Sermon 4th May 2014

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker,  preaches - the reading is from Ezra.

May-Day Bank Holiday weekend definitely requires a light-hearted, worker-centred start that also fits the launching of a new series. So here’s a quick straw-poll that’s just for fun (mostly!)

Here’s how this one works: I’m going to say a number of people’s names. Put your hand up if you know something about that person; and keep it up as long as you keep knowing about each name (or put it back up when you do know again). And don’t be surprised if you do know lots of them: that’s more or less the point of this exercise! So, here we go, then: Fidel Castro; Winston Churchill; Albert Einstein; Sigmund Freud; Mahatma Ghandi; Mikhail Gorbachev; Che Guevara; Adolf Hitler; John F Kennedy; Martin Luther King; Nelson Mandela; Chairman Mao; Karl Marx; Mother Teresa; Emmeline Pankhurst; Ronald Regan; Joseph Stalin; Margaret Thatcher; Desmond Tutu; Queen Victoria; Malcolm X; and, finally, before your arms tire out: Ezra!

OK so the last name is the odd one out; but mostly in the sense that all the others were from the 20^th Century. Most of us recognised most of those names because these are the people who have significantly shaped the world as we know it today. That may have been a positive or a negative shaping; but our lives wouldn’t be as they are if any of these people hadn’t existed. And we know that, because we recognise these names; and between us we could probably say rather a lot about each of them, I reckon – with the exception of Ezra! But of course the aim is that by the end of today we will all know plenty about him; and why he truly belongs on list like this. But for now most of you probably just have to trust me on that.

Today we are beginning a new series, on at least some of the Bible characters who together are known as the Minor Prophets. In most lists there are 12 Minor Prophets, and they are the last 12 books of the Old Testament. So neither Ezra nor Nehemiah are included on those lists – but they are in our series. In fact, for centuries this week’s main focus (Ezra), and next’s (Nehemiah), were combined in one book; so it all risks getting bit confusing. You will hopefully understand, then, why I need to sound something like a lecturer today. There is lots of factual information that we need to grasp; and my guess is that most of us don’t have those facts in our minds already.

Apologies if that’s not true of you, and do say so afterwards. Assuming that most of us do have significant information gap, though, where to begin is the key question. It might be most helpful to start with why the preaching group thought that this would be a good series for us to do. It’s not ‘just’ that we tend to focus our preaching on the New Testament – though that’s certainly true to say. It’s quite right too that we should give most attention to God’s work in and through His Son. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection were literally eternity-changing events. If that list of significant names had to be restricted to one entry, it would surely only have Jesus on. But of course Jesus didn’t appear in an historical, or spiritual, vacuum. Centuries went into God’s preparation of the world for the ministry of His Son; and that is the story which is told in what we know as the Old Testament.

Of course there’s more to the Old Testament than that. The people – and peoples – who appear in it were encountering God in their present. Yes, some of them became aware that God was in the process of doing something far bigger that what they could see or understand. Some of them spoke, or wrote, about that; but even then they didn’t ‘get’ it – not least because they couldn’t, until God did it for real. In any case, their focus very understandably, was mostly on what God was doing with and through their own immediate circumstance. They, like us, were most interested in what God was up to in what was happening in their life and time; and that’s exactly what attracts us now.

The preachers, and the leadership team, are very aware that in many ways we’re entering a new phase of our life in this parish. Of course that particularly applies at St Paul’s, but it’s not ‘just’ about the completion of that redevelopment. We have spent quite some time on all of our buildings, both in terms of what we can realistically use, and in what we need to be able to do God’s work in this place in this time. It may have taken longer than we hoped, or expected; but our reflection is that as well as doing lots of God’s work in the processes themselves we have learned, and are learning, many Godly lessons along the way. The aim is that this series will now help us to do two things. First is to review those lessons, and to be sure that we really have learned them fully and properly. The second is to invite God to show us His way forward, on into this next phase of His work here.

So: what have we learned; and what do we need to learn? The way that we’re going to answer those questions is by looking at the life, time, and circumstance of these particular prophets. Those are hugely varied, as we’ll discover along the way; between them they cover a vast swathe of Bible, and human, history; some 350 years, during which so much happened. But what they all have in common – and what matters most for us – is that these were the people who were trying to hear, and respond to, God in all of their different situations. That, then, is the key strand that links together all that we will do here between now and the Summer. It’s entirely coincidental (if you believe in such things!) – that our Bishop will do a visitation here during this time; and that we will formally have to adopt in his presence a Mission Action Plan, which sets out what we are doing in God’s Name and why in this place: watch this space for details of all that, then!

This reviewing, and looking ahead, journey starts here, today with Ezra. His is the 1^st of these books in the Bible in term of the order that they’re in; it’s far from the first in terms of the historical story, though! So this is a good time for us to remember that the Bible is, in fact, a library of books, of very different types of literature. It’s not one big story that begins in Genesis and ends in Revelation. So if you missed the series that we did on Bible literature in 2012, it’s all available on our website. Be sure to have a read, then, to help understand what we are (and what we aren’t) learning from here. You see, the prophets didn’t ever aim primarily to record factual history. Their job was rather to help people to understand what God was saying and doing, and what responses He required from His people, in the circumstances of their time.

