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Rector's Reflection
3rd Sunday after the Epiphany, C
January 24, 2010
There are all sorts of things upon which to reflect in the readings for today... and I had
already reflected on one of those things, but the Nehemiah reading wouldn't leave me alone.
Nehemiah isn't a book we dwell on (not that we shouldn't—there's just so much in the Old
Testament that we can't linger any one place for too long). Anyway, during the exile Nehemiah
had been working as the cupbearer to King Artaxerxes. When Nehemiah heard that Jerusalem
was in ruins, he became depressed—which was very uncharacteristic of the usually chipper
Nehemiah, so the king released him to go home to rebuild. Having finished the restoration, today
we join Nehemiah and Ezra as they introduce the people to worship as God had intended it for
his chosen people.
This piece of the book of Nehemiah is a bit unusual because, while there are lots of
examples in Scripture about how the worship of God should take place, rarely do we see, as we
see here, how it actually does take place. It's a great history lesson on a variety of levels, but I
think it's an even greater reminder to us about the nature and function of worship, right here and
right now.
Nehemiah reminds us that worship is something that the people of God do together. "All
the people gathered together into the square before the Water Gate..." In these eight verses, all appears nine times. Nehemiah and Ezra wouldn't have known what to do with worship in
private. Paul talks about us being the body of Christ and it seems to me that Paul expected the
whole body to join in worship... not disembodied, independent parts doing their own thing!
The next thing Nehemiah reminds us is that in worship we ought to know that we have
entered the presence of the living God. The people didn't just ask Ezra to speak about God, they
asked him to speak the Word of God. Likewise, God is not just the object of our worship, God is
also the subject. There are all sorts of programs and strategies out there designed to make our
worship more friendly and more representative of God's immanent grace, but we miss a whole
piece of the God story if we fail to acknowledge and to speak of the awesomeness, the
omnipotence... the frightful mystery of a God whom we serve—not a God who serves us.
Annie Dillard describes what worship in our church might look like if we approached it
with a Nehemiah 8 methodology: "Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we
so blithely invoke?... Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares [and] lash us to our
pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense..."
Thirdly, worship in Nehemiah centers on the Word. I lament a trend I see in some places
that, in an attempt to be "seeker-friendly" and to reach a "targeted audience," the Word
sometimes runs the risk of getting dumbed down lest it give offense. Yes, it is the Church's task
and the preacher's task to make the Word understandable. It is not, however, the task of either to
make it platitudinous.
Today's passage ends with the people weeping... why, I'm not sure, but it may have
something to do with a transformative experience they have just had in the presence of Almighty
God. That's what worship does... or at least is supposed to do. Sunday worship isn't meant to be
a weekly visit to a God museum; it is meant to be an encounter with the living God who makes a
difference in our lives so that we can go out and make a difference in God's world.
Susan+
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