Where We Start

I contributed this week’s ‘Word for the Week’, a weekly email service run by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

The builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD… With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the LORD: ‘He is good; his love towards Israel endures for ever.’ And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy.

Ezra 3:10–12

As moments in history go, this one was significant – unprecedented, even.

At long last, things were beginning to open up. New circumstances. New possibilities. Inevitably, there’d be risks involved. The experience had been draining. People would need space for lament and confession, for reconnection and reconstruction. There’d be some delayed grief going forwards. But none of that could detract from the fact that change was in the air.

Sound familiar?

It was 539 BC.

Persia had taken over from Babylon on the world stage. A new regime with new ideas. Cyrus, whose heart had been moved by the Lord, allowed captive peoples to go back to their own lands.

So it is that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell of the building projects – the temple and the walls of Jerusalem – that take place after God’s people return from exile. No less real, and no less hard graft, is the rebuilding of the people themselves – in relationship with God and each other. But at the heart of the restoration, that which comes first, is worship.

It’s where true restoration begins. And that’s because of who God is: ‘he is good; his love towards Israel endures for ever.’

The account is realistic enough about the conflicting emotions, the opposition they’d face, the delays involved (it would be another 20 years before the temple was finally rebuilt). Even so, the affirmation of God’s character and covenant commitment pave the way for a new start. Hope has been rekindled, faith has been stoked, memories have been stirred, markers of identity have been reinstated, promises have been reaffirmed, God has been praised.

As new beginnings go, it’s a great place to start.

For all the differences between their situation and ours, the need for worship is no less significant today than it was then. Not the sort of worship which provides a momentary retreat from the world, but worship that shapes us for life in the world, which paves the way for renewed witness on our frontlines.

Yes, as we head into this new season, there’ll be mixed emotions. Like God’s people of old, we shouldn’t be surprised if joyful happiness is tinged with regretful disappointment. But God is present with us and calls us to see his bigger purpose, to celebrate who he is and what he has done, and to be empowered to be his people in and for the world.

Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible (24/50) – The Reality of Life After Exile

‘Word for the Week: Whole Life, Whole Bible’, from London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, is a series of fifty emails designed to look at the main milestones of the biblical story, seeking to show how whole-life discipleship is woven through Scripture as a whole, from beginning to end. Here is the twenty-fourth of the fifty emails, this one written by Helen Parry.

When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dreamed.
Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
‘The LORD has done great things for them.’
The LORD has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy.
Psalm 126:1-3

‘The Return’ is one of the great themes of history and of literature. And none more so than the return of the Israelites to Jerusalem after seventy years in captivity. But it was only when Babylon was superseded by Persia that the time of release finally came.

Cyrus was an enlightened ruler, who followed a policy of ‘multiculturalism’ throughout his empire. Prompted by God, he proclaimed the release of as many Jews as wished to go, to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. Unlike many other ‘returns’ – of refugees or exiles, whose first concern is to find their families and homes and retrieve their possessions – this first return was focused on the temple.

The Jewish people’s relationship with God was intrinsic to their identity. It was expressed in terms of place – the land, the city, the temple. The land was lost and the buildings destroyed, but when the time came for the return the first opportunity that was granted to them was to reinstate the worship of God at the centre of their corporate life.

Against opposition, the temple was completed in twenty years amid great rejoicing, but it wasn’t until sixty years later that Ezra, ‘a teacher well versed in the Law of Moses’, led a further wave of immigration. Once again, the emphasis was on the temple and its worship, but Ezra was given administrative and disciplinary authority as well.

The walls and gates of the city, however, were still in ruins, and it fell to Nehemiah, a decade or so later, to organise the rebuilding. Like Ezra, Nehemiah had the blessing and concrete help of the Persian king. Both Ezra and Nehemiah were conscious of the ‘good hand of the Lord’ over all their plans and actions. But what of the people?

They, too, entered fully into the vision of their leaders. They flung themselves wholeheartedly into the building projects. The walls were finished, houses rebuilt, towns resettled. But rather than settling back into a purely material way of life, they never lost sight of the Lord.

When all the work was finished they asked Ezra to bring out the Book of the Law of the Lord, and as they listened, understood and responded to it, they recognised that the restoration of their community rested on the restoration of their relationship with God.

Might this be a recipe for the restoration of health to our own society today?

Helen Parry

For further reflection and action:

1. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah show how the restoration of God’s people involves ‘practical’ matters (like rebuilding the broken Dung Gate in the city wall) as well as ‘spiritual’ matters (like confessing sin). And it deals with both these things in a way that suggests that there’s actually not much difference between what we sometimes think of as the ‘practical’ and what we think of as the ‘spiritual’. What is your equivalent of ‘rebuilding the broken Dung Gate’ today, and how will you serve God through it?

2. How might the church take the lead in challenging the ‘sacred-secular’ divide in society day?

3. For further reflection on this period in the history of God’s people, focusing on Nehemiah 8, see the article by Antony Billington – ‘The Word of God and the People of God’ – available online here.

