Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Please pray with me, oh God, tell us what we need to hear and show us what we ought to do to obey Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today's reading is from Ezra, chapter 2, verses 1 through 2 and 64. 70.
Now, these are the people of the province who came from those captive exiles whom King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had carried captive to Babylon.
They returned to Jerusalem and Judah, all to their own towns.
They came with Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Seraiah, Reliah, Mordecai, Bilshon, Mizpah, Bigvi, Rehum, and Banon.
The whole assembly together was 42,360.
Besides their male and female servants, of whom there were 7,337, and they had 200 male and female singers.
They had 736 horses, 245 mules, 435 camels and 6,720 donkeys.
As soon as they came to the house of the Lord in Jerusalem, some of the heads of families made freewill offerings for the house of God to erect it on its site.
According to their resources, they gave to the building fund Dh61,000 of gold, Dh5,000 of silver, and 100 priestly robes.
The priests, the Levites, and some of the people, as well as the singers, the gatekeepers and the temple servants, lived in their towns and all Israel in their towns. This is the word of the Lord.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: So at some point in your life, I imagine many of you set before yourselves this goal. You said, this is the year I'm going to do it. I'm going to read the entire Bible, cover to cover.
Your project began with great promise. You were reading through the Book of Genesis. You read the stories of Adam and Eve, of Noah and the ark, of Abraham and Sarah and their descendants. You read of Joseph and that amazing Technicolor dream coat, and you thought, I can do this.
I'm on a roll here.
You then got to the Book of Exodus, and it started with such promise. You read stories like the one that Josiah preached on so recently, about Moses and the burning bush. You read of how the people of ancient Israel, these people who were in bondage in Egypt, cried out to God, and God heard and answered and freed this people from enslavement, delivering them across the Red Sea, and read of how they came to Mount Sinai and received the ten commandments of God, thunder and lightning. And you thought, yes, I can do this.
And then you got to the latter part of chapter 20 of the book of Exodus, and then you got to 21 and 22 and 23, and it was law after law after law. Some laws dealing with violence and restitution, others dealing with religious ceremonies, others dealing with priestly garments and things to be put on the altar and how the tabernacle might be set up. And you thought, this is getting to be tough going.
And then as you got to Leviticus, it got even tougher. More and more laws related to bodily fluids and all manner of other things. And by the time you got to numbers, and let's be honest, you never made it to numbers, but by the time you theoretically got to numbers, you looked at numbers, Chapter one, and you saw this long census list of names of families and numbers, all those who were to be conscripted into the military of this ancient people of God. And you thought, you know, I'm going to set this down and I'm going to pick up this novel, or maybe I'm going to turn on Netflix.
What you discovered is something that we all discover, if we haven't already, and that is that this book, the Black Pew Bible you have in your pews in front of you and that you've probably seen in a host of different translations, isn't a novel. It doesn't have this single sort of narrative that you can follow one page to the next as soon as similar story told in one single narrative like that. It's a library of books. It's got legal texts, it's got poetry, it has proverbs, it has prophetic texts, it has song lyrics, a book full of song lyrics. We're going to get to hear one of the ways that a particular set of Those lyrics, Psalm 118, was set to music by Jessica Gerhardt. During the offertory, you have letters, some written to individuals, some to churches. You have in the scriptures, four different biographies of Jesus, and all that packed into one library called the Bible.
Now, sure, it might not read like a novel or a book of poetry or any one kind of text or one kind of literature, but if you dare to pick up that Bible again, if you do what you all did today and come to worship, to read and reflect on these ancient texts in community, if you make it a lifelong journey to listen for God's word to you from this book, you'll find there are insights aplenty to be found in each one of the literary forms. This library, called the Bible, contains today's passage. Chapter 2 of Ezra is a genre of literature you might call census data.
Census data. Sounds thrilling, doesn't it? Like reading the Phone book.
And yet, even in a single list of names and numbers from a time roughly 2,564 years ago, God can speak to us.
In fact, a text like this reveals what mattered to an ancient people of God as God was at work them.
Well back in 2018, this idea of showing what we value by what we measure, by what we name and number, this became a best selling book in organizational management. To Measure what Matters by John Doar, sold more than a million copies.
