so many things. Color schemes for decorating the Fellowship Hall. The location of a shed. There are so many subjects about which people can debate or argue or criticize each other, but none of them have anything to do with “deep change”.

They aren’t going to transform our lives. They aren’t going to save the lost. They’re just matters of preference. And maybe we’d come up with a reason, and maybe we wouldn’t, but we do it the way we do it because we like it that way. Many many decisions made in a church are only about preference and habit or at most tradition that may or may not still matter.

But whatever we decide, its not about “deep change”.

On the other hand, there was a moment in time among the people of Israel when deep change meant life instead of death. When the people were spiritually, emotionally and even physically dying, and if they didn’t go through a change, they were finished as the people of God. We know this time as the Babylonian captivity. It was an historical era where the people broke so many of their promises to God that God finally had to act to hold Israel accountable for it idolatry and injustice. God’s prophets came along, notably Jeremiah and Isaiah, and they told the people, “Get with God’s program or you’re out of here!” They did not change and they did not obey God and they were cast out of the Holy Land.

The Babylonians came in, flattened Jerusalem, exactly as Isaiah and Jeremiah told them it would happen, and the people were carried off into captivity in Babylon and in other places of their empire.

But time passed. And the people had lost their king and their nation. And they had lost their temple and the walls of protection around Jerusalem were torn town. And they lost their priesthood and all of the other rituals of what it meant to be a Jew, and they were just plain lost. Then along came God again, and God decided that it was time to restore the people, so he got Sirus, King of Persia, to allow the people back into the promised land. Persia defeated Babylon, Sirus ruled, and he said, “You can go home”. He gave Nehemiah permission to rebuild the wall. Other Jews had permission to start rebuilding the temple, and all the people went home and settled in towns all around Jerusalem.

And one day, the people who had been lost and who were hungry, as hungry can be, longed to be close to God again. The people, not the leaders, the people decided to gather in Jerusalem, in the courtyard and they asked Ezra, the scribe, to read to them from Torah, from the five books of Moses, the first five books of the old testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. In Nehemiah, Chapter 8, verses 1-12 we hear the report of what happened

(The People Command Ezra to Read Torah)

¹ When the seventh month came the people of Israel had settled into town and all the people gathered together into the square before the watergate. They told the scribe, Ezra, to bring the book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel. ² Accordingly, the priest, Ezra, brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding.

That’s an interesting phrase. All the men came, and all the woman came, and everybody else who could hear with understanding. Who does that refer to? From our Baptist experience with these matters, t’s probably the children and the youth who are old enough to understand for themselves what it means to be God’s people. They were included.

³This was on the first day of the seventh month. Ezra read from the Torah facing the square before the watergate from early morning till mid-day, five to six hours. Five to six hours, in the presence of the men and the woman and those who could understand, and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law.

They paid attention because they were hungry. They had lost every other connection to God. They had lost their temple; they had lost their city; they had lost their nation; they had lost everything. And they would never again believe that a king could make Israel great, or that a temple could be their connection to God, because temples can be demolished and kings can become corrupt. So how does the people of God continue to maintain their connection to God? In a way that saves their lives?

⁴ The scribe, Ezra, stood on a wooden platform that had been made for the purpose and beside him stood (I’m going to ask your forgiveness and skip all these names ). ⁵ And Ezra opened the book is sight of all the people and he was standing above all the people and when he opened it all the people stood up.

Do you know where Christians stand when scripture gets read? Yes, the high church Christians like Lutherans, Catholics, always stand for the gospel readings, not for the others.

⁶ Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen”, lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their heads and faces to the ground. And then the Levites all went out among the people and helped the people to understand.

In other words, all the Levites went out among this great crowd gathered and broke the people into small groups and had a bible study so that they would understand what was being read. Understand not intellectually, understand in a way that would be transformational, that would save their lives because they had no other connection to God. The temple was out. The priesthood was out. The nation and the king were out. You could not depend on them. They could be taken away. They are not portable. You cannot take them into Babylon or western Europe where the Jews would go later on or into America. How would they retain their spiritual identity through the rest of history?

