Rejoicing and Weeping While Rebuilding

  I am currently trying to work through a Bible reading plan that has me read four texts a day.  Consistency is not my gift.  But, it has me reading one chapter from four different parts of the Bible with the goal of reading the whole Bible in a year.  Luckily it one of the initial books is Acts and so I read today from the 3rd chapter of Acts this morning.  I also read from the 3rd chapter of Ezra (if you're doing the math, yes that means I've done this three times).  I happen to be preaching on the 3rd chapter of Acts on Sunday.  My brain tried to connect the other three texts (Genesis 3, Matthew 3, and Ezra 3).  It wasn't working.  The selections were made on the basis of math not theme.  But something about the Ezra text haunted me. 

      The book of Ezra tells the story of the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.  The first temple—the one built by Solomon—had been destroyed by Babylonians in 586 BC.  About fifty years later, the exiled Israelites were allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple.  Ezra 3:10-13 says, “When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments were stationed to praise the Lord . . . and they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, ‘For he is good,for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.’ And all the people responded with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of families, old people who had seen the first house 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.”  That was the part that haunted me.  Joyful shouts and people's weeping intermingled. 

        The joyful singing and the mournful crying could not be distinguished from each other.  We can only speculate as to why they wept.  Perhaps they saw that only the foundation had been laid and the fretted over how much work was left to be done.  Perhaps they feared that they would not see the temple rebuilt in their life.  Perhaps the foundation looked smaller than the temple they remembered and they grieved the lack of grandeur.  The Bible does not tell us why they cried just that they did.  I believe at least part of the tears is this:  Every rebuilding is a reminder that something had been built and destroyed or deteriorated.  The destruction of the temple was a violent and traumatic act in the lives of the people.  Rebuilding the temple caused some to remember when the temple was destroyed.  It opened up old wounds.  No matter how beautiful or grand or well-constructed the rebuilding is, it can never replace what was lost because the way it was lost cannot be undone. 

        American mainline churches are in a rebuilding process.  We are having to rebuild our capacity to truly evangelize—truly talk about how a person accepts Christ as their Lord and Savior.  We are having to rebuild our leadership and imagine how we sustain congregations with smaller paid staffs.  We are having to rebuild our credibility in the culture.  We are rebuilding.  And in that rebuilding process there are signs of real hope and real progress.  But along the way there are also tears.  Some of us remember when we could simply assume that everyone around was a Christian.  Some of us can remember when congregations had credibility in their communities simply because they were congregations. Some of us can remember when the ministry career path was a fairly stable and predictable path.  Perhaps our grief comes not from hopelessness about the rebuilding process but from the painful memories of how we came lose what we lost.  We lost these things at least in part because we released our call to evangelize and depended on preformed or inherited faith and the cultural presumption that everyone should be Christian.  We released the priesthood and ministry of all believers preferring instead to professionalize all the tasks of congregational life.  We allowed the trappings of cultural credibility to pacify our prophetic voice and dull our senses to God's Spirit.  We cannot undo the way we lost what we must now rebuild.  We can confess it and allow God's grace to heal it.  In other words, we can cry for awhile and then allow the in-breaking of God's grace and transformation convert our crying in to joyful songs of praise.  

         Here is my prayer for myself and I offer it to you should you want to pray it with me:  “Lord, dry my tears.  Set me free from memories about what I think was lost.  For you, Lord, taught us that those who would save their life must indeed lose it.  Draw up from me laughter and joyful songs as I see the foundations of rebuilding being laid.  Open my eyes to see what will be and set me free from the exile of what has been.  Amen.”