Texts: Nehemiah 8:2 4a, 5 6, 8 10; Luke 1:1 4; 4:14 21 Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C 24 January 2016 Rev. Paul R Pluth, JCL When I was in school in Washington DC, I went to the inauguration of a President. I got a ticket from my congressman, for the area all the way across the fountain from the Capitol, with no seats but it was a ticket. On a cold, wet January day I, and thousands of other people, stood for hours watching tiny people far off on the steps of the Capitol. Why did we do that? To experience something that defines us as an American people namely, the peaceful transition of power, even after a very contentious election. That s exactly what is happening in that glorious story from Nehemiah that is our First Reading: the Jewish people, the Jewish nation, gathers together to stand for hours to experience something that defines them as a people, something that gives them life as a people. 550 years before Jesus was born over 2500 years ago Judea (modern-day Israel) had been conquered by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, modern-day Iraq, and the Jewish people had been taken as slaves to Iraq. The city of Jerusalem had been turned into a ghost town, houses and business abandoned, and the troops of King Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed the Temple in the Jerusalem, which was even more than the center of Jewish religious life. The Jews knew they were God s chosen people, that Jerusalem was a holy city, and that the Temple was where everything that maintained their special relationship with God took place. In destroying the Temple, the Babylonians ripped the heart out of the Jewish people. In the 70 years of exile in Iraq that followed, the teachings and practices of Judaism, and the Jewish Bible, were forgotten or corrupted. For us, it would be as if, for 70 years, every church was closed, priests were banned, there were no Masses and no Bibles, and St
Peter s Basilica was blown up. But then Persia today called Iran conquers Babylon, in an early Iran-Iraq war, and King Cyrus of Persia, generous in victory, allows the Jews to go home, to rebuild their nation, rebuild their city, rebuild their culture and their religion. For 100 years this rebuilding process goes on, in fits and starts, until King Arataxerxes of Persia decides it must be completed; the King appoints his servant, Nehemiah, to be governor of the province of Judea and to finish rebuilding the city wall around Jerusalem, and the Persian king appoints Ezra, the scribe, to oversee the rebuilding of the Temple and the restoration of the Jewish faith. Finally, the work is finished: the Temple is rebuilt in Jerusalem, the whole order of priests and religious ceremonies are re-established, the city wall of Jerusalem is rebuilt, to make the city safe, and through the work of one man, Ezra, through Ezra, the Jewish Scriptures, the Bible of their time, God s word to his people, are restudied and prepared to be taught to the Jewish people once again. Which brings us to the events of today s reading. With all these things accomplished, Ezra builds a wooden platform, like this pulpit, the people gather in the large open space, because even though the Temple has been rebuilt there really aren t many houses, and from that pulpit for 7 days Ezra reads to them from the book of the law, which was God s word, the Scriptures, the first 5 books of our Old Testament, and Ezra interprets that word Ezra preaches. The Jews were excited to hear it, and stayed there 7 days to listen to it, and built little booths to sit in while they listened, and afterwards they threw a big party, because they knew this was the word that gave them life and made them God s people. And Jews still celebrate this event today, 2,500 years later, with their feast of
Succoth, the feast of booths. It would be, for us, as if we were starting from ground zero, as if we had no churches at all, and we had to rely upon the memories of the oldest people we knew, who were the last people to have actually seen a church, to know how to build one and to know what should go in it. It would be as if we had no priests, and we had to start all over, deciding who should be priests, and what they were to do. Imagine we had forgotten about Christmas and Easter, Pentecost and sacraments, had forgotten almost everything about the events of our faith, and someone had to rediscover the Bible, restudy God s word, and not only read it to us but also teach it to us in effect, preach God s word to us as if it we were hearing it for the first time. That is what Ezra s job is: to give back to the Jewish people the word of God that had been lost to them. What Ezra reads from is called the book of the law in our reading, but it s really the book of God s dealings with them, God s message to them, and they were so excited to hear it because they knew that it was the word that gave them life, that gave meaning to and made sense of their lives, that made them who they were: God s children, God s people. That s why the Jews were willing to stand there for hours, and stay there for days, listening to Ezra reading and explaining the Bible. I know we don t look forward to the reading of the Bible at Mass, and the preaching of the homily, with the same kind of excitement and attention the Jews gave Ezra even though, like the Jews, these Bible readings are the essential story that defines us as a people. The old, old story that there is a God who loves us so much, that this God goes looking for us when we run away, that this God has sent and keeps sending his Son, Jesus Christ, to find us and walk with us and bring us home, again and again until there s no longer any place to run away from
God. That s the That s the mercy of God, the mercy we are celebrating during this Jubilee Year of Mercy proclaimed by Pope Francis. At first Ezra s wept when they heard God s word read, because they heard it as a word telling them all they had forgotten, a word telling them where they had failed, where they had gone wrong. But Ezra is a great preacher: he says Don t be sad, don t cry. Eat rich foods and drink sweet wine, and share with those who had nothing prepared, because rejoicing in the Lord must be strength. Ezra calls us back to the good news that the Bible is: don t get fixated on listening for the word of judgment of how you and I have failed; instead listen for the promise, listen for the story of how God never fails us. When Jesus was called up in his hometown synagogue to read from the Bible, in our Gospel today Jesus read the promise from the prophet Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year of the Lord s favor a year of the Lord s mercy, just like the Jubilee Year of Mercy we are in. There was not a single word of judgment or judgment in what Jesus read out to the people in the synagogue, only mercy and promise. And when Jesus finished, he told his listeners, Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing, today these promises from the Bible have come true right before your eyes because Jesus, who accomplishes all God s promises for us, was standing right
before them. And today, we still can say, Today these Bible promises have been fulfilled in our hearing, because Jesus, the Living, Risen and Ascended Lord, is here today among us, as the accomplisher of all God s promises to us, reminding us that everything we experience today in this worship is the joy of God s mercy a mercy we are to share with others just as Ezra told the Jews to share their feast with those who had nothing, so that everyone can experience the joy and mercy of the Lord.