Here in this account, we have the story of a monumental moment in time when the people of Israel first became, in a deep and transforming way, what we call “People of the Book”. People of Torah. What do they call a Jewish leader today? They’re not priests. They’re not Levites. They’re not scribes. They’re Rabbis. They’re teachers. They teach Torah. Torah study according to Rabbi Garfunkel, does not just include the Five Books of Moses. It means all the rest of the writings, and many things that have been said about them, and other books that help you to understand Torah. To study Torah is about the highest commandment that a Jewish person can obey today. What happened to the people of God in the time of Nehemiah was a deep change that continues into the present time. What began here—the study of Torah--continues to be the power, the spiritual power of the people of Israel.

And Nehemiah, who was governor, and Ezra, the priest, and the scribes, and the Levites, who taught the people, said to all the people, “This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep”. For all the people wept when they heard the word of the Law. Their leaders tell them not to weep. They’re supposed to be excited and happy that day. But before they can be excited and happy about all that’s happening in the restoration of Israel, the first thing they do is they weep, uncontrollably weep, because their lives have been so empty and now they are experiencing God’s fullness for the first time in hundreds of years and so the people weep.

The reading and the Bible study fill the lives of people who had been empty and lost.

So why do we read the Bible? And why do we study the bible? Do we read it for the sake of gaining information and having interesting arguments about debatable matters? Do we read it so that we can prove someone else to be wrong in their interpretation? Lots of times the Bible gets taught that way. Do we think we’ve studied the Bible when we gain insight into history and culture? Yes, that insight sometimes helps us to grasp the meaning of a text. However, the real reason the Bible was written is to change our lives; save, heal, guide, empower, comfort, transform. To replace darkness with light. To change fear into hope. To birth love and joy and peace in our lives. To fill the emptiness of our lives.

When I came to this point in thinking through and praying through today’s message, I took a deep breath--kind of like this—and asked, “Where do I go from here?” I started thinking about other Bible stories, and I passed by a couple of them, and then I came to the story of Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus is a story in the gospel of Luke in which this tax collector, who nobody liked, whose life was totally empty, who was living a life of corruption and despair. He was so desperate to change his life that this wee little man climbed up into a Sycamore tree so that when Jesus came by, he could see Jesus, hoping that to see Jesus would change his life.

That, of course, is the key here. To see Jesus—really SEE Him--so that the sight changes your life, just like the life of a particular woman was healed just by touching the hem of the garment Jesus was wearing.

And it happened. Jesus came by, Zacchaeus saw him, but more important, Jesus saw Zacchaeus, and He told him to get down, and said He was going to his house, which is to say, I accept you, I love you, I value you. You are important to me, and whatever it is that has been wrong in your life, we’re going to make it right. And it happened. It happened really fast. Zacchaeus gave away a lot of his possessions. He REALLY changed.

What’s your seeing tree? What do you climb or what else do you do in order to see Jesus?

That question actually caused me to write a song entitled, The Seeing Tree. I’m not going to sing it. Don’t worry. It is the question that matters. What’s your Seeing Tree? What spiritual discipline do you need to practice in order to see Jesus? And, when Jesus sees you, what does He say to you? Do you know how to listen? Jesus said to Zacchaeus, “Come down. I’m going to your house. Everything’s going to be different. We are going to turn this around. You aren’t alone any more.”

If you can’t hear the story of Zacchaeus and be willing to ask and answer personal questions, then the story will remain for you and the Bible will remain for you just another interesting or entertaining book. If you really want to get the meaning of the story in the Bible, if you are open to deep change, then you will ask and answer the deep questions. What does Jesus say to me? When he sees me looking for him, what does he say? And then, when he says something back, what begins to change in your life? What part of your life do you need to give away to Jesus at this turning point in your life?

