B-Sides of the Old Testament: Nehemiah

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Two out of three ain’t bad.

Last week, I talked about one of the most famous B-side books of the Old Testament: Leviticus, a book filled with laws and commandments from God. And the main point that I was trying to make is that Jesus came not to destroy that law, but to fulfill it, teaching and preaching and healing from what I called the big picture of the Torah: Ordered time. Ordered space. And ordered community. I suggested that these were the big-picture commands that the people received, standing in the shadow of the Mountain of God.

Then, the next thousand years happened. By the time we get to today’s B-side book, a lot has taken place. In broad strokes, the people of God wandered in the wilderness, then settled in the promised land to build a nation, then turned that nation into a kingdom with a monarchy, then took part in a civil war that divided that kingdom into two parts, then one half of the kingdom was destroyed by the invading Assyrian Empire, then the other part was destroyed by the Babylonian Empire, and then finally God’s people stumbled their way back into the promised land to pick up the pieces. And all of this took around 800–1000 years, depending on your interpretation of Biblical chronology.

There are two books in the Old Testament that tell the story of that “stumbling back” part. The books called Ezra and Nehemiah together tell the story of, well, Ezra and Nehemiah, as well as a guy named Zerubbabel who for some inexplicable reason doesn’t get a book named after him. Now, it is an important clarification that the book Ezra isn’t only about Ezra and the book of Nehemiah only about Nehemiah. Instead, these two books together tell the story of these three leaders, each with a different priority. Zerubbabel was the first to return from the Babylonian Exile, and his main goal was to restore the Temple and the altar, so that the people would have a place to worship. Ezra came next, with a goal to reclaim the Levitical laws of the Torah and return people to the practice of those laws. Nehemiah was the third, and he recognized that none of the other stuff would survive if someone didn’t build a defensive wall around the whole thing, to protect them from constant invasions. So, over the course of these two books, we read of these three leaders, and many, many more, returning from the chaos and disorder of the Exile, to figure out what happens next…

So, to say it again, two out of three ain’t bad. The first work of these men was to re-orient themselves around the ordered space of the Temple. They saw value in restoring that Temple and claiming their identity around it. Just like Leviticus told the people to camp in a way that oriented them toward the tabernacle, these leaders knew that they needed a visible Temple to re-orient themselves toward God. So, Zerubbabel built the Temple and Nehemiah the wall to protect it. Check! Second, they knew that they needed to re-orient themselves around ordered time. Ezra and others restored the priesthood so that they could reclaim the importance of weekly sabbath practice and annual festivals and feasts. Last week, I read in Leviticus about the Feast of Booths, or Tabernacles, a Fall Festival that reminds them of when they were homeless in the Exodus. Right before the passage I read this morning, Chapter 8 narrates the re-institution of that festival. It is timely, is it not, for a people who finds themselves once again homeless, returning from in the disorder of the Exile. So, Ezra and Nehemiah and the people celebrated the Feast of Booths again, according to what the law told them to do, re-orienting themselves toward an ordered time. Check! So, two out of three ain’t bad….

…but it ain’t good either. What is missing? Ordered community. In Leviticus, that ordered community theme includes how to reintegrate the outsider back into gathered people. Those who are poor…leave food for them to glean along the edges of the fields to provide for their families. Those who are trapped by debt…cancel those debts to give them a new start. Those who are widowed or orphaned…prioritize them and their needs. Those who are inflicted with diseases…here is worship practice that allows them to return into the community of worship. Those who are foreigners or strangers or immigrants in the land…

Leviticus 19.33–34

When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the native-born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

Now, these books tell us that Ezra read this—and all of the Torah, probably Genesis through Deuteronomy—out loud, in front of the whole assembled nation. So, they knew that this was in there. And yet, the end of Ezra and the end of Nehemiah tell one of the most painful stories in Scripture. Many of the men had married women who were aliens in the land…those who were outside of the faith of the Israelites. Had started families with them. Had children with them. But in the quest for holiness and purity, both Ezra and Nehemiah proclaimed that this was now considered heresy, and ordered that these women and children be sent out beyond the city gates. There they would be defenseless, in danger of attack, theft, rape, enslavement. In Ezra 9–10 and Nehemiah 13, we read lists of men who were punished for these interracial marriages. Nehemiah himself pulled out the hair and beards of these men, forcing them to recant, and send away their families, to likely death.

Two out of three ain’t enough. Ordered time and ordered space are a start, but when the end of the book looks like destruction of marriages and families, and blatant racism, and literal child sacrifice to make a theological point, something is missing. Jesus said as much, when he came to insist that he was there to fulfill the original intent of these laws. Look how he responded when outsiders came to him: lepers, Roman centurions, Samaritans, tax collectors, prostitutes, the poor, the sick…children. “Let them come to me,” he roared. “For they are the kingdom.” Perhaps he was thinking of Ezra and Nehemiah and their competing message: “send the children back outside of the walls. Separate the children from their parents. We don’t care about the children or their mothers.”

Sometimes, we miss the forest for the trees. We can show up to church once a week and recognize sabbath in our weekly and annual rhythms. We can build and renovate and protect this space in an ordered and worshipful way. But if we willingly choose disordered community over the holy and ordered community that God commanded, we have missed the point. There is a cycle that takes place throughout the Old Testament.

• It begins, like it did on Sinai, with God commanding this ordered community. Care for neighbor. Vulnerable. Marginalized. Step one.

