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Week of May 25: Call to Renew the Covenant
Teresa Edwards
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 13-14, 17-18
Background text: Nehemiah 8
Once, while on vacation, I met a couple who took a trip each year on their anniversary. They traveled to a different state and renewed their wedding vows. Their idea intrigued me. The beauty of renewing their marriage covenant on their wedding day each year expressed their deep commitment and abiding love. In the last lesson of this quarter, Ezra guides the people in the renewal of their commitment and covenant with God.
GATHER
Our text opens as the people gather on the first day of the seventh month for the feast of trumpets. Today we know this day as Rosh Ha-shanah or the Jewish New Year. In the square at the Water Gate, men, women and children with the ability to understand “told the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel.” (Nehemiah 8:1b) Standing on a wooden platform before the assembled, Ezra presided over the group with priestly authority.
How might one describe this gathering? The word worship sums it all up. Nehemiah 8:1-12 gives us a snapshot of the synagogue service during this time in Biblical history. The gathering of the congregation, the presentation of the scroll, the blessing and the double “amen” point to an orderliness of corporate worship. Upon the completion of the wall, the people gathered to praise God.
This gathering also centered on joy. In our Daily Bible Study materials, the author speaks to this: “the day of gathering was described as holy three separate times. All three instances linked holiness to joy…….This pause to celebrate was not rooted in the performance of the people. It was rooted in the joy of a saving God.” In joy, the community worshipped, celebrated and feasted together.
Celebrations and banquets mark joyous occasions still today. How was this day different? The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, Volume III states that “joy in the Lord reflects dedication to God, commitment to God’s ways and to God’s Torah, faith and trust in God.” This kind of joy provides strength to face daily life with God and for God. Gathered together, all the people discovered that this service of worship centered on joy in their Lord. Each week we gather in worship. Are we mindful and receptive to the gift of joy that our Lord offers to us in the midst of every situation and circumstance? Does our holiness have room for joy?
HEAR
Everyone knows that famous commercial catch phrase….”Can you hear me now?” In our noisy world, hearing proves to be difficult. The men, women and children in our lesson desire to hear God’s word. “They told the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel. Accordingly, the priest brought the law before the assembly…” (Nehemiah 8:1-2b) Anticipation filled the air as Ezra opened the book to read God’s word aloud.
In addition, Nehemiah gives us other clues that further indicate their desire to hear God’s word. Throughout this passage, the people display that same desire literally with their bodies. They stand before the word of God and lift their hands with a double amen. They bow their heads and put their faces to the ground in response to the receiving of the holy word. “The people’s raised hands connote expectation and dependency. Obedience and submission are articulated by their bowed heads and by their prostration on the ground.”(New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, Volume III) Their bodies communicate their intent. These movements signify their preparation to hear something important from God’s heart.
To insure that everyone understood the word that Ezra read that day, the Levites circulated in the crowd to help people understand what was read from the book of the law. The Levite’s helpful interpretation brings us to another important point. To hear God’s word, understanding is necessary.
For many the Bible is a confusing book which can be difficult to understand. People say: “I can’t take a Bible study because I don’t know enough about the Bible.” The Levites show us that everyone needs to study, ask questions and seek deeper understanding of the scriptures. On the day after the festival, that is exactly what the leaders did with Ezra. The church today must do the same, making the study of scripture a top priority. Through study, understanding and transformation occur. God wants to speak to us today through the Bible. Let us prepare to hear.
RESPOND
Gathered together, the people heard the word. Hearing that word required a response on their part. Their response included further study of the law and building booths for the festival prescribed in the law of Moses. Their actions conveyed a strong commitment to restoring and renewing their covenant with God.
Gathered together in God’s word throughout these lessons, we too have heard the word. Hearing requires a response on our part as well. First, we bow before the holy word and submit ourselves completely. Our next response takes the form of living daily according to that word so that all might know this covenant God who loves beyond measure. You and I must respond. “You and I are the message. You are God’s thoughts, God’s hopes, God’s dreams, God’s passions, with skin on.”(Jesus, Life Coach, Laurie Beth Jones) Yes, that means you and me!
