20^th October 2009

(Sunday 6 September 2009)

Lessons -- Nehemiah 1:1-4; 2:4-6,17-20; Revelation 21:1-8; Matthew
23:27,28,37,38

    When I heard that the wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates
    are destroyed by fire I sat down and wept and mourned for days; and I
    continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. (Nehemiah
    1:3,4 RSV)

It is not melodramatic to say that there is much to discourage Christians today in Western nations, including Australia. Declining public influence, falling attendances and ageing congregations are signs of a deeper crisis of hope.

In the last issue of our St John's magazine I referred to a very stimulating book which should encourage us. Written by RR Reno, In the Ruins of the Church: Sustaining Faith in an Age of Diminished Christianity is both realistic and hopeful about the Church's situation.

It 'tries to provide spiritual guidance to Christians seeking faithfulness within increasingly dysfunctional churches. I worry about my own faithfulness, both to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to the church that has brought me to him. I am trying to find a way toward discipleship in a world that treats obedience and discipline as scandalous impositions. I wish to draw nearer to the apostolic tradition in a church that is moving in the opposite direction. Both the culture and the church make faith difficult. (pp 13,14)'

'To see the church in ruins has not led me to despair and it certainly has not led me to curse God for failing to provide me with a triumphant and splendid church in which to dwell. (p15)'

Of particular significance for us today is his insistence that dissatisfied Christians should not run from the ruins. There is no hope in detachment, either for idealistic liberals or idealistic evangelicals!
Worse still, the strategy of separation 'is utterly at odds with the scriptural pattern' (p22) .

Drawing on the image of ruins as applied to Jerusalem, Reno outlines the enormity of the problem facing a collapsed culture and the hope of rebuilding. At the outset he cites two Old Testament texts:

'For vast is the sea of your ruin; who can restore you?' (Lamentations 2:13)

'They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.' (Isaiah 61:4)

Reno is critical of two equally destructive reactions to the situation:  * the liberal desire to tear down the 'apostolic inheritance'; and * the evangelical desire to see a corrupt church demolished.

These protagonists have more in common than is usually imagined! 'Neither will suffer the ruins of the church.' (p22)  'This refusal to dwell within that which has been received strikes me as the greatest failure of modern Christianity, a failure that is now pervasive, not only in the church but in what we now call post-modern culture' (p22) where the boundary between truth and error, good and evil has been blurred.

In Nehemiah, Reno finds what he believes is the pattern of truly faithful engagement with the cultural crisis facing the Church. Upon learning from afar that the holy city, Jerusalem, is in ruins, he doesn't 'distance' himself from his people but 'returns to the city of graves' where, in great sorrow, he sets himself to rebuild its walls and its traditions.

He steels himself to preserve Israel's distinct identity in the face of fierce pressure from outside and within. The surrounding people (outside the walls) did everything to frustrate the re-building and break the workers' resolve: direct attack, ridicule and accusations of disloyalty to the King. The priests and leaders (within the walls) were ignorant of Hebrew beliefs, sought comfort in pagan religion and culture and enslaved their own people and charged them exorbitant rates for land.

The tremendous cultural pressures of the Persian period (from 538 BC) can't be underestimated (B Anderson, The Living World of the Old Testament, p492). Nehemiah reminded the people of 'the folly of Solomon's cosmopolitanism' (from 961 BC; see Nehemiah 13:26) and of the ravages of syncretistic religion in Canaan (from 1200 BC).

In his day (from 445 BC) and despite threats, Nehemiah named abuses, stood up to intimidation and scheming (6:6f) and instructed the workmen to have 'one hand working, the other hand on the sword' (4:17f). They should neither stop the urgent work of rebuilding the walls nor be unprepared for stiff opposition. They should be ready to defend the difficult and sometimes dangerous task of recalling Israel to her vocation as God's peculiar people, who were to be unlike the nations among whom they lived.

Despite our separation by almost 2,500 years from the specific crisis faced by Nehemiah, he can still be an inspiration to us.  'If we are to follow the scriptural pattern rather than the modern pattern, then we must turn as did Nehemiah and travel back, as he did, to the city of graves, to the monuments kept living by the passion of memory even as they lie wrecked. For this city (Jerusalem) is hallowed by the presence of the Lord, and to return to its sanctuaries, however ruined, is to return to the instruments of redemption that God has graciously provided. We must suffer its ruins if we are to rebuild its walls.' (p22) 

Lest we rush to fully embrace Nehemiah as our example, we also need to see the dangers of his exclusivist agenda. Membership of Judaism was then strictly determined by birth, inter-racial marriages were forbidden, teaching became more important than prophecy, and suchlike. The prevailing mood, as Stuart Blanch (former Archbishop of York) puts it, was of survival, isolation, purity and superiority to 'the nations' based on exact adherence to the law. (For all Mankind, p57.)

In Nehemiah, the grand vision of Second Isaiah a century earlier (c540 BC) is obscured by the single-minded focus on what it means to be a member of the special community of faith. However, modern critics of 'exclusivism', who are used to Christianity playing a key role in public life, often underestimate the fragility and vulnerability of small groups of the faithful set amidst much more powerful nations.

If it were not for Nehemiah, there may not have been a heritage to pass on -- to the benefit of many cultures, including Western civilisation, which have been transformed by Judeo-Christian beliefs. If it were not for Nehemiah, we / the Church today would be even more likely to overlook the tremendous cultural pressures -- outside and within the walls of the Church -- on Christians to compromise on fundamental beliefs and practices.

Consider the speed with which faith and goodness are crumbling around us:

1. Militant atheists ridicule belief in God. (In The Age last week C Deveny, in an infantile rant unworthy of serious journalism, accused God of having Narcissistic Personality Disorder.)

2. In State and Federal legislatures, politicians and advocacy groups, intent on absorbing religious and cultural differences into a synthesis, are undermining the foundation of law once strongly shaped by Christian beliefs and virtues.

3. The vague spirituality that pervades bookshops, businesses and churches erodes confidence in the magnificent singularity of God's disclosure of his grace and goodness in Israel and Jesus.

4. In order to be seen to be culturally relevant, churches of both progressive and evangelical persuasion are anxious to detach themselves from the Christian (and Jewish) past. The integrity of Scripture and creeds are impugned (progressives); my personal experience here and now trumps tradition (evangelicals).

It is enough to tempt the bravest souls to separate themselves from the Church and from Western culture!

The Church must stand on firm foundations. The walls of tradition must be rebuilt, but not with the exclusive materials used by Nehemiah -- later so destructively applied by the Pharisees in Jesus' day (Matthew 23:23f). We are to grieve the state of the world and the Church as we engage in the many and varied tasks of re-building the rich traditions of fidelity which have been crumbling for 'many generations' (Isaiah 61:4).

This dire situation, as Reno rightly says, shouldn't be a cause for dismay. Our crucified, risen and ascended Lord has gone before us in fulfilment of Israel's suffering vocation on behalf of the nations. Our hope is in the fact that the old and new Jerusalem have been judged and redeemed in Christ (Matthew 23:27,28,37-39). In that singular event, the Church and the world are given a foretaste and pledge of that time when he shall 'make all things new' (Revelation 21:5). At that time, consistent with who he has revealed himself to be in Israel and Jesus Christ, 'God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things will have passed away.' (Revelation 21:4)

May that hope of a new heaven and a new earth sustain us in the difficult task of rebuilding and enliven us to glorify the Lord of heaven and earth.

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Rev Dr Max Champion is minister in the St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is Chair of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the UCA. 

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