A Community of Memory

C – 3^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time: 21 January 2007

NEHEMIAN 8: 1 – 10; Psalm 19

1 Corinthians 12: 12 – 31a; LUKE 4: 14 – 21

A Sermon by John C. Bush, Interim Pastor

First Presbyterian Church

Birmingham, Alabama

One of the advantages of a congregation that has been around as long as this one has – 135 years on this corner – is the store of institutional memories you build up. Some of you who were here some forty years ago, and lived through Birmingham’s intense Civil Rights experiences, have agreed to participate in an oral history project being conducted with Dr. Jonathan Bass’ history class at Samford University. Some of those memories are painful, and not everyone wants to revisit them, but those who are willing to share them will be making a significant contribution to the long-term institutional memory of this congregation. Perhaps you’ve heard me say before that I believe, painful as those times were for you, the final resolution when the session ultimately endorsed Dr. Ed Ramage’s vision of an open and inclusive worshipping community, was the signal event that set you on the course of being the welcoming, opening place you have become. A place where people can truly find A Home in the Heart of the City.

As Willa Cather wrote, “some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen again. And Vladimir Nabokov said, “It is all a matter of love – the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.”

The Old Testament lesson today tells of an event that happened in Jerusalem some five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, and which triggered the corporate memory of the people. It is a remarkable story, but one with which most of us are not familiar.

For 70 years the Jewish people had been in captivity in Babylon – a kingdom that included part of what we now call Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. All of the educated and professional people had been taken away in defeat or driven away into exile. Only the unskilled, untaught and unemployable were left behind. The Temple had been destroyed, and the wall that surrounded the city torn down. Over decades of neglect and pillage, the once magnificent city was reduced to ruins.

Cyrus the Great, ruler of Persia – what we now know as Iran – defeated Babylon and gained control over that kingdom’s client states. [Hold that thought; we’ll come back to it in a moment. If you don’t understand the ancient differences between what we know as Iran and Iraq – the Persians and the Medes, Persians and Arabs – you are doomed to misunderstand a very great deal of what is going on today in that part of the world.)

Now back to Cyrus. He appointed Nehemiah governor of Judah and gave him and a priest named Ezra permission to return and rebuild Jerusalem. With an act of grace, Cyrus permitted a return of the Jews to Palestine. Details are sketchy and confused, so it is nearly impossible to reconstruct exactly what happened and who was responsible. What is clear is that these two men – Nehemiah the governor and Ezra the priest – were prime movers behind the reconstruction of the city.

Now somehow Ezra came into possession of what seems to be the only surviving copy of the Torah – the Law of Moses, what we call the first five books of the Bible. Whether Ezra brought these scrolls with him from Babylon or discovered them while clearing away the rubble of the Temple, is unclear. But word got out that he had the scroll, and the people asked him to read it to them. The passage we read today recounts this first reading of the Word of God in Jerusalem in more than 70 years.

What memories do you suppose this occasion stirred in the minds of the people? A very few of the oldest of them might have remembered hearing the scriptures read amid the glories of the Temple now in ruins. The young adults would have known about the Law of God from hearing their parents or grandparents talk about it. For most, this was their very first exposure to the Lord’s commandments. Their first reading of the story of the Exodus from Egypt. The emotional impact was just too much for them: “For all the people wept when they heard the words of the Law.”

As a result, the people celebrated one of the long-neglected ancient feasts, and entered into a solemn renewal of the covenant God had made with Moses. Memory recreated a sense of community – of belonging both to the past and to the future. Of taking what has been and, by the grace of God, making it into what shall be. Which is what the Church has always been: a community dedicated to God’s work of making a future out of the past. Of proclaiming the grace of God which does not hold us captive to the way things have been, but which builds on what has been to make all things new.

But it doesn’t happen – cannot and will not happen – in a vacuum. It will happen as we take care to share the reality of the faith with one another in the context of a community of memory. To tell each other how God has worked with us and for us throughout the long history of God’s people. That’s why it is so important for all of us – adults as well as children and young people – to learn and teach these ancient stories of the faith so that they may become a powerful resource for courageous and faithful living. Transforming the past into God’s new future.

That is the opportunity God is now putting into the hands of this congregation. In a few minutes you are going to be making a decision about future pastoral leadership – in extending a call to the Rev. Shannon Webster to become your new pastor. I’ve known and respected Shannon for many years, though I had no hand in making his connection with your PNC. His ability as a preacher, writer, administrator and teacher, as well as his background in stewardship and evangelism, seem to me to present you with some remarkable gifts.

The calling of new pastoral leadership is one of the more significant decisions a congregation makes. But it is also important to remember that a new pastor is not a solution to every worry and problem a congregation faces. Pastors come and go, as you know from experience, but the congregation remains. Under the guidance of God’s Spirit, you are the continuing influence; the pastor is coach, mentor and guide.

What has been will continue to be, and will be renewed to become the new thing God will help you create together in this place. Because, you see, the faith we hold and teach is not merely a system of philosophy and doctrine. It is, in essence, a story. A long and wonderful story of a creator God who makes us in the very image of God; who sets us free to live as God’s people in a community of memory.

The lesson from Nehemiah is that the Word of God creates community. It is a word of both inspiration and instruction. A Word of lively motivation to tackle the difficult tasks at hand. To seek and do the creative, compassionate, justice-seeking, future-directed work of God with energy, intelligence, imagination and love.

Jesus came one day to this home synagogue in Nazareth. There, according to Luke, the revelation of God was affirmed through the reading of scripture in the assembly of believers. That act of reading and hearing sparks a reminder that God promises good news to the poor, release to those in bondage, and freedom to those in difficult straits. When that promise comes alive in the hearts and minds of believers, we know and can never forget that God is for us and with us in all the circumstance of our lives.

These two lessons from scripture hold out both strength and hope to people like us, facing a new future grounded in what God is yet doing with us, for us and through us.

How have, or might, the ancient stories of our faith touched and renewed your life? The life of this congregation? What potential do they have for helping us cope with the dislocation and alienation each of us knows in the darkest and coldest places of our soul? What hope and assurance to they give as you, the people of First Presbyterian Church of Birmingham, face the new future God is giving you in this historic place?

“And the people bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord …and they wept when they heard the words of the Law of God. … And the people went on their way rejoicing because they had understood the words that were declared to them.”

NOW GLORY, HONOR AND THANKSGIVING

BE TO OUR GOD

AND TO GOD’S NAME BE PRAISE

THIS DAY AND FOREVER. AMEN.