As we conclude, I thank you for allowing me to accompany you on this journey of faith. May the rich blessings of a life lived in covenant with our God be yours this day and always.
The Rev. Teresa Love Edwards is the Minister of Adult Discipleship at Forest Hills United Methodist Church in Macon. She can be reached at teresaedwards@foresthillsmacon.com
Week of June 1: Jesus as God’s Son
Herchel Sheets
Hebrews 1:1-4, 8-12
Meister Eckhart (1260-1327), a noted German Dominican theologian and writer of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, once said: “God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away.”
There’s a place for talking about the “hiddenness” of God, but there is an even more important place for talking about the Divine impulse and commitment to self-revelation. According to the Scriptures, it is not concealment but disclosure that motivates the mind and heart of God. God does not want to be a stranger, but a known and loved friend to every human being.
A God Who Speaks
The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews says that God has always been engaged in this mission of self-revelation. “Long ago,” he says, “God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets.” Later in his “letter” or “sermon,” he calls the roll of some of those “ancestors” and names a few of the prophets through whom God spoke. He knew, of course, that some great souls had cried out to God, asking where God was and how long God was going to be hidden or delay relief from certain ills and hurts. But he also knew that history was strewn with the witness of one person after another who had made known a little of the mind and heart of God.
Moses stands at the head of a long list of prophets through whom God had spoken. The Ten Commandments themselves speak decisively and eloquently of the mind and character of God. And then there were such prophets as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Micah, Habakkuk, Joel—and the list goes on. Each of these was one by whom God “spoke to our ancestors.” Our God is a speaking God, speaking “in many and various ways.”
The Culminating Word
“But words can be cheap,” someone says; “multiply as they may, words can be meaningless, words can be worthless.” Samuel Johnson, the noted literary figure of eighteenth century England, once said of a certain bishop that he had “a rage for saying something when there’s nothing to be said.”
But our “speaking God” does not speak just to make noise. In fact, one of the prophets through whom God had spoken in the past had found on one occasion that God’s voice had not come to him in wind or earthquake or fire—that is, in the spectacular or unusual—but after a time of “sheer silence,” or as another translation puts it, “in a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:11-16).
Theodore Roosevelt once said, “I have always had a horror of words that are not translated into deeds, of speech that does not result in action.” Such inactivity has never characterized God’s speaking. Indeed, in the Bible God’s word itself is so certain that it is considered to be action. In the very first chapter of the Bible, for instance, God speaks and one act of creation after another takes place. God’s words are always “translated into deeds,” God’s speech always “results in action.”
A poet says: “I see his blood upon the rose/ And in the stars the glory of his eyes,”/ His body gleams amid eternal snows,/ His tears fall from the skies./ I see his face in every flower;/ The thunder and the singing of the birds/ Are but his voice—and carven by his power/ Rocks are his written words.”
That’s beautiful! But it was something very different that the author of the Letter to the Hebrews had in mind when he wrote that “in these last days (God) has spoken to us by a Son.” That, he believed, was God’s culminating word—not culminating in the sense of being the end of God’s speaking, but in the sense that God has no greater word to speak. Jesus is the Son of God, and so is God’s supreme word. In him God has said and continues to say what he most wants and most needs to say to the world.
A Word That Still Speaks
This Son of God “is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.”
Who can begin to fully understand all of that? And yet by speaking “to us by a Son” God has utilized the best possible means of helping us to know the Divine. As the late Catholic monk, Thomas Merton, said: God has “revealed himself scaled down to our dimensions.”
It’s no wonder the sixteenth century English priest and poet John Donne exclaimed: “Twas much, that man was made like God before, but that God should be made like man, much more.” Yet that was the supreme act of God’s saving purpose.
The Hebrew people had never been allowed to have images of their God, but now God himself had provided a likeness for them: God’s Son who was “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.”
And down to the very day in which you and I live, God continues to speak to us through that Son. “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” (2 Cor. 9:15)
The Rev. Herchel Sheets can be reached at HHSheets@aol.com.