And it's based on an assumption that what we measure shows what matters to us. Doar writes of how organizations should choose with intention what they most value and then measure that.
The book tells of how tech companies like intel and Google achieve tremendous growth by setting clear objectives with defined goals and then actually measuring were those key results achieved or not.
Marissa Meyer, the former president and CEO of Yahoo and later an executive with Google, is quoted in this book. She says, it's not a key result unless it has a number. It's not a key result unless it has a number. Numbers matter.
And what numbers we measure shows what matters to us as individuals, as companies.
If profits are what matter to you, that's what you measure. If employee satisfaction matters to you, that's what you measure. If customer satisfaction matters, that's what you measure. And that's why you and I get bombarded with those surveys. And I hate them.
How would you rank your service today on a scale of 1 to 10?
I hate filling them out, but I get it. You know, they're trying to say that customer response, customer satisfaction matters, and you measure what matters.
Doctors do this when it comes to the human body. So I recently went in for my annual physical, and before even getting to the doctor, I went and had my fluids tested. You probably know what that's like. And then I get this eight page document of all these names and numbers.
Sodium, potassium, carbon dioxide, HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, psa, total, all with measurements.
That's when. That's before I actually got to see the doctor. And when I did, what did they do? They measured my weight, my height, my blood pressure. When I finally did get to see the doctor, I said, hey, you know, I've been dealing with some forearm pain, kind of tennis elbow. And what did she ask? She asked, okay, Matt, tell me, on a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is the pain?
You measure what matters.
Lord have mercy. Are there a lot of names and numbers when it comes to our bodies? But we and our doctors keep account of them. Why? Because something we value our health, our longevity. And so we measure to know how healthy we are, to take action if we need to, to get a sense of our body as a whole, its health and thriving. That matters.
Well, you might call today's passage from Ezra chapter two, a kind of annual physical when it comes to the body politic, the body that was the ancient people.
And now these health measurements were taken after a particularly traumatic incident. And so one could understand if the numbers indicated we've got some real issues here.
But that's not the kind of medical printout we get in Ezra 2.
Instead, we see a body that even though it had undergone tremendous trauma and loss and, and displacement, known exile, seen a city burned to the ground, when it is finally back home, home in Jerusalem, picking up a hammer to rebuild the temple and the city, we read, this is a healthy, vibrant body. How do we know that? We read the census data, we read the medical reports.
Enough priests?
You bet.
973 descendants of Jedi alone.
Levites? Yep, numbers are good.
Singers, temple servants. And how about ordinary people? Were there enough to truly constitute a full, healthy community, not just a smattering of the ancient people of Israel, but a full people, God's people. There are the names and numbers right in your Bibles to prove it. This was a full, healthy body politic, the very body that once knew vibrant life in a place they called home in Judah and Jerusalem. And now returning home, that same body with descendants of so many of the same families, with healthy numbers of those descendants, we can truly say this is the community of God's people.
As many of you know, Jill and I have been in touch with the neighbors of our street on Norwich Place, a street where we lost almost every house to the Eaton fire. And one of the things we've been asking each other about by text and talking about when we've met in person is asking that question, so, are you going to rebuild? Are you going to return? And part of the reason we're curious about that is we want to know, is it going to be the neighborhood again?
You know, it doesn't necessarily have to be everyone, but it's like a critical mass. Is it going to be a healthy enough number of those former residents returning or their descendants? In the case of one household on our street, it's the daughter of the former homeowner who's now working on not just one house, but two. And so we want to know, are the families and the descendants a critical mass of them returning? So it will truly be, well, the neighborhood and when we've learned, it was when we've learned there'll be a healthy number returning, it felt like, oh, yes, there is a neighborhood again. Ray and Luis and Frank and Sonya and Patty and her two kids, Grant and Taylor and their two kids, and Frank and Lynn and other households. Once we had all those names and numbers, we could say, this is a neighborhood. We are rebuilding, a community.
