Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] So the passage Toby just read and the broader subject matter of the Book of Ezra is recovery and rebuilding after a traumatic disaster. Recovery and rebuilding after a traumatic disaster. This makes Ezra specially applicable, it seems to me, to our time and place, as we recover and rebuild after the Eaton and Palisades fires.
[00:00:26] But still, given the heavier nature of Ezra, I thought before diving in, we would take a look at the Howard family's new golden retriever puppy.
[00:00:36] Isn't she adorable?
[00:00:39] I got to see her in person yesterday.
[00:00:42] I also thought I'd share with you a glimpse of what I got to see earlier this week in Missoula, Montana.
[00:00:49] Here's a shot of the beauty of God's creation as I observed it first firsthand this past Wednesday.
[00:00:56] This is the Blackfoot river that you might have read about in A River Runs through it. And there is where my dad and I enjoyed some fishing together. He's 88 and still going strong.
[00:01:10] So may glimpses of the goodness of creation remind us there are heartwarming things in the world, even as there is some really hard stuff to okay, so on to the Book of Ezra. One of the questions that the Book of Ezra seeks to answer is this. How is God involved in the wake of traumatic disaster? How is God involved in the wake of traumatic disaster? And secondly, how are God's people to respond faithfully in the aftermath of disaster?
[00:01:45] Well, roughly a decade ago these questions were explored at a gathering of pastors held in Beirut, Lebanon that is right there.
[00:01:55] This gathering of pastors took place during the height of the Syrian Civil War. Pastors from various regions in Syria came together to be trained and equipped and supported in providing pastoral care to their communities and and to their congregations in the wake of heartbreaking violence and destruction. During that civil war. In the city of Aleppo alone, more than 30,000 people were killed in a four year period of time, 2012 to 2016, and more than 30,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Here's a photo of a man crying seeing what his neighborhood had become back in 2000.
[00:02:41] Well, at this gathering of pastors in Beirut, they were invited to reflect not on the Book of Ezra, but rather on Psalm 137.
[00:02:50] And Psalm 137, like the book of Ezra, hones in on a particular time in history that was particularly challenging and that followed one of the most traumatic disasters that ever befell the Jewish people as their stories told in the Old Testament.
[00:03:09] Back in 722 BCE, the northern section of what was once a united Kingdom of Israel under King David was conquered by Assyria. The former residents of that northern kingdom and its capital of Samaria were deported and taken off to Assyria. Here's a carving from that time period depicting an Assyrian soldier leading deportees away.
[00:03:34] Well more than a century later, a new superpower had emerged on the scene to rule the ancient fertile crescent. By 605 BCE, under King Nebuchadnezzar II, shown here, Babylon had not only decimated what was left of the Assyrian army, they also defeated Egypt at the Battle of Carchemish.
[00:03:54] Babylon then ruled the ancient Fertile Crescent from northern Egypt down here through Judah and Syria, all the way to Babylon, that land where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers run within that kingdom of Judah. When that kingdom rebelled against their Babylonian overlords, Babylon's response was brutal. They not only invaded Judah and they wracked the city of Jerusalem, but they took all the riches, all the wealth, all those precious, sacred symbols in the Jewish temple away. And then they burned that temple to the ground.
[00:04:35] This is how one artist imagined that traumatic moment in the history of the Hebrew people, and many former residents were deported to Babylon.
[00:04:48] Psalm 137 is the lament of those exiles. And it goes like this. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion on the willows, there we hung up our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion.
[00:05:11] How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?
[00:05:15] Remember, O Lord, the days of Jerusalem's fall. How they said, tear it down, down to its foundations.
[00:05:22] O daughter Babylon, you death devastator. Happy shall be those who pay you back for what you've done to us. Happy shall be those who take your little ones and dash them against the rock.
[00:05:37] It's a sad and angry lament. Psalm 137.
[00:05:43] Well, after those pastors had heard that psalm read and were invited to reflect on it, one of the pastors said this. You know, this reminds me of a prayer gathering where we had back in my community in Syria not so long ago. The Al Nusra Front had just staged an assault on our city. And in the wake of that destruction, we gathered to pray. And one person in our group prayed for protection.
[00:06:07] Another prayed for God to watch over those who had now become refugees.
[00:06:15] Another asked God to provide shelter for those refugees. Another prayed for strength and faith to rebuild in that hard journey ahead.
[00:06:24] But then a woman cried out these words, may the people who sacked Our city be forever cursed. May what has happened to us be visited on them. May they suffer. And then, before she could even finish, a man in that group put up his hand and said, hush. We do not pray that way.
[00:06:46] The pastor then looked at the others gathered in that meeting in Beirut, Lebanon, for pastoral care. And he said to that group, you know, I think that man was wrong.
[00:07:01] I think that man was wrong. When I hear Psalm 137 read just now, I think he was wrong. That is how we pray.
[00:07:11] Those feelings are real.
[00:07:15] Those feelings are real.
[00:07:18] Well, friends, we get those feelings in that prayer book, that is the book of Psalms. Big feelings of grief, sadness, loss, even bitter anger. Hot emotions, what you might even call big feels. You know, big emotions.