Week of June 8: Christ as Intercessor
Herchel Sheets
Hebrews 7:20-28
This seventh chapter of Hebrews is filled with a mixture of strange ideas and of marvelous affirmations about Christ. The strange ideas have to do with two Old Testament passages about an obscure king and priest by the name of Melchizedek. In Genesis 14:18-20, we are told that Melchizedek comes out to greet Abram as he returns from a victorious battle. In Psalm 110:4, someone who is not named is told, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”
The writer of the Letter to Hebrews, using scriptural interpretation methods that were common in his day, declared that Christ was the one who had “become a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” And he said that in this role “he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”
A New Kind of Priest
The author of Hebrews was writing out of a religious heritage in which priests played a critical role in persons’ spiritual lives. They offered prayers and praises and presented sacrifices, with the purpose of representing persons before God and helping them to approach God and to live in a reconciled relationship with God.
One became a priest simply by being born as a male into a priestly family. It was a matter of family heritage, and naturally lasted only through the duration of one’s lifetime. Since priests represented a holy God, they were supposed to be holy, but there was no guarantee that that would be the case. So the priests offered sacrifices not only for other people, but for themselves as well.
But now, the writer of Hebrews said, there was a new kind of priest. He was one named by God, not a priest by virtue of being born into a certain family. The duration of this priest’s tenure was not determined by limited life expectancy, but by “the power of an indestructible life.” This priest made possible a new approach to God, and thus introduced “a better hope.” And whereas under the old order the priests had to offer sacrifices for their own sins, this new priest was “holy, blameless, undefiled,” and “had no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself” on the cross.
Choosing a Representative Before God
In James A. Michener’s novel, Hawaii, Captain Janders is in charge of the ship in which several Christians are traveling to begin missionary work in Hawaii. He has been less than civil in his relationships with these people. He has no sympathy at all for their mission. But when ferocious winds arise and the ship is in danger of sinking, he becomes desperate and goes down to the cabin where the missionaries are and says to them, “If any of you missionaries have personal knowledge of God, I would appreciate your prayers now.”
If your life seemed to be hanging in the balance, if you felt overwhelmed by the circumstances of your life, whose prayers would you appreciate then, whom would you like to have to represent you before God? When you feel the need to approach God, when you want to come into God’s presence, whom would you like to have to assist you in that momentous venture?
What about someone who is not restricted by time or place? What about someone whose life exemplifies the character and spirit of God? What about someone who is intimately acquainted with the mind of God? What about someone who can be trusted unreservedly?
The writer of Hebrews says that is what we have in Christ. “Consequently he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”
Prayerful Influence with the Almighty
In writing about Charles Spurgeon, the great English preacher of the nineteenth century, Russell Conwell referred to what he called Spurgeon’s “prayerful influence with the Almighty.”
Is that what we have in Christ, someone with “prayerful influence with the Almighty?” Someone who knows how to sway God around to another viewpoint? Someone who knows how to get God to do things God does not have plans to do?
I have to acknowledge that there is mystery here, that there is much I do not know or understand about relationships in the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But when the writer of Hebrews says that Christ “lives to make intercession for (us),” and the Apostle Paul says that the “Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words,” (Romans 8:26); I get the very strong impression that our interests are represented where God is.
Kate in Reynolds Price’s novel, Kate Vaiden, is pregnant outside of marriage, and in desperation goes into a church. She says, “It was empty of all but white dogwood on the communion table. I sat in a back pew and tried to pray. But I couldn’t even think of God’s first name.”
Even in such desperate circumstances as those, even when prayer seems futile or impossible, there is someone else praying for you, “since (Christ) always lives to make intercession” for us. Always, he carries in his own heart the needs of every one of us, and “he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him.”
Week of May 18: Up Against The Wall
Teresa Edwards
Nehemiah 4:1-3, 7-9, 13-15
Background: Nehemiah 4-6
No one wants to find him or herself up against the wall. The view from up against the wall is seldom good. Hard choices must be made. Those who oppose us look us dead in the eye. Up against the wall experiences test our commitment and faith in the face of danger, threat and conflict. In this week’s study, Nehemiah finds himself up against the wall. His response teaches us a strong lesson in dealing with our “up against the wall” experiences.