Well, today's list of names and numbers in Ezra2 makes this clear point. This community rebuilding the temple and city of Jerusalem is the neighborhood, the former neighborhood. Maybe not every single person, but so many families that are descendants of the former residents. This body of people, this is the same body, the same protagonist we've been following through this library of books we call the Bible. It is God's people, God's community, God's neighborhood. They're returning and rebuilding. And not just a smattering of that former body. It's the real deal.
But there's a second message we dare not miss in this ancient census of the people of God.
Not only do these names and numbers reveal that this community rebuilding God's temple is a healthy, vibrant people of ancient Israel.
Not only is it the same people of God that God had freed from slavery, but the names and numbers proclaim this unmistakable message. Everyone counts.
In God's eyes, everyone counts.
Not only are ordinary people included in this census list, you might have noticed they come first, before the priests, the Levites, the temple servants are even named. The names and numbers of ordinary people from the ancient people of God are recorded, Recorded, as if to say they matter.
They're listed first. You measure what matters.
And when it comes to the ancient people of God, we read everyone matters, everyone counts. And did you notice from Nora's reading, we get animals numbered Horses, mules, camels, donkeys.
Their inclusion in this census reminds us we human beings are not the only ones who matter to God, who matter in the web of creation, this ecosystem God created, in which we can only thrive together.
In God's account, everyone matters. Not just the people displaced from the Eton and Palisades fires, but the animals, too. Those coyotes, the rabbits, the creatures that dwell in that region. In God's account, everyone counts.
And if you see the mission of ancient Israel as one of being blessed by God and in order to then bless all nations, if you see the call of ancient Israel to receive God's light and then be a light to the nations, a beacon of justice, mercy, love and truth that points to a just, merciful, loving and true God of all creation, that this Notion that everyone counts applies not just to the people of ancient Israel. It's then a mission for the people of ancient Israel, a people that have known firsthand the love and call of God. They are then to proclaim to the nations this great truth. In the eyes of the Lord, in heaven and earth, you matter.
The God of all peoples cares about you. In God's world, everyone counts.
For Christians, we believe the love, justice, mercy and truth of God became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. And in this rabbi and healer, we see God's love as it welcomes children, heals the sick, invites in the outcast and the leper. We saw a Savior not just for the people of Israel, though he was that. Both Matthew and Luke give us long lists of names called genealogies to show how Jesus was a part of the historic family of God's people, Israel. Jesus was also our scriptures proclaim Savior for all nations.
His life was poured out in love for the world, for Jew and non Jew alike, for those in Jerusalem and Samaria, and even to the most remote parts of the world. Everybody is beloved in God's eyes. Our Savior's ministry proclaimed his life, death and resurrection proclaimed. All may have been in faith, infected by this disease we call sin, but to all the love of God has been extended in and through Christ. And in him we see a God who's loved us enough to number, as Jesus put it, even the hairs of our head, even the hairs of our head are measured because that's how much we matter to God, that love we receive by faith.
So, friends, in a world that can say so often to us that the ones that matter are the CEOs, the influencers, the celebrities, the political leaders, Remember Ezra, chapter two in an ancient census list that begins, not ends, but begins with the ordinary people of Israel.
Remember, in God's eyes, you, whoever you are, you count, you matter. God has even measured the hairs of your head. Everyone, including you, counts in God's eyes.
But remember to the call placed on the ancient people of Israel, the call for us as a church today, to proclaim to the nations everyone counts. That's one reason why this congregation participates in the homeless count and has the opportunity late at night and early in the morning to meet with some of our neighbors who are experiencing homelessness, to talk with them, to get a sense of their story and to know exactly how many there are. 1,047 people experienced homelessness in Pasadena in 2024.
All those who occupied the 9,414 structures destroyed in the Eaton Fire matter.
The 4 million names of those displaced by the South Sudanese war from 2013 to 2020 matter.
The estimated 132,000 children in Gaza, who aid groups estimate will be at risk of death from acute malnutrition if there's not a ceasefire in large scale unimpleted delivery of AIDS soon. They matter.
As do those held in hostage, as do those imprisoned, those fleeing situations of violence. Everyone, all creation, we read in scripture, matters to God, down to the animals, for we are one large web of life. God created it that way. A world where everyone counts.
So hear the good news and hear the challenge.
You, we, they, everyone counts.
In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Amen.
