Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Please pray with me.
Prepare our hearts, O God, to accept your word. Silence in us any voice but your own, that hearing we may also obey your will through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The reading is From Ezra, chapter 4, verses 7 through 8, 1122 in Hebrews 12:1 2. You can follow along in your pew Bible and in the days of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, Bishlem, Mishadath, Tabil and the rest of the associates wrote a letter to Artaxerxes.
The letter was written in Aramaic script and in Aramaic language.
Reham, the commanding officer of Shimsha the secretary, wrote a letter against Jerusalem to Archetesis the king. As to the king Arctectasis from your servant in Trans. Euphrates, the king should know that people who came up from us, from you have gone to Jerusalem and are rebuilding that rebellious and wicked city. They are restoring the walls and repairing the foundations.
Furthermore, the king should know that if the city is built and its walls are restored, no more taxes, tributes or duties will be paid and eventually the royalties will suffer.
Now, since we are under obligation to the palace and it's not proper for us to see the king dishonored, we are sending the message to inform the king so that a search may be made in the archives of the predecessors.
In these records you will find that the city is a rebellious city, troublesome to the kings and provinces, a place with long history of sedation. That is why the city was destroyed.
We inform the king that if the city is built and the walls are restored, you will be left with nothing. In Trans Euphrates the king sent the reply to Rahan, the commanding officer, Shimsha the secretary, and the rest of the associates living in Samaria and elsewhere in Trans Euphrates.
Greetings. The letter you sent us been read and translated in my presence.
I issue an order and search was made and it was found in. The city had a long history of revolt against the kings and had been placed of rebellion and seditization.
Jerusalem had a powerful king ruling all over the Trans Euphrates and taxes, tributes and duties were paid to them. Now issue to order to these men to stop work, so that the city will not rebuild until so order.
Be careful not to neglect the matter.
Why let this threat grow to determine of the royal interests.
Hebrews 12, verses 1 through 2. Therefore, since we surround by such a great cloudness of witness, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so entangles and easily. And let us run with the perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, the joy set before he, endured the cross scorning and shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne.
This is the word of the Lord.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Thanks be to God.
So I don't know if you've heard, but Christopher Nolan is going to be directing a film version of the Odyssey. It's coming out in 2026. And there's one scene in particular that I'll be intrigued to see how Christopher Nolan directs. It comes in chapter 10 of Homer's famous epic poem, the Odyssey. The hero believes he's finally sailing home.
Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, had left his home and wife and family years earlier to sail off to Troy. He had survived the Trojan War and endured all manner of additional challenges. He was captured and held captive by a nymph, Calypso, on an island, and after escaping her clutches, he and the rest of his crew were shipwrecked. And after yet additional challenges and setbacks, by chapter 10, finally, they are so close to home on the boat that they can see the hearth fires burning, the fires from home in Ithaca. The smoke from those fires were rising. They could see it. Odysseus is so at peace, he takes a nap.
And then the crew, others who are on the boat too, think this is their opportunity. And they start to search through his belongings, thinking he has gold and silver in them that he's gotten from Troy and that they might take for himself. And among their belongings, they find or Odysseus belongings, they find an ox hide sack. And when they open that the winds, winds that have been given to Odysseus from the king of Aeolus, they are unleashed at a most inopportune time. And that close to home, suddenly those winds blow the boat all the way back to Aeolus.
Odysseus awakens and sees how much they have lost so close to home. It's like they're all, all the way back where they started. And he isn't sure whether to just jump in the sea and end it all or to carry on.
He chooses to carry on. And it will only be many chapters, many books, many adventures later, that he finally makes it home.
That's the kind of scene, it seems to me, the kind of moment we see in today's passage from Ezra, where we're almost there, almost home. And then some huge issue emerges. Resistance, adversity, adverse winds.
Jewish exiles from Babylon had already traveled a great distance to take part in a grand project Rebuilding the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. That's what we read about in the Book of Ezra. They traveled months to to get there, to Jerusalem from Babylon.
And before that they had endured extraordinary hardship. These retournees had been exiles for decades in Babylon. They'd seen their city and temple destroyed, Judah conquered by the Babylonian empire. So many of the former residents there sent into exile.
Finally, after enduring that time, they made the return trip and now they are rebuilding. They laid a foundation. We read in chapter three of the of the new Jewish Temple. And they had a worship service.
Things were so hopeful. They see the finish line, the path home, and then resistance.
Some of those in the boat alongside these returnees, a group that today's passage calls the people of the province beyond the river, they unleash a bag of wind.
Next month, the Reverend Dr. John Thompson will be preaching on the first section of chapter four and sharing more about who those people of the land were and the travels they'd taken and the trials they had endured.
