SERMON 138 - SUNDAY 22 SEPTEMBER 2019

Sermon delivered at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Family Chapel, Whaddon, Wiltshire  – Sunday 22nd September 2019 – Ecumencial Evening Prayer

Ezra 1; John 7:14-36

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and may my words be a blessing to all who hear them. Amen

“Those who speak on their own seek their own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of Him who sent him is true and there is nothing false in him”      

I have a particular fondness for our first, Old Testament, reading because I think it is one of those wonderful passages from a time before Christ which provides us today with a feeling of great hope for the future.  At a time of great uncertainty and confusion in our nation Ezra’s first words remind us that God never forgets us and can action great and unexpected things to put matters right.  We have only to continue to offer up our prayers of thanksgiving and supplication, obey God’s will and have patience to wait for an answer to our requests.

 Who was this Ezra who wrote this book of the Bible?  Well, he is believed to have been a chronicler of the times of the great Exile of the Jewish people in Babylon when there was a kind of ethnic cleansing in reverse.  He is therefore attributed as being the author of the two preceding books of the Bible – 1 and 2 Chronicles. On the occupation of Judah by the Baylonians, who sacked the Temple at Jerusalem, they took into captivity into Babylon (modern day Iraq) all those Jews who were educated or powerful leaving behind those less fortunate to maintain the land with hard labour. King Solomon’s great Temple was left to fall into ruin as the Jewish Faith was not one which was recognised by King Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian Empire. However they actively recruited and integrated the elite classes of the Jews into Babylonian culture and we read much about this in the Book of Daniel.  Ezra was from this elite class who found himself working for the Babylonians in exile in an administrative capacity.  He is described as a Scribe which meant that he would have be a learned religious man.

 The Babylonian Empire became more and more corrupt and decadent and we read about this decadence  in the narrative of King Belteshazzar’s last feast when he used the holy vessels stolen from the Temple by his predecessor King Nebuchadnezzar. You will recall “the writing on the wall”

 Eventually, in its turn, the Babylonian Empire was itself overrun by the great Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great in 538 BC and Ezra, the great chronicler and administrator records in this first chapter of his book how God spoke to Cyrus telling him to let some of the Jews in former Babylonian captivity return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. There may have also been a very practical and political reason for doing this – the Temple was all important to the Jewish Faith and its destruction and their subsequent exile away from it might well promote unrest and lack of co-operation with the new Persian masters. Therefore, by selecting certain families loyal to the regime to return, the Persians could continue to control Judah with content and compliant collaborators. One only has to think of Vichy France during the last World War as a parallel.

This return, and consequential rebuilding of the Temple teaches us much about loyalty and faithfulness within the context of the Jewish faith and as a pattern to imitate. As we read further on, in the Book of Ezra, we see how Ezra later organised the people into groups to do the work; but also how he had to admonish them when they saw the rebuilding of their own homes as having priority over the building of the Temple which fell further and further behind schedule. Eventually by Ezra’s hard work the priority of the Temple’s construction became paramount to the Jew’s lives – after all the Temple had become the centre of their Faith.  I think that the great lesson for us today is that they had, after all, managed to continue with this Faith with the absence of a Temple for over 70 years and it is this faithful diligence, continual trust and paying due obedience to God which sets a great example and is the key to a hopeful existence.

 Prayer is not just about sending messages and requests to God but also being prepared to listen to what he has to say to us – allowing proper time to hear his word – that “still small voice of calm” or as our hymn this evening puts it “be still for the presence of the Lord is moving in this place”.  Cyrus heard God’s voice telling him to allow some of the Babylonian exiles to leave captivity and return to Jerusalem.  He heard and obeyed; and like him we must be prepared to listen and obey too.  I think many of us do hear God’s word – it might come through the words of a another person, it might be heard through the radio or TV or simply a thought which comes into our head whilst walking or driving.  Often we may say to ourselves – “I really should do something about this or that” but then we go on to make a cup of tea or do some other activity and never go back to that message or simply put it out of our minds. When that next happens ask yourself, was that a thought of my own making or was God trying to convey something to me; if so, what am I going to do about it?

In our second reading this evening from John’s gospel we jump forward some 550 years and find Jesus at Sukkot or the Festival of the Booths (or Tabernacles). Jews believe that God wanted the Israelites to observe this festival by living in temporary shelters for seven days as a reminder that when their ancestors were in the wilderness, God provided them booths to dwell in. As in every year, Sukkot remains a time of rejoicing. Why? Because it was at this time in ancient Israel when the harvest season was over that God had provided more than enough food for the people to survive. Now it was time to go up to Jerusalem and give thanks to Him in worship at the Temple; a Temple that had been rebuilt at the time of Ezra.  Therefore the celebration and the location of Jesus’s teaching were extremely significant in the context of the words he speaks.

Jesus is being quite provocative. In the earlier part of this Chapter Jesus had been warned by his disciples that there was a faction which was out to kill him and they had implored him not to go out into the busy city during the Festival.  Indeed, Jesus reassured them that they were to go but that he would stay behind at home.  After they had left to join in with the celebration Jesus himself, contrary to his word, went out and made his way into the thick of it by going to the Temple and there, before a crowd of devout Jews, started preaching.  Jesus did not fear for his life because he already knew that it would be spared until a later time – the appointed time for his Crucifixion. 

The significance of this passage is that it was the occasion when Jesus left it in no doubt as to who he was – the Messiah and reminded the crowd of the miracles he had performed and of his teachings such that many in the crowd, seeing that those in authority were taking no action began to really question whether he was indeed the Son of God.

Nobody laid a finger on him.  There was confusion and doubt but his main message was that “those who speak on their own seek their own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of Him who sent him is true and there is nothing false in him”.  In other words be true to your calling, put away your false self or ego and those influences which seek to distract you from finding your true self and concentrate on listening to what God wants of you.

Everybody is unique – as Oscar Wilde once said “I can only be myself as everybody else is already taken”.  Cyrus didn’t act as would have been expected – he didn’t seek to continue the subjugation of the Jewish people but rather he heard God tell him to allow those exiled to return.  He sought the glory of God and not himself and his Empire.

Whilst we are prepared to listen to God, to accept the teachings of Christ that he was sent by God to save us then we can always have genuine hope – however tough the going might get and however confused we might be.   If you can find your true self then you will also find God and by glorifying him do your bit to make this world a better place for all.      

Amen                  

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