God’s Steadfast Love Endures Forever
Advent 3 – December 15,
2019
“Rebuilding the Temple”
Recent years, many
I have known who have downsized and moved into new homes – and yet near enough
to old homes (where they’d lived for decades) to see what new owners were doing
· And lamenting, worrying,
about what the new owners would do to the houses they had spent so much time
and love and care and had gotten it to be what they wanted it to be – and the new
owners have the nerve to come in and change things!
· New owners glad and
grateful to create things anew, to make the place their own
· And former owners are in
mourning for what once was and for the changes that have come
Ezra finds the people
of Israel returning from exile facing a similar scenario
· (not even mentioning the
people who have been in Israel the whole time – the ones too poor, without
enough status to warrant being carried off into exile into Babylon)
· But just the ones who have
come back, with joy and excitement and sense of mission when King Cyrus of
Persia overtook Babylon and had a different way of managing conquered peoples –
sending them back to their lands and allowing them to practice their own
religions
· Sending them back with
blessing – and with riches – and with holy items from the former temple that
King Nebuchadnezzer of Babylon had confiscated
· And they return and
immediately get to work
o They build the altar on
the former foundations of Solomon’s temple and begin the life of cultic worship
again – offering burnt offerings to the Lord
o And starting to rebuild
the temple that was razed when the Babylonians finally came in and conquered
the city of Jerusalem – seeking to restore it to former glory
· And oh, when the builders
laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests come in their
vestments and with trumpets, and there’s a crew with cymbals (following the
instructions of King David from the true Glory Days of the kingdom of Israel) –
and there’s singing and praising and giving thanks to the Lord – and the people
shout because the work has begun and they are imagining and dreaming about a
new future
· … and at the very same
time, “many of the priests and Levites and heads of families, old people who
had seen the first house (temple) on its foundations, wept with a loud voice
when they saw this house, though many
shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of
the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping…”
In the same moment when the younger folks who had
been born in Babylon and had never seen the first temple are rejoicing and
celebrating that they are starting anew in their ancestral home, the older
generations who could remember what it had been like before are in tears,
weeping and crying – because what is starting anew is nothing like what they
remember and they long for those good old, glory days
What do we do when
places and traditions that hold such deep meaning are changed? When some
rejoice and some weep, so that we can’t even distinguish between the sound of
the 2?
· There is a challenge in
being the church in the 21st century in America
· Because our glory days are
long past us, right?
o We remember when Sunday
school was bursting at the seams
o And when worship
attendance was so much more than it is now
· Not unique to CTV by any
stretch
· American Christianity has
undergone great transitions and changes in past decades
o From the time when the
church was the center of social and community life and everything kind of
revolved around the Christian calendar
o And it doesn’t remotely
work that way anymore
· And there is a time for
mourning that, perhaps, for remembering a different time and wishing for the
glory of those former days
· And yet, at the same time,
as H. George Anderson, former presiding bishop of the ELCA, once wrote in a
book of the same title: It is a good time to be the church
o There is cause for
rejoicing at the laying of new foundations on the traditions and history that
we come from
o Being the church in 21st
century America comes with challenge – and also opportunity
§ Because people who come to
church now are there because it really matters – because they are seeking
something different, something meaningful, something lasting in their lives
· It doesn’t always look the
same as it did for previous generations
o And yet, there is the
praising of God, and giving thanks, and blowing trumpets as people come to know
and encounter and worship the living God
And yet, even in
the midst of this contradiction of weeping and rejoicing that is so intertwined
that sometimes we can’t distinguish between the 2, the good news is what we are
reminded of in the singing of the people
as the celebrate the laying of the new foundation: “For [God] is good, for
[God’s] steadfast love endures forever…”
· Even in the joy and sorrow
and excitement and upheaval and anticipation and uncertainty of this moment of
returning to Jerusalem and beginning again to rebuild their lives and the temple, as people rejoice and weep in the same breath –
God’s love for the people of Israel is unchanged
· God’s promise to bring
them home is fulfilled!
· Even as the Jews in this
time are trying to figure out what it will look like to live into this new
future that God is creating, even as some look back to the glory days of the
past with longing – what NEVER changes is the love of God that has sustained
them and carried them through their entire history
o This history we’ve heard
pieces and parts of since September – the calling of Abraham and Moses, the exodus
from slavery into freedom, the God who shows up for Ruth and Naomi, the God who
never, ever abandons or gives up on the people, no matter how far they go
astray
o This God will be with them
as they forge a new life in an old, yet unfamiliar place, as they rebuild the
temple
· And God promises the same
for us – that no matter what changes come, no matter how someone else may
change the house we loved so long in order to make it their own, God’s
steadfast love endures forever
· This is the gift and the challenge
of Advent – that, living in this present moment, sometimes celebrating and
missing the past, we look forward to what God promises is yet to come – the
kingdom that has begun in Jesus, but is not quite yet fulfilled
· But God has never yet not fulfilled one of God’s promises to
God’s people
· And so even when we cannot
quite see the future that has changed so much from the past we loved, we cling
tight to God, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, for God’s steadfast love
endures forever.
· Amen.
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