But from today's passage at least, these people of the province are portrayed as a force of resistance to the efforts of the key protagonist. That protagonist being the Jewish returnees from exile in Babylon back to their former home in Jerusalem and Judah. And as they seek to rebuild that home, their efforts meet with adverse winds. Neighbors call them on this. They say, you don't have the proper permits. And they call the authorities, and the authorities in the form of King Artaxerxes says stop.
And they have to pause the whole, whole enterprise.
What do you do with resistance?
What do you do with winds unleashed that throw you far from home? Right when you could see the fires burning, Right when you could see the foundation laid?
It's a question the fourth chapter of Ezra pushes us to ponder. And it does this not simply by pointing to adversaries and resistance in the temple or rebuilding campaign of these returnees. In today's passage, which I started intentionally at verse seven, there's a kind of jump forward in time, a kind of a forward look from the time of Cyrus, which is during the temple rebuild, all the way to a time when King Artaxerxes ruled the Persian Empire.
Early in chapter three four, the temple building project is paused by resistance. In today's passage, we flash forward and the rebuilding campaign of Jerusalem's walls meet resistance. It's as if chapter four is proclaiming to God's people then and now. Get ready, friends, for resistance.
Get ready soon after you begin, and get ready right when you think you're almost home.
The resistance might be Internal. It might be external, but take on any grand project adventure or huge risk and resistance will come.
I remember so well meeting with other clergy at a Clergy Community Coalition gathering. It was up at the Brookside Golf Course's main dining hall area over by the Rose Bowl. This was just a few months after the Eaton fire. And a member of the town council of Altadena was sharing with us during this particular gathering. And he said they had gone to paradise and talked to people there about their rebuilding and recovery efforts and what lessons they learned. And one message that this Altadena council town member got clear as day was this. Expect, anticipate that the community will turn on one another.
That's part of the journey. It's gonna happen.
Resistance.
He shared this. He also shared that he hoped and was determined to persevere through. Now, I might have not seen yet that level of conflict when it comes to my own rebuilding efforts or that of my neighbors after the Eaton fire destroyed our neighborhood, but I will say this, and I was realizing after a recent worship service, I've shown pictures and told stories of my neighborhood getting together, meeting over in the atrium and talking about rebuilding and coordinating and collaborating. And I'm worried all of you think, oh, that's smooth sailing. That must be going great.
Let me tell you another story today, before one of these gatherings, you know, when I tried so hard to facilitate, I recognized we had a church. Your session was so kind to open that room for these neighborhood gatherings. Sent out a word about that, was excited to plan it, Think about how we might even have a common architect as a neighborhood. Wouldn't that be cool? And then I get a scathing email from one of our neighbors who says, who made this guy the facilitator?
And who says we have to have a common architect or even have a common theme, necessarily.
And I heard that and thought, ouch, ouch. You know, resistance.
Resistance can push that question to the forefront, too. As I thought that day, I thought, should I still plan on this meeting happening or maybe should I give up?
What do you do with resistance?
Let's say you head to some new school or new place thinking it's going to be a wonderful new adventure. And then you meet your roommate and live with that roommate and it's a disaster.
Or let's say that roommate is your spouse.
You had a dream of playing on a sports team or writing that great novel or building that new ministry or founding that organization or getting that job, or welcome, welcoming a child of your own into the world or helping your family. Or church or organization or city or nation, get to that next level, that next step in the path to your destination. At least the destination you saw in front of you. And then your neighbors write to the emperor and they say, put a halt to this.
Make them stop.
Just when you think it's smooth sailing, just when you've laid the foundation, or just when you finish one building project like the temple and are finally endeavoring a new project to build the walls of the city, the winds of resistance smack you in the face.
What do you do with resistance? Well, here's one temptation. I think a temptation is to demonize or dehumanize whatever or whoever is resisting my plans.
Your plans. A temptation is to imagine those who resist the path we see forward must be of the devil. They are opponents, adversaries, enemies to be countered or destroyed.
I imagine the Jewish exiles from Babylon, having returned all the way to Jerusalem and Judah, were tempted to look at their situation precisely that way.
But then we read the content of the actual complaint that is leveled to the emperor against these returnees, and we discover that at least in the way the people of the land are portraying these returnees, it is precisely, precisely these retournees, these former exiles who are the winds of resistance.
Here is what the people of the province write to the king Artaxerxes of Persia. The Jews who came up from you to us have gone to Jerusalem and they are rebuilding that rebellious and wicked city. Do a search for yourself in the history books and you'll find this is a city that has long rebelled against kings. That word that's translated as rebel is actually an Aramaic word here, and it can be translated rebel or revolt. Or guess what?
Resist.
Resist.
