2018 11.18 Ezra 3:8-13 8 In the second year after their arrival at the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and Jeshua son of Jozadak made a beginning, together with the rest of their people, the priests and the Levites and all who had come to Jerusalem from the captivity. They appointed the Levites, from twenty years old and upward, to have the oversight of the work on the house of the LORD. 9 And Jeshua with his sons and his kin, and Kadmiel and his sons, Binnui and Hodaviah along with the sons of Henadad, the Levites, their sons and kin, together took charge of the workers in the house of God. 10 When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD, the priests in their vestments were stationed to praise the LORD with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, according to the directions of King David of Israel; 11 and they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the LORD, For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel. And all the people responded with a great shout when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. 12 But many of the priests and Levites and heads of families, old people who had seen the first house on its foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this house, though many shouted aloud for joy, 13 so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people s weeping, for the people shouted so loudly that the sound was heard far away. 1
His Love Endures Forever As an English major, I took a lot of literature courses in college. One of my favorites focused on the great Irish writers of the early twentieth century [SLIDE], the novelist James Joyce and the poet William Butler Yeats. Joyce is notoriously difficult to read. He writes in a kind of dream language. Images take precedence over plot and character development. Reading a Joyce novel is like looking at an impressionist painting. You can recognize shapes, but they are hazy. Rather than a story with a beginning, middle, and end, you re left with more of a mood. I wanted to like Joyce, but it was too much effort. Yeats, on the other hand, was easy to love. His poems were lyrical, poignant, and for the most part, quite short. For all those reasons I committed several of them to memory. One was titled A Drinking Song [SLIDE]: Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That s all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die. I lift the glass to my mouth, I look at you and I sigh. If you re a young, single man, that s a poem you would do well to memorize. Another favorite was titled The Realists [SLIDE]: Hope that you may understand! What can books of men that wive In a dragon-guarded land, Paintings of the dolphin-drawn 2
Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons Do, but awake a hope to live That had gone With the dragons? Unlike the first poem, this one might not impress so much on a first date, but it expresses a common theme of Yeats poetry...a melancholy longing for a past that no longer exists. The dragon-guarded land lives only in a book. The sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons pulled by dolphins are the work of an artist s imagination. To read these stories and to look upon these images will only stir a longing for something that can never be. There are no more dragons, no more sea-nymphs. Of course, Yeats is not referring to literal dragons or sea-nymphs. He s giving voice to a feeling of nostalgia [SLIDE]. Nostalgia is a yearning to return to the past, often an idealized past, a past that is sweeter in memory than it ever was in reality. It is that kind of yearning that some of the Israelites feel as they return from exile and lay the foundation for what will become the new temple. On the one hand the people celebrate. They shout for joy. They give thanks for their return to the land and for the opportunity to rebuild. But at the same time, the older among them, those who are old enough to remember the splendor of the old temple, cannot help but mourn for what they have lost. They too shout, although not with joy but with weeping. They are certain, from the moment that the first stone is laid, that the new temple will never match the glory of the old. What s gone is lost...forever. They have returned from exile to their dragon-guarded land, but they mourn the fact that there are no more dragons. The book of Ezra [SLIDE] chronicles the return of the Israelites from exile in Babylon. The setting for today s reading is shortly after the exiles have returned home. The year is 537 BC. The exile, which had lasted fifty years, is over. The people, now back 3
in their homeland, are ready to start over. Some of them were born in exile and had never set foot in Israel. They had never seen the walls of Jerusalem. They had never worshipped in the temple. That first temple had been destroyed fifty years earlier. But now, in their second year back, it was time to rebuild. For a book that bears his name, it might seem odd that no one named Ezra appears in this passage [SLIDE]. Actually, in this book that contains ten chapters, Ezra doesn t show up until chapter 7. That s because the book of Ezra is set within two different time periods. Chapters 1 to 6 are set shortly after the exiles return home, around 537 BC. These chapters focus on the return home and the rebuilding of the temple. Chapters 7 to 10, however, are set about 80 years later, in 458 BC. That is the year that Ezra, a priest and scribe, arrived from Babylon. He was commissioned by the Persian king to oversee worship at the temple, which by that time had been completed. That s all we will hear about the man Ezra. He doesn t factor into today s reading, but for the sake of context, I wanted us to have an idea of who he is and why the book bears his name, even though he appears in less than half of it. Ezra s name doesn t appear in this passage, but lots of other names do: Zerubbabel, Shealtiel, Jeshua, Jozadak, Kadmiel, Binnui, Hodaviah, and Hennadad. It s all quite a mouthful. We re not going to spend time on any of these individuals. All we need to keep in mind is that they are all either priests or Levites. That means that they served in the temple, leading or supporting the worship there. But at the moment, as things stand here in chapter 3, there is no temple. It had been destroyed by the Babylonians 50 years earlier. It needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, and that s what all of these people and many others are there to do. 4