[00:07:34] Sometimes the emotions we read about are wonderful, joyful. You'll recall Psalm 122. I was glad. I was delighted when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord.
[00:07:46] But then there's sadness, even anger, too, along with that joy. It's all there, one hot mess, emotion.
[00:07:56] And in today's passage, the one that Toby read, there is a hot mess of emotion on display as the people of God are gathered in the ruins of what was formerly the Temple of Jerusalem.
[00:08:10] Now, in the Book of Ezra, the ancient people of God are no longer in Babylonian captivity as they were in the days imagined in Psalm 137. Instead, in Ezra, it was a time after the Babylonian exile. It was just after the ancient Hebrew people who had known exile in Babylon were finally allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple and city. And many of those who had been in exile did just that. Some 42,360 of them, we read in chapter two, they gathered for this groundbreaking ceremony at precisely that spot where Solomon's temple had once stood. And as the people looked on, gathered for this time of worship, the builders laid a foundation.
[00:08:56] And then the priests all dressed in fancy garb, blue trumpets, and then the Levites, the rhythm section started clanging cymbals. And then they led the whole group that was there and singing this refrain, give thanks to the Lord, for God is good, God is good. God's steadfast love endures forever.
[00:09:20] One of the great refrains we find often in scriptures. Some of the people then shouted for joy. After so many decades of exile, finally they were back in Zion. And they could see right before their eyes tangible signs that a new future was underway. They could see it happening right before them. Their hearts were full of joy.
[00:09:45] But not everyone erupted with delight.
[00:09:48] Some of the older priests and Levites and heads of families. They remembered the former temple in all its glory. And after watching the new foundation being laid, they erupted with sadness and sorrow, with lament.
[00:10:02] And we read that that gets all mixed up with the shouts of joy, shouts of joy, tears of sorrow in the wake of a traumatic disaster and in the journey of recovery and rebuilding. We read in Ezra, a hot mess of emotion can erupt in a people and often does, especially when you come before the living God in worship.
[00:10:29] When I read this passage, I think ahead already to that time. Jill and I will see the foundation laid in our new home on the site of where our former house once stood prior to the Eaton fire. And just think of the mixed emotions that will bring out, on the one hand, the wonder of seeing, wow, there will be a new house here and seeing a new foundation. The old one has been taken away with the Army Corps of Engineers. There's no foundation right now, but one day there will be. And seeing that laid will be this powerful symbol of hope.
[00:11:04] But then I'm sure we'll think back of all those things we can never recover. Our daughter's artwork from when she was little as just one example.
[00:11:15] And I think of the hot mess of emotion that will emerge in not just us, but in the whole community of Altadena and Pasadena as we see new foundations being laid on roughly 10,000 sites, sites where buildings once stood.
[00:11:31] Well, those who have keenly observed the process we go through in the wake of disaster have noted this roller coaster of emotions that often ensues. And if you want yet more information on the recovery process following trauma, please see Cynthia Erickson, who is an expert in this particular field. And it seems to me this very chart can apply not only to the journey of recovery and rebuilding after a fire, but also to the loss of a loved one, or to the loss of a job, or to the loss of an election or a sense that values you hold dear are getting lost.
[00:12:13] It begins pre disaster, where you're kind of in this middle space between, say, joy and delight at the top and sorrow and anger, hard emotions at the bottom. It begins in that kind of middle ground. But then there's that moment when the disaster hits. And there's, I think of the time, for example, when I was looking at my phone and saw on January 8th, when our neighbor Taylor texted me that every house in our neighborhood had burned to the ground, save one. Now I will say, if I had recognized and really felt the full impact of that loss, I would have been all the way down there.
[00:12:52] But thankfully, there's this thing called denial, and it's glorious, particularly in times like this. So, yeah, a little bit of it sinks in, but the whole thing doesn't yet, and that's really helpful. Ah, but then there's this rise, the heroic. I saw heroes emerge, people who came to my door that very day to bring clothing and open their doors to us, with hospitality, to bring food. I saw people reaching out from all over the country to you, to me, to communities like ours that were impacted. It was the sense that, man, we are bonded together in love and care. These relationships are holding me up. Relationship with God, with family, with church, with community. It felt this, like, this powerful sense of cohesion, like we were a body, you know, it was glorious.
[00:13:48] But then comes the descent, and that happens after that time. And it's not like the cohesion completely dissolves, but, you know, it's not quite the. And the eyes of the world, the eyes of a nation move on to the next disaster, you know, and you're still left there having to do the work of rebuilding. And I will say, when you reach the bottom, it's not just sadness, friends, it is anger.
[00:14:13] I saw the anger emerging in me one particular day, and I'll tell you right when it was. So I'm talking. These are some weeks after the Eaton fire, and I'm talking to my mortgage company.
[00:14:25] We had sent to our mortgage company a check for the full amount of our dwelling, which the insurance company had sent to us. It was made out to us, and to our insurance company, we send it to them, expecting they're then going to send the money to us. No.