OPPOSITION
Last week we left Nehemiah and the people rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem. As progress on the wall continued, opposition rose from all sides. External and internal conflict jeopardized their good work. Sanballat, the governor of Samaria, took the lead in round one by mocking the Jews with sarcastic questions intended to thwart their work. Standing at Sanballat’s side, Tobiah jumped into the fray adding his two cents. These external threats fell like empty words to the ground. Ignoring the insults of their enemies, the people under Nehemiah’s leadership “rebuilt the wall, and all the wall was joined together to half its height; for the people had a mind to work.” (Nehemiah 4:6)
Internally, opposition took another form. In chapter five, Nehemiah addressed the economic oppression of the people by their own kin. At the end of their rope, the Jews rebuilding the wall cried out for help in response to the unfair lending practices of the Jewish upper class. Nehemiah responded in anger to the selling of his own people in exchange for debts. Immediately he addressed the nobles and officials, confronting them with the error of their ways. “As far as we were able, we have bought back our Jewish kindred who had been sold to other nations; but now you are selling your own kin.” In response, “they were silent, and could not find a word to say.”(Nehemiah 5:8b). On Nehemiah’s command, the officials returned the fields, homes and money of the poor which they unfairly gained. “We will restore everything and demand nothing more from them. We will do as you say.” (Nehemiah 5: 12)
Both internally and externally, Nehemiah faced great opposition. As a leader, he stood up to the forces which threatened God’s work among them. In the life of faith, opposition is sure to come our way. In A Guide to Prayer For All Who Seek God,Reuben Job reflects on the opposition we face in following Christ. “Those who seek to follow Jesus will encounter opposition. It follows as surely as night follows day. The opposition may arise within ourselves; it may arise among the followers of Jesus, or it may arise in the world. It may be subtle, blatant, mild or severe. But the opposition is sure to come, so the issue is not whether it will appear but how we respond to opposition.” Nehemiah’s story challenges us to ponder our response to opposition, internal and external, in our own lives.
PRAYER AND ACTION
Throughout this study, we have seen evidences of the importance of prayer. Nehemiah joins the ranks of those who depend on prayer. This week’s lesson especially highlights prayer in relation to action. In response to the threats of their enemies in chapter 4, Nehemiah and the people “prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night.” (Nehemiah 4:9) The Adult Bible Studies Teacher Guide speaks to this verse: “For this courageous leader it was a matter of creeds and deeds: Pray as if everything depended on God; work as if everything depended on you.” According to the New Interpreters Bible Commentary, Volume III, “Nehemiah did not make the mistake of only praying while neglecting to take concrete actions through which God could provide deliverance.”
In Compassion, Henri Nouwen echoes these thoughts. “Prayer and action can never be seen as contradictory or mutually exclusive. If prayer leads us into deeper unity with the compassionate Christ, it will give rise to concrete acts of service. And if concrete acts of service do indeed lead us to a deeper solidarity with the poor, the hungry, the sick, the dying, and the oppressed, they will always give rise to prayer.” Our prayer and service become vehicles by which God provides deliverance in the world.
Too many times church groups and classes pray for the needs of their community and the world, but somehow never act to meet those needs. Sometimes the church rushes in without prayerful meditation to seek God’s guidance and blessing. Neither scenario is as pleasing to Christ as those who take time to pray and then stand up to act.
COMMITMENT
As everyone who has ever served on a church building committee knows, completion requires commitment. In Nehemiah 6:15, we read: “So the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of the month of E’lul, in fifty-two days.” Nehemiah and the people remained committed to covenant with God. They rose each day and took their place on the wall until the job was done. The successful completion of the wall signaled God’s commitment to the people.
A friend once shared a famous quote about commitment that stuck with me. “Commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken makes a contribution, but the pig really makes a commitment.” Commitment to a real relationship with Christ requires more than offering up only the part we want to give. It means offering up all of our life daily, despite the cost. Nehemiah lived this truth to the full. He invites you and me to do the same.