I just don’t believe you, if you say, that you have arrived and that you’re settled, and that there’s nothing more to learn, and no more ways to grow, and no more parts of your life to be surrendered, and that you’ve got it already figured out. I just don’t believe it.

It doesn’t work that way for me. It doesn’t work for anybody else that I know well. Sometimes people say it. They say, “Leave me alone. I’m settled.” But settled is always a process of slow death. Deep change requires that we be willing to give to Jesus the next part of our lives.

It may be a desire to get over the anger or the fear that controls too much of your life. It may be a moving-on in terms of vocation. It might be prayers for healing of body, mind or spirit. There’s so many ways that God transforms our lives, but the key is to climb and keep on climbing your Seeing Tree.

And what is our Seeing Tree? The last verse of the song says, “The BIBLE is our seeing tree; read there and you’ll see Jesus. The story is our seeing tree; listen well and you’ll find life. The Word is our Seeing Tree, God will grant us pardon. The Gospels are our Seeing Tree, showing us the way to love.”

What does deep change have to do with the Bible? Well, deep change occurs when we read the Bible in order to live; to read, not informationally but formationally, to shape our lives according to God’s purpose.

We ready in order to change, not to stuff more information into our brain cells.

We read that the Mind of Christ might be formed in us.

We read to hear again the great stories that create an intricate web of relationship between us and God.

Read spiritually, what the ancients called “Lection Divina”, Godly Reading, that enters our souls as food enters the stomach, spreads through our blood, and becomes holiness and love and wisdom. The words of scripture are energized and transformed like a digestive process into love and wisdom and holiness.

Read so as to take possession of the Bible from the under-taker scholars and from legalists who would kill the Spirit.

People of the Book.

Baptists, like the Jews, have been calling ourselves People of the Book for a couple of hundred years.

We are People of the Book when we read it again as if for the first time.

We are People of the Book, when we ingest the Bible and chew on it and savor it and devour it like a hungry lion devours its prey.

We are People of the Book when we immerse ourselves in the Bible privately and share our transformational encounter with the Bible publicly.

We are People of the Book when the next Bible story we read, and the one after that too, causes us to ask penetrating questions of ourselves and when we are open to let God’s answers to those questions change us to the core.

We are People of the Book when we do not acquiesce when the preacher or the teacher of the Bible seems satisfied with just imparting the facts.

We are people of the book. Baptists. We are people of the book and as you allow that to be true for you, and I allow it to be true for me, and we allow it to be true for our church, then deep change happens in our lives and in our church. Then, with that power and that love, we then can be a force for deep change in our neighborhood and in our city. We will have power like gasoline powers a car. We will have power to transform lives around us, including the whole neighborhood, and including the whole city. Jesus is the source of this transformational power.

So be it. Amen.

The Seeing Tree

Zacchaeus climbed a seeing tree and what he saw was Jesus.

Zacchaeus climbed a seeing tree and what he found was life.

Zacchaeus climbed a seeing tree and what he gained was pardon.

Zacchaeus climbed a seeing tree and what he felt was love.

1) They said he was a greedy man, but what he was simply empty,

They said he was a hateful man, but no one would be his friend.

They said he was a cheating man, but he was really struggling

To find his way beyond the crippling sorrow of his life.

2) If he had been a evil man who only cared for money,

He could have bought a front row seat, force could have been his way.

Instead he fumbled into a tree and made himself a sight to see.

He was just a hurting man, wounded like you and me.

3) We all need a seeing tree from which we can see Jesus.

We all need a seeing tree showing us the way to life.

We all need a seeing tree where we can gain pardon.

We all need a seeing tree where we can feel love.

4) The BIBLE is our seeing tree; read there and you’ll see Jesus.

The story is our seeing tree; listen well and we’ll find life.

The Word is our Seeing Tree, God will grant us pardon.

The Gospels are our Seeing Tree, showing us the way to love.

Ken Whitt, January 2007