Ezra-Nehemiah

Ezra and Nehemiah tell the story of how God restored his broken people after they came back home from their exile to Babylon.

Ezra 9:9 sums up the major theme of these books: ‘Though we are slaves, our God has not deserted us in our bondage. He has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia: He has granted us new life to rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins, and he has given us a wall of protection in Judah and Jerusalem.’

1. One Book
Although Ezra and Nehemiah are separated in our English Bibles, they were originally written as one long work, and are best read as one book. They also contain different ‘forms’ of literature – some personal memoirs, some lists, some family trees, some letters – but they’re one book and they tell one story.

2. Real Events
Ezra and Nehemiah tell of real events. A number of times, they record dates which we can check out with reasonable accuracy. Ezra begins in 539 BC, and Nehemiah ends in 433, about 100 years later.

After Jerusalem is torn down, about fifty years go by, Babylon slowly crumbles, and Persia takes over on the world scene (see 2 Chronicles 36:22-23; cf. Ezra 1:1), with Cyrus allowing subjugated peoples to return home.

Ezra 1-6 tells of a first wave of exiles who return and eventually rebuild the temple (in 516). More than fifty years go by (during which the events which are described in the book of Esther happen back in Persia) before Ezra the scribe comes on the scene, in 458 (not appearing until chapter 7 of the book which has his name on the cover). Then about twelve years later, in 445, Nehemiah comes from Persia to rebuild the walls of the city. The last date in Nehemiah is 433, bringing us pretty close to the end of the Old Testament period.

3. Restored People
Ezra and Nehemiah tell the story of a restored people. The books are sometimes used to illustrate lessons about leadership or building projects; and there may be ways in which they are models of leadership for us, in the priorities they set, and in how they go about things. But they have much more to tell us about the factors involved in the restoration of all of God’s people.

There are different dimensions to restoration. Ezra chapters 1-6 focus on the restored temple. But bricks and mortar are not enough, so in chapters 7-10 we see the people being brought under a restored rule. That brings us to the first part of Nehemiah, with its interest again in bricks and mortar: restoring the walls of the city, in the first seven chapters. And then, once again, the people can build a wall around their city, but they also need to build a wall around their lives: the new city requires a new society.

Hence:

The new temple (Ezra 1-6)
• Return of the exiles (Ezra 1-2)
• Rebuilding of the temple (Ezra 3-6)

The new rule (Ezra 7-10)
• Responsibility of the scribe (Ezra 7-8)
• Reformation of the people (Ezra 9-10)

The new city (Nehemiah 1-7)
• Resolve of the governor (Nehemiah 1-2)
• Reconstruction of the walls (Nehemiah 3-7)

The new society (Nehemiah 7-13)
• Renewal of the covenant (Nehemiah 8-10)
• Restoration of the nation (Nehemiah 11-13)

4. Sovereign God
Ezra and Nehemiah teach us that God is sovereign. While they were in exile, they were promised restoration: Jeremiah spoke about God making a new covenant with the people; Ezekiel had a vision of dry bones coming to life. But it would be God who would do it. He wants to do it because he is a faithful God, a merciful God, a covenant-keeping God. And he can do it because he is a sovereign God.

Matthew Levering on Ezra and Nehemiah

Matthew Levering, Ezra & Nehemiah, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007).

Matthew Levering contributes the volume on Ezra and Nehemiah to the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, a series self-consciously devoted to theological reflection on the biblical text, written with ‘the conviction that dogma clarifies rather than obscures’ (‘Series Preface’, 13), and which has turned to theologians rather than biblical scholars, ‘chosen because of their knowledge of and expertise in using the Christian doctrinal tradition’ (‘Series Preface’, 14).

Levering hopes to give ‘a sense of the narrative flow’ of Ezra and Nehemiah, but notes that the commentary ‘makes no claim to be a historical or literary study of the books’ (21). The three distinguishing features of his commentary are:

(1) to employ the template of ‘holy people and holy land’ in reading Ezra-Nehemiah. This picks up an earlier co-written study: Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering, Holy People, Holy Land: A Theological Introduction to the Bible (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2005 – a very helpful volume.

(2) to read Ezra-Nehemiah in the light of other canonical books, and

(3) to work with a view of history seen not merely as the linear progression of time, but as ‘the non-chronological relationships through which past, present, and future human beings share in different ways in the same realities’, such that ‘the story of Ezra and Nehemiah becomes our story even while remaining their story’ (23). This notion of participating in the history of Israel and the church receives extended treatment in his Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008) – a hefty read, it has to be said.

Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart on Ezra-Nehemiah

Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible Book by Book: A Guided Tour (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 113:

‘Ezra-Nehemiah advances the biblical story by describing how the necessary reforms in Jerusalem were set in motion, which were later to serve as the basis for the Judaism out of which Jesus and the early church emerge.’