Ezra is one particular case in point of that. His task when he wrote (as most scholars agree that he did do) wasn’t to set down exactly what happened when, where, and how at this crucial time in Israel’s history. It was rather to explain what God was saying and doing, and what He required of His people in these circumstances. So we really need to know what those circumstances were, then. Ezra helpfully put enough detail in at the start, in just the few verses that we read, for any historian to put it all together. This can only be a whistle-stop tour of that, but we’ll likely get much more detail in the weeks ahead. For now, we need to go back to when David was king of one-nation Israel, in about 1 000 BC. Even before he died there were fights about which of his many sons should be the next king, and very soon the nation split into two parts. Then there was Israel in the North, with its capital in Samaria, and Judah in the south, based around Jerusalem – and plenty of fights between the two nations.

Not surprisingly, God had opinions on all that was going on in both nations; and He expressed them, not least through the prophets, both Major and Minor. That’s not for today, though. Our whistle-stop needs to leaps on, to 720 BC when the northern kingdom (Israel) was wiped out for all time by the Assyrians. Judah continued, and confusingly, in time then became known as Israel. But Judah didn’t do too much better in God’s eyes, and, in 586 BC, was itself overthrown, by the Babylonians. They tore down the Temple in Jerusalem, and carted most of Judah’s population off into exile – just as had been prophesied by Jeremiah. And now, as Ezra picked up the story, the Persians had taken over from the Babylonians. Jeremiah’s threatened 70 years of exile finally were finally almost over. Israel (Judah) was being allowed to go home; but to what sort of future?

At first it all seemed about as good as it could be. Cyrus sent them on their way in 537 with his blessings, and provisions; but it wasn’t long before trouble started again! Although the returnees had started rebuilding the Temple very soon after getting back, opposition meant that work was stopped – for 10 whole years. Another change of king saw it get restarted; but the job wasn’t finished until 516 AD. Those processes are all detailed in Ezra’s short book, and I’ll encourage you to read it through. When you do, you’ll surely spot that although he wrote about these events, Ezra wasn’t involved in them himself at this stage. He didn’t return to Jerusalem until about 458, when he was sent as leader of another group. He, they had a particular, very specific mission for the next phase.

That mission is again detailed in the book itself. But what we need to grasp to understand it properly is just what a difficult situation Ezra and co came back into. The 1^st wave went back to a place that’d been flattened. Israel could only survive if it was a vassal state of the Persians. They had no king any more; and they never would do again; the Temple was destroyed, so there was no focal point for worship, and what they re-built was very much a second-class affair. Whatever they wanted to do was opposed by the people who’d been left behind, and had got used to the way things were. To some extent things had moved on in the 50 years that followed before Ezra’s return; but there was still remarkably little when he arrived.

In exile Israel had begun to try and understand what had gone wrong to get them in that mess; and how to avoid that fate in future. That was all theory, which was all it could be until the time when they actually went back; and it was largely Ezra who led the working of it out in practice. His name means ‘help’ – and that’s exactly what he did! He was a priest, a scribe, an expert in the law, a leader trusted by the Persians; someone whose life was dedicated to serving God and His people. He was sent to teach people God’s Word; not least because he didn’t just know it and believe it, but lived it out. His job was to shape and administer a new national life for Israel’s new circumstances; and he did it so effectively that it impacted the nation for centuries.

There clearly isn’t time to detail that now; but, for what he did and how he did it, Ezra truly belongs on any list of society-shapers. First he led the nation in repentance for their age-old sins of idolatry and intermarriage. He then shaped the practical living out of whole a new allegiance to God’s Law; how it was taught; and how the Sabbath was observed. What resulted from Ezra’s tireless work was the sort of firm faith that survived centuries of international politics being played out on Israel’s soil. It carried them through it all as people of faith, even while God appeared to be silent for the 400 years before prophesy re-appeared in the person of John the Baptist. And, although we might perhaps not have known it before today, Ezra was key in all of that being so.

Well, the whistle-stop tour is nearly over; but I hope it’s left you appreciating an amazing, faithful, determined, and, above all, Godly man. I also hope that you’ve noticed along the way what we might learn from this in Herne Hill. It’s not a very complicated lesson; and I’d say that it is what has kept us going through all the years and work in getting us to here. It’s about putting, and keeping God 1^st. What we do, and how we do it, has been, and has to keep on being, about what He wants: 1^st and last. Our journey onward from here isn’t set in the context of being given a second chance; but it is about us living in faithful obedience to the God to whom we owe our all. So, as we head into the next phase of that, may that thought, and that motivation, be at the core of it, and us: it really is all about Him. And so now let’s pray that it, and we, will be ...