
Mass readings for the Word of God Sunday (3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time):
Nehemiah 8.2-6, 8-10 Psalm 19.7-9, 14 1 Corinthians 12.12-30 Luke 1.1-4;4.14-21
I don’t often make the Old Testament reading the starting point of my reflection. Today I do because of the sense of crisis we live with, that I’ve spoken of lately. This story from the Book of Nehemiah is about a new beginning amidst the ruins of Jerusalem, and how the Word of God begins the process of regeneration.
Now, this dark mood with respect to where we are headed as a society is one that exists right across the Western world, and the process of finding a solution has profoundly divided people, and discouraged them. We can see that in the politics of the United States, the UK, Germany, France, even smaller countries like the Netherlands and Austria. With respect to Canada, where I grew up with a proud sense of national identity, that sense of pride and optimism among us has plummeted. An Angus Reid poll from last month indicates that only 34% of Canadians are “very proud to be Canadian.” When the question was asked in 1985, 78% said they were very proud – Quebec respondents being the reason it was even that low. The fall off in national pride is translating into a general lack of enthusiasm for what we might call the “Canadian Project” – the idea that Canada is here for a reason, it has a role in the world, and has things it is particularly called to do. Called by whom? God? I don’t know how most would respond, but you get the idea. Anyway, the same survey showed that only a little better than a third of Canadians under the age of 35 have a “deep emotional attachment” to Canada. For the rest, their devotion is conditional – if one has a certain standard of living, then Canada’s alright. Otherwise, the idea of Canada is met with something disturbingly close to indifference by the majority of young adults.
Now, similar observations can be made about other Western countries based on surveys and observable cultural trends. But I think the point’s made: there has been a profound psychic and spiritual break. We must ask: can what has been broken ever be repaired?
That first reading from Nehemiah concerns a broken society. Nehemiah is a Judean, a Jew; and he’s been working in the imperial court of Persia, then he’s appointed to be the governor of Judea. Now Judea, Jerusalem, all that was Israel has been incorporated into the Persian empire as a province. Now we might recall that this has happened as a result of the fall of Babylon and their empire.
Babylon conquered Judea, demolished Jerusalem and The Temple of Solomon, hauled away all the Temple treasures, but more importantly, they carried away into exile a quarter of the population, specifically the political, cultural and spiritual classes affecting what is known as social decapitation. So, to think in today’s terms with respect to the Western world, it would be as if a non-Western power, China, Russia, whatever, conquered Europe and North America, and then took all the members of congress, parliament, the national assemblies, along with the royal families and moved them to Beijing or Moscow. But they would also take all the music and film production people, the television producers, the concert organizers, and all those musicians and actors and set designers, and took them and plunked them in Siberia. With respect to spiritual leadership, well, that’s the Pope and the Cardinals, and all our bishops, and they’d put them somewhere where we could not communicate with them. If you’re a roofer, or a dental hygienist; a family doctor or a financial advisor, whatever, you’d stay. It’s just that all the national institutions would be gone, and their facilities gutted. Those who had the responsibility for maintaining our culture from which we derive our identity, would be gone. And that’s what happened to the Jews when Nebuchadnezzar came and conquered them. But he eventually died. His heirs were incompetent, and Babylon fell to the Persians. And when the Persian king took over, it had been 70 years since Jerusalem had been destroyed. He let the exiles, or more accurately the descendants of the exiles go home. And we would presume they started putting back in place all those institutions upon which a community relies. And they did, but only “sort of” because what they found on their return was a devastated landscape, Jerusalem a ruin, the Temple a wreck. No money, no effective political power, and no means of local defense (they weren’t allowed an army; maybe a small, poorly equipped militia); they tried to rebuild but faced all their old enemies, the ones we know from the stories of the Old Testament, but now with a city without walls, and a local population that, while they were still ostensibly Jews, had largely forgotten the substance of what they were as a nation. They had intermarried with non-Judeans. And I know for us today that wouldn’t seem to be so big a deal – who cares if someone of Irish descent marries someone whose ethnically Portuguese. But we’re talking here about more profound things than cuisine and folk songs, but rather religion which is the carrier of our most deeply held values. And I do believe Christian parents today are aware of that difference when a son or daughter starts a relationship with someone who doesn’t share the faith, and how one can see this changes their children, and even more profoundly the grandchildren when such spiritual matters are glossed over; how quite often the solution is to simply abandon any formal religion and reduce spirituality to “being a nice person” and celebrating secular versions of Christmas and Easter.