[00:14:40] Here's what the mortgage company representative told me. We are going to keep 100% of what you owe on your mortgage held in a special account just for you until you're 75% through with the rebuild and can prove that by extensive documentation. Oh, and by the way, during these months, even years ahead, you're still going to have to pay your mortgage on those funds that you can't even receive.
[00:15:05] So I like to think that I respond, you know, with measured peacemaking ability. I wanted to do violence to that man.
[00:15:14] I wanted to break something. Just so you know, the powerlessness of that experience, it wasn't just him, and it wasn't just that experience. It's this broader sense of all that I can't control and the challenge of recovery, the anger of that situation and of all kinds of decisions that could have been made to lessen or even avoid the disaster that befell us. I could feel that anger rising, and I'm sure a number of you know what I'm talking about as well.
[00:15:46] But then comes a journey of working through that anger, sadness, that grief. It's a journey of coming to terms with the loss. And I'm incredibly blessed to get to do that with God and family and church and a broader community. But that that process takes time. The estimates are that I've seen on charts like this, and Cynthia, correct me if I'm wrong on this, somewhere between one and three years. But it can vary based on the individual and community and whether further trauma and disaster gets heaped on top of that one to three years. And there are ups and downs. There are triggering events that can pull you right back into that awful experience. You know, this last Thursday, so many of us recalled September 11, right?
[00:16:34] I remember just a few days after September 11, I was asked to call a woman on the phone who was well known to a family at our church. And this woman had lost her husband to the September 11 attacks. Her husband had been working in one of the World Trade center buildings when the towers fell. And when I talked to her on the phone, I heard her processing this. I heard deep sadness and grief at what was lost. I heard anger. Echoes of Psalm 137 were absolutely there in what she shared, big fields. But then I thought of her this last Thursday, and I haven't kept in touch with her. But I wonder. I would imagine by this point she's likely remarried at this point, she's likely seen what were then her young children become young adults and celebrated transitions and new joyful events in their lives. And then September 11th comes, and I imagine it's this whole mess of emotions for her, as it probably was for many of us as September 11th hit again.
[00:17:46] It can be a hot mess of emotions we humans experience on the road from disaster to a new beginning.
[00:17:54] Well, according to the book of Ezra, that hot mess of emotions that you are, that I am, that we are, are received into the arms of a loving God, a God who is praised with these very words. Give thanks to the Lord, for God is good. God's steadfast love endures forever towards Israel, that is, towards God's people.
[00:18:17] In all times and especially in the wake of disaster, we are embraced mind, body and and heart, full heart. Our shouts of joy, our tears of sorrow were embraced in our entirety by a loving God who first gave us life.
[00:18:34] And it's before that, God, that all those hot feelings emerged for God's people gathered in Jerusalem and God received all those mixed emotions in love as these people of God finally welcomed back to Jerusalem to rebuild, finally see tangible signs of that new temple. And it might have recalled for them the great words of the prophet Isaiah. It is I, God, who created you, I who formed you, I have redeemed you, I've called you by name, you are mine.
[00:19:08] In today's passage we glimpse God's embrace of that hot mess of emotions.
[00:19:14] And God is lifted up as a good and loving parent, embracing God's children, hot emotions and and all well. As Christians, we believe that this God, of whom the ancient people of Israel saying, came to be with us in a new way, in Jesus Christ. In him God built a new temple, one with Christ as the foundation or cornerstone. A temple where each one of us is a living stone, part of a holy priesthood. By faith we believe we are joined together with God through Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit in body, mind and Holy Spirit heart were received, embraced, beloved, accompanied.
[00:19:57] We who were once no people are made. God's people, God's children through Christ our Savior, in whom the steadfast love of the Lord the ancient people sang about became flesh and dwelt among us.
[00:20:11] Now in Scripture we see God offering not only embrace to God's people children, but instruction too.
[00:20:20] God offers direction as to how this people might live as witnesses to the loving God who called and claimed them. And one of the ways God instructs this people to live is by following the Ten Commandments. One of those being, well, thou shalt not kill.
[00:20:37] As real as the feelings of anger might be for us, real as the feelings of anger towards the Babylonians surely were for the Hebrew people acting on those feelings, killing our enemies, dehumanizing our enemies, is opposed to that sixth commandment and to the teachings of Jesus. We recall as Christians how Jesus said in Matthew 5, you've heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemy.
[00:21:11] Pray for those who persecute you so that you may live as children of your Father in heaven.
[00:21:20] In a nation with way too many guns and way too much gun violence and way too much rhetoric of getting back at our political enemies, of retribution.
[00:21:34] May we Christians reflect instead the commandments of God and the teachings of Christ.
[00:21:41] May we be the very people God has called us to be. A people who are in fact a hot mess of emotions as we are, but also people redeemed by Jesus Christ, made into salt and light in the world.
[00:22:00] When a long journey of recovery in the wake of disaster. Friends, praise God. We have a loving God, a blessed savior, a community of faith one another. The Holy Spirit at work in our midst, in the journey. And with that God holding us, challenging us, comforting us. May people see God's love at work in us as we love God and our neighbors and even our enemies.
[00:22:28] For that, friends, is even more heartwarming stuff than a puppy or than a glimpse of Montana.
[00:22:37] Thanks be to God. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, amen.