The people of the province are arguing to King Artaxerxes. These people who are rebuilding Jerusalem are winds of resistance. They'll thwart your plans, O King. They'll fail to pay you sufficient tribute. Look at the history books if you don't believe us. And the purpose Persian king appears to do just that. He probably looked in those history books and saw, oh, wait, back some time ago, in the days the Babylonian empire ruled this land, there was this resistance effort by Jerusalem and that led to Babylon's. Babylon's destruction of that city and Temple in 587 and 586 BC.
So who is the force of resistance in this passage?
Is it the people of the province who oppose the rebuilding efforts of former Jewish exiles from Babylon? Or is it those exiles themselves as they rebuild and form what the king of Persia fears will be a new resistance movement to his plans.
There are, after all, celebrated resistance movements in film and in history.
Think of Star wars and the Rebel Alliance.
Or think of the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany, a church made up by the way of a minority of Christians in Germany at the time, but an effort we now see as faithfully resisting efforts by Adolf Hitler and others to make the church merely a tool of imperial goals for that nation.
Other resistance efforts we would lament like efforts in this country to resist the abolition of slavery prior to the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation.
So, friends, how are we to interpret resistance in our time and in today's scripture passage? How do we interpret it when emerges from us, when or when it hits us smack in the face? What do we do with seasons of resistance?
Well, today's passage from Hebrews offers wise counsel in this regard. Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him, endured the cross disregarding its shame, and has taken the seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
Now, on the one hand, that passage paints a picture of Jesus as one of resistance, lifts up the cross, a reminder of how Jesus was crucified by religious and political authorities of his day for releasing what they saw as a bag of adverse winds.
And yet it also lifts up Jesus as persevering through resistance, through adverse winds, through trials, even through death, and rising by the power of God to persevere by faith. Our lives are inextricably linked to his.
And he then empowers us to endure even death, knowing God has defeated defeated death in Christ. The home we ultimately seek and long for and believe is ours, is given by Christ at work in us.
And yet being connected to Christ doesn't just mean we have the strength to persevere, to carry through. We also have the guidance, the direction, the challenge of Christ that He leads us, lays out a path for us to follow, gives us a race to run the path of ever deepening love of God and neighbor, the path of radical obedience to God, the path of obedience to the teachings and ministry and example of our Savior. And resistance comes up on that journey, internal or external. It's an invitation to reflect again on Christ's call, to look at the path we're on and ask is this in fact Christ's path for me, for us, us? Is it God's call? Or might we have gotten off course?
Maybe, just maybe, that neighbor of mine had something that I needed to hear and that could be helpful in my journey, in our neighborhood's journey of making sure that all are included, that voices are heard, and maybe the critic has something vital to say. And that kind of re examination can push us again to lean on Christ, on his strength and on his direction. Maybe these enemies or opponents or people of the land we read about in chapter four of Ezra, maybe in God's providence and God's rule over all things, they're a kind of call for pause and reflection.
For the returnees after decades in Babylon and after finally returning home, maybe the resistance they faced was an invitation to ask anew. Are we reflecting our identity as the people of Abraham and Sarah, not just back then, but right now? Are we in fact a people who have been blessed by God and are living out that call to be a blessing to all nations?
Are we on God's path forward? If so, let's carry on trusting in God's strength. And if not, maybe a course correction is called for.
So here's my invitation to you when it comes to resistance. Resistance, you encounter resistance, you instigate.
Gauge that resistance according to the compass that is Christ.
When you face obstacles in some bold new effort, you undertake as you will when you set out, and when you near the finish line, take that invitation. Resistance, resistance provides to listen anew to God's call in Christ.
Is this project in fact God's path for you? Or might the resistance be in some way an invitation to make a course correction? When you are identified with some resistance effort or some obstacle, as the Jewish returnees were in today's passage, may that too be an invitation to consider Christ's call and ask if the race you're running is Christ's race for you.
In my journey with you all as your pastor, there are days I feel, as I am sure you do too. Like Odysseus, when those adverse winds got unleashed, or like the returnees who had endured a long, hard journey, only then to face local opposition, a family that had been a pillar of our congregation departs.
Internal struggles arrive, emerge in our life together, a staff member departs, personality challenges emerge, or external struggles come our way. Like a major economic downturn, a pandemic, a series of two devastating wildfires, and all those efforts it feels like we've made, been making, are making together to get home to that destination we feel called to in Christ, feel like they've been hit with the winds of resistance.
Or maybe we feel as individuals, as a church, like we're one small wind blowing against so much that needs changing and course correction in our world. And our little wind feels too small to make an impact.
That impact needed to make it home.
So may seasons of resistance be for you and me a gift.
May they be invitations to return to Christ to savor the home we have with him and discern his direction following where he leads. And the good news of Scripture is, when we take up that race Christ has laid before us, he will give us the power and strength to persevere.
We do so not on our own, but by God's work in us.
Thanks be to God. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Amen.