They begin with the altar. This happens just before today s reading, in verses 1 to 7. Before they lay the foundation, the priests and the Levites first rebuild the altar for making sacrifice. Normally, when building any kind of permanent structure you begin with the foundation, but they begin with the altar. They have a reason for doing that. The people of Israel have just returned to the land. They re not yet settled. They re not organized. They fear that they may be an easy target for the surrounding nations. That s why they believe that if their first act as a community is to worship, then God will protect them. After the sacrifices are made, then they lay the foundation. This is cause for great celebration, for spectacle. The priests, wearing their ceremonial robes, blow trumpets. The Levites clang cymbals. Together they raise a holy noise. They sing, praise, and give thanks to God. They are grateful to God to be back home and to have a new start. Quoting from the Psalms they sing [SLIDE]: For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel (Ez. 3:11). Yes, it s true that God s steadfast love might have seemed less than steadfast 50 years earlier when Jerusalem was conquered and the temple destroyed. God s steadfast love might have seemed only a memory during nearly 50 years of exile in Babylon. But now the Israelites are back home. The altar has been restored. Sacrifices have been made. The foundation of the temple has been laid. Things will be just like they used to be! It s cause to sing: His steadfast love endures forever! A great shout goes up from the crowd. There is joy, joy like there hasn t been in more than a lifetime. A joy that the people never experienced the whole time that 5
they were in exile. Yet amid the shouts of joy, something else can be heard [SLIDE]: 12 But many of the priests and Levites and heads of families, old people who had seen the first house on its foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this house, though many shouted aloud for joy, 13 so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people s weeping, for the people shouted so loudly that the sound was heard far away. Amid the shouts of joy, there are also shouts of lament. Amid the cries of celebration, there is crying. There is weeping. The shouts of joy and sorrow mingle together such that they are indistinguishable. Are the people celebrating or mourning? Are they laughing or crying? Yes, they are. What is going on here? What is there to be sad about? Who is crying? Surprisingly, it s many of the priests and Levites, the very people who are leading the worship service who are crying. And not only them, but many other prominent people the heads of families, the elders of society. Basically, all the people who are old enough to remember the first temple, the temple of Solomon [SLIDE]. Now that was a temple! It was bold. It was grand. No expense was spared in building that temple. There were massive stones for the foundation that required the hand of eighty thousand stonecutters. There was polished wood made of the finest cedars and cypress from Lebanon laid floor to ceiling, all overlaid with pure gold. That was a temple that made a statement! It expressed the power and the might of the God who delivered the people from their enemies. That was a temple worthy of containing the presence of the Lord as well as the pride of the people! 6
But this new one [SLIDE]...why, you can tell from the laying of the first stone that it will be nothing more than a pale imitation of the first one...the real one...the only one. That is how the elders of Israel think of this new temple whose construction is now under way. The older Israelites have memories of the first temple. They remember how grand it was. They remember what it was like to see its mighty walls rise up from the earth, to walk through its proud gates, to gather together in its courts. Memory is powerful. Memory not only reminds us of what we ve done and where we ve been, memory forms who we are now. All our experiences, our triumphs and tragedies, live on in our memory. They remain a part of us. And the older we get, the more precious those memories become because, at a certain point, if we are fortunate to live a long life, we will have more years behind us than we have ahead of us. To use an automotive metaphor [SLIDE], there will be more years in the rear view mirror than in the windshield. From the vantage point of our senior years, with so much mileage behind us, we will live ever more so in memory. And the present can never compete with the power of memory. The present will always pale in comparison to memory. That is especially true when our present days are difficult ones, not to be enjoyed but rather endured. That is sometimes how we go through life not enjoying in a positive sense, not even existing in a neutral sense, but enduring in a negative sense. Enduring the breakdown of a marriage that is headed for divorce. Enduring the death of a close friend or family member. Enduring a life-altering disease that reminds us of our mortality. Enduring the daily stress of living in debt with seemingly no way out. Enduring the burden of living up to our parents expectations. Or maybe just enduring the disappointment of a life that hasn t turned out as we had hoped. 7