• Then step two. God’s people say, “God, we don’t want to do that.” They disobey. They choose disobedience of God’s commands. They choose disorder. They choose greed or violence or rejection of neighbor…or all of the above.

• Inevitably comes step three. That disobedience sows disorder and destruction within the community, and they find themselves desperate and in need of salvation…

• So, step four, so they cry out to God, “We are so sorry and we won’t ever do that again and would you please come to save us, like right now?!?!?”

This cycle happens over and over again to the people of God. Old Testament. New Testament. The history of the Church. Even today. Prophets warned that we were going down this path, with the rhetoric in this country around immigrants in this country. Blatant disregard for our neighbors. Rejection of human decency. Dehumanization of anyone different than me as the enemy. But we took that path anyway. And it destroyed community, and relationship, and lives. Just this week, there was a big Associated Press article about people, especially in rural communities, who championed anti-immigration rhetoric and policy within the last couple of years. But they have continued around the circle, to realizing what that meant. “I didn’t think that meant all of those hard-working farmers that kept my farm afloat and those meat-packing plant workers that kept our community afloat. Or my sweet neighbor. Or my kids’ lunch lady that they loved so much, who was taken out in chains, never to be seen again.” Step three in spades. And now, according to the article, there is regret, and confession, and realization of the mistakes that they made. They have arrived at step four.

Which brings us back to Ezra and Nehemiah. It is clear that they didn’t get it all right, but they didn’t get it all wrong, either. Nehemiah 9.1–38 records a long prayer of confession that replays the whole cycle. God had told them how to live in ordered community; they had disobeyed that order; their disobedience brought disorder to their community. Which brings them to perhaps the most important part: Ezra drills down on step four. He knows that there is power in acknowledging and confessing the brokenness of their sinfulness. Ezra recounts the story of that brokenness:

• They ignored the commandments as soon as they got them, including creating an idol of a golden calf that demonstrated their need for earthly power over God’s power.

• They ignored the prophets who tried to warn them of their disobedience, even killing them rather than doing the hard work of obeying God.

• They put their trust in kings and religious leaders who were greedy and disobedient and followed the ways of violence inspired by the Empires surrounding them.

• And, finally—this is the most important shift—Ezra moves from “they” to “we.” For “here we are in great distress, for we have acted wickedly.” Their story of failure is our story of failure. We cannot separate the two.

Let me suggest that this confession is part of the good news of Ezra and Nehemiah. For as Ezra offers this prayer, in a public and shared and corporate way, he acknowledges that their present need is connected to their present disobedience. We tend not to get Step 4 right, because we are caught up in the blame game. If you watch the news and your only response is “they are doing it all wrong,” I would invite you to read these two chapters in their fullness. Until we get this confession piece right, we aren’t going to move forward.

You have heard me include in worship before what is sometimes called a “land acknowledgement,” declaring that the land that we worship upon was originally that of the Osage, and the Kaw, and the Kickapoo, and the Oceti Saquowin indigenous tribes. When we do this, we acknowledge that we stand on this land as beneficiaries of a history of violence. Language such as this makes people feel uncomfortable, even angry. We are basically individualists who think “Well, I never moved anyone off their land, so I shouldn’t need to apologize to anyone.” But where does that get us? The casualties of a nation that was founded and rooted in racism, again and again rearing its ugly head. And because we are too short-sighted to recognize that we benefit from that violence, or too fragile to think that we need to confess for anything, here we are again. But Ezra and Nehemiah got that part right. Their prayer of confession literally said that we have participated in that which is broken in this world. Until you get there, you are never leaving Step 3. And until you get there, you will never get to Step 5.

There is a part of the cycle missing, and some might argue it is the most important part. After teaching, and disobedience, and destruction and confession…comes forgiveness. Every single time. The amazing part of the story of the Bible is not that we are going to screw up. That is a foregone conclusion. Even while Ezra and Nehemiah are confessing their failure to obey the Levitical laws, they are preparing to disobey some more. That is just the way of humanity. But the good good news…the good-est good news of the cycle, is that God knows it’s coming, and forgives us anyway.

That is part of Ezra’s prayer, too. If you go back and read those 38 verses, you’ll see the whole cycle over and over again. And you will see, with 100 percent clarity, that the hero of the story isn’t Ezra or Nehemiah or even Moses or Abraham. It’s God:

• “You are the Lord, you alone; you have made heaven, the heaven of heavens…

• “You are the Lord, the God who chose Abram…

• “And you saw the distress of our ancestors in Egypt and heard their cry at the Red Sea. You performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh…

• “you led them by day with a pillar of cloud and by night with a pillar of fire…

• “You came down also upon Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them right ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments…

• “you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and you did not forsake them…

• “you gave them kingdoms and peoples and allotted to them every corner…

• “in the time of their suffering they cried out to you, and you heard them from heaven, and according to your great mercies you gave them saviors who saved them from the hands of their enemies…

• “in your great mercies you did not make an end of them or forsake them, for you are a gracious and merciful God.

That is the story of stories. And even when Ezra and Nehemiah didn’t get it right, they at least knew that God was a God of forgiveness and mercy. Beloved siblings in Christ, may you remember that this is our story, too. When we think we have all the answers. When we think we are too good to acknowledge our own brokenness. When we fail to confess or even understand our need for confession, here is the good news. This is the God that we worship, and that God is already waiting with a wheelbarrow full of forgiveness. Two out of three ain’t enough. But our God sure is.