But the bigger problem lay with the returned exiles themselves. They were strangers in their own homeland, and they’d been affected, and corrupted by living among the Babylonians. But they try.
By the time Nehemiah comes on the scene, it’s been at least another 40 years; and while he has had the benefit of coming from a very devout family that did not forget God and the traditions, he discovers just how bad things have gotten. Not only does Jerusalem not have walls, and so the city is defenseless; the people are without what we might call spiritual walls; and now three going on four generations have passed and the nation is effectively dying. The estimates as to how many were left in Jerusalem and the surrounding towns and villages was that there were maybe 20,000 Jews left, at most (that’s the population of Dundas). So many had simply left and disappeared into the surrounding nations; their descendants were now Amorites and Egyptians, Idumeans and Syrians, not people of Judah.
So, the walls needed to be rebuilt: the city walls, but also those spiritual walls among the people. And the story in Nehemiah is about the titanic effort that was undertaken, with the help of the prophet Ezra, to do just that, and to do it quickly because their enemies, aware that the people were being spiritually reawakened, began to organize for Jerusalem’s final destruction.
But what is the starting point of all this?
It’s not drawing up blueprints for the rebuilding, its not planting fresh crops to feed the people, its not raising a local militia to defend the city; it’s listening to the long-forgotten, too long unheard, Word of God.
And the people are all gathered together, outside the remnants of one of the city gates, and the Scriptures are proclaimed, and what is left of the priestly class, the few Levites still around, they then explain to the people what they’ve heard. And then there is weeping. There’s regret. And I always thought it odd, because the calamity isn’t their fault. They are the descendants of those who had so stupidly thrown away an authentic relationship with God, and chose to be like all the other nations with their superficial religiosity and the tailoring of religion to human appetites and ambitions. Yet, they felt the shame of it; and I might think also some anger over what their ancestors had done, how the brilliance of the Kingdom of David was lost, and what was left was the rubble that surrounded them.
Ezra comforts them; with the words of the prophets, perhaps those of Isaiah, he gives them hope; and then he tells them to feast.
It’s subtle, but in this story, we have the outline of the mass: we are gathered, we hear the word of God, we pray, we acknowledge our sins, we worship (which is not saying prayers, but praying itself); and then we have the Eucharistic feast.
I must confess to a measure of anger I feel. I was born at just the right time to witness the steady decline of Canada; to watch as traditions were stripped away, stories forgotten, heroes defamed, the Christian faith libelled; the worst of our inclinations indulged, our wealth and potential squandered. The walls were pulled down in my lifetime; and I ought to have, in sadness and in anger, stomped off and disappeared like those of the lost ten tribes of Israel, but for the power of this great story.
I’m not referring to Nehemiah here, but to the other story whose preface we heard in the Gospel proclamation: what St. Luke has written to Theophilus, whose name means either “friend of God” or “loved by God.”
For what was started all those centuries ago among the ruins of Jerusalem by Nehemiah, what was promised in the preaching of Ezra, is fulfilled in the story of Christ. And through that story of salvation, I’ve come to know the many stories of the Bible, and to find in them instruction and inspiration. These calm my anger, lift my sadness, restore my hope, and leaven my soul. Such is the important work of our lectors, those who proclaim Sacred Scripture among us, whose ministry is giving to us the Word of God as inspiration such that quite apart from what I have to say in my homily, God can speak to us directly in our hearts.
Being a Christian community today is to manifest God’s loves among the spiritual ruins of a civilization that has lost its way; indeed, as I said last week, may actually be dead. Being a Catholic Church, once the foundation of what has past, we are the body of the resurrected lord in the midst of the people, and so, the means for their coming back to life.
Amen.