Enduring such things, it s tempting to want to live in the memory of happier days before we had to endure. We call to mind a time before the divorce, before the death, before the sickness, before the financial problems, before the unfulfilled expectations, before the disappointment. Things were better then. The days were sunnier. The future was brighter. Life was something to be enjoyed, not endured. If only we could go back to that time. I have felt it too. Today we celebrate Thanksgiving. Yes, Korean Thanksgiving was a few weeks ago, but this is the English Ministry; we follow the American calendar. Besides, Thanksgiving in Korea is not a public holiday. Stores are open. The roads and railways are not jammed with travelers returning to their hometowns. But in America Thanksgiving is the busiest travel day of the year. That s because, even more so than Christmas, Thanksgiving is a holiday that celebrates the family. Parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, aunts, uncles, and cousins all gather under one roof to eat turkey and pumpkin pie, watch football, and argue about politics and then rush to the malls first thing in the morning for the Black Friday sales. In all seriousness, I loved Thanksgiving as a child and all the way through my adolescence. It was the one day a year I would get to see my aunt and uncle and cousins who would drive down from Massachusetts. Thanksgiving was a feast not only for the taste buds but for all the senses. The kitchen filled with the aroma of the roasting turkey. Laughter echoed around the house. Seated around the dining room table we retold familiar stories that remained just as funny and endearing as always. The house was full of life. That is, until 1989. That was the year I spent Thanksgiving in New York City visiting my brother in the hospital. That year I ate Thanksgiving dinner with my parents in the hospital cafeteria. 8
I knew that Thanksgiving would be different on the Tuesday evening before the holiday. I was home from college for Thanksgiving break. I was seated on the couch in the living room when the phone rang. My father almost never answered the phone because (1) it was rare that anyone called him, and (2) he didn t like making small talk. So when the phone rang he would let it ring and ring until eventually someone else answered it. But for some reason he answered the phone that night. It was my oldest brother Donnie on the line [SLIDE]. I knew right away that something was wrong. I heard my father sigh into the phone, Oh, Donnie. It was a sigh heavy with sorrow. There was a weight of worry behind those two words. The conversation didn t last long. Donnie was calling from the hospital to tell us that he wouldn t be able to come home for Thanksgiving. He had come down with pneumonia and needed to stay in the hospital for a few days. I took the news much better than my father. Well, that s too bad, I thought, but we ll see him in a month at Christmas. I couldn t understand why my father was reacting so strongly. Sure, pneumonia was serious, but Donnie had come down with pneumonia once while in college. It ll take some time, but he ll recover. I didn t know it at the time, but when my father heard the word pneumonia he also heard behind it something much worse AIDS. We wouldn t learn the awful truth for another two years, but my father s worst fear, and all our worst fears, were eventually realized. Donnie was released from the hospital after a few more days. But over the next three years his health slowly and relentlessly deteriorated. He passed away in September 1993, nearly four years after that Thanksgiving and twenty-five years ago. In one sense it seems like a lifetime ago, and in another sense it could have been yesterday. 9
After Donnie passed away my family continued to celebrate Thanksgiving, but it was never the same because Donnie wasn t there. He wasn t there to show up at the last minute, as he always did. He wasn t there to tune the stereo to his favorite pop station and record the title of every top 40 song in his notebook, which he did without fail every week. He wasn t there to make a sarcastic joke at the dinner table. He wasn t there to be the last one to go to bed, usually no earlier than 3:00 AM. I sometimes long to go back to the time before my brother got sick [SLIDE]. Those were good days. Those were days before we had to endure his absence from our family celebrations. But I ve come to realize something since then. While my family had to endure the loss of our beloved son and brother, something else endured as well God s love endured. My brother s death did not break my family, it actually brought us closer together. That was not because we are saints. It was not because we are special. It was because God s love healed us, slowly but surely, day by day, week by week, month by month. Even now, twenty-five years later, I believe that God is still at work healing us, helping us to endure. One way that God is healing me is by teaching me that Thanksgiving is not just a holiday, it s a way of life. I ve learned that each day is cause for thanksgiving because each day is a precious gift from God. We can choose to ignore that truth. We can choose to take it for granted. We can choose to treat each day as just another day in a long series of days. Or we can choose to receive each day with gratitude. We can choose to receive this day this cold, dreary, November day with thankfulness because it is a gift from God. I ve learned to give thanks, not for my brother s death, of course, but for his life. I give thanks for each day that we shared. I give thanks that his life was not defined by his death but by the love that he gave and received. 10
Jesus died a brutal death on the cross, a death that was meant to bring shame to him, to define him as one who was cursed. But just as God s love for his people Israel endured through the shame of exile, so God s love for his Son endured even the shame of the cross. God s love endures forever. It endures not despite death but in the midst of death. God s love endures through all manner of suffering. God s love endures in the midst of our failed relationships. God s love endures in the midst of our sickness or that of our loved ones. God s love endures in the midst of financial hardship. God s love endures in the midst of unfulfilled expectations. God s love endures all things for he is good, his love endures forever. That is cause for thanksgiving. 11