Nehemiah: Renewing Our Commitment

Format Image

Text: Nehemiah 8:5-10; 9:1-3, 38; 10:28-29

Last week, we talked about some of the opposition that the builders and Nehemiah faced while building the wall. 

He had to deal with scandal and oppression perpetrated by his own officials…

but he also had to create plans to protect the people from enemies who wanted to attack and destroy their work. 

And then suddenly, the work was complete.

It took just fifty-two days to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem. 

FIFTY-TWO DAYS!

My drive home takes me down 63rd and they have been working to rebuild the bridges on Highway 28 over the Raccoon River since last summer and are only halfway done. 

But these everyday folks rebuilt the walls of the entire city in fifty-two days. 

So… what happened next? 

Did they throw a party?

No.  Nehemiah counts up the people.  

He takes a census of all of the Israelites and counts up 42,360 people, an additional 7,337 slaves, 345 singers, 736 horses, 245 mules, 435 camels, and 6,720 donkeys. 

And they take up an offering. 

You know, like you do. 

And then do they throw a party?

Nope.

Because all along this has not been a story about rebuilding a wall.

It has been a story about rebuilding a people.

Rebuilding a community that was centered on God. 

As we talked about in the first week of this series, in order to get to the good stuff and address their needs related to belonging and identity, they first had to make sure that they cared for safety and security needs. 

But once the walls were built and the gates restored and the officials were brought back in line from oppressive practices… well, the people could breathe. 

And they could begin to refocus on their relationship with God.

In fact, rather than Nehemiah initiating the next steps, he writes that the people gathered together and asked the scholar Ezra to bring out the Law of Moses. 

Ezra also had a calling… to rebuild the faith of the people, and his story can be found in the first half of the Ezra-Nehemiah saga.

As a priest, he understood that a right relationship with God was the only true source for security for the people. 

And he understood that God’s law was the foundation for that “right relationship.”  

The people are ready to listen.

So Ezra pulls out the scroll of the Law of Moses.

Many scholars think that this was likely what we know today as the Book of Deuteronomy, or “Second Law.” 

And from early in the morning until noon, he reads aloud from the scroll to the people. 

But friends… here is just how far away from the faith and their heritage the people were…

Ezra read the words, presumably in Hebrew… but the Levites, the priests, had to translate.

These, after all, were people who had grown up and spent their whole lives in Babylon and Persia. 

Or, they were the everyday folks who had been left behind and lived under oppression and they didn’t have priests and schools and institutions in place to continue their traditions.

They were all strangers to their own culture and they didn’t understand their own language 

And when they understood what the laws of Moses were asking of them, they wept.

Out of shame.

Out of guilt.

Out of frustration. 

This did not feel like a joyful discovery… but rather it only highlighted in their hearts how far away they were from God and who they had been called to be.

At one of our meetings with Global Ministries, we spent some time listening to the stories of Native American United Methodists. 

I can’t help but think of how the United States brutally removed indigenous people from their lands, when I think about the time of exile in Babylon for the people of Judah.

And in so many instances, our federal government and the religious partners who helped manage schools, focused on assimilation and removal of native culture, rather than allowing their traditions to flourish.

The same happened to Africans who were captured, sent halfway across the world, and forced into slavery. 

As the General Board of Global Ministry, we watched together, “More than a Word,” which explores the use of Native American mascots. 

What struck me among the stories were the voices of younger people who grew up either on reservations or even in more traditional white culture, but who were rediscovering their cultural identity.

Their identity had been forgotten.  Or even worse, it had been described to them as shameful, something that had to be destroyed. 

And it was hard for some to find a safe space to explore what that identity and history meant in their lives. 

So part of their weeping was about a loss of that identity.

But the other part of their grief came from knowing just how far they had been from keeping God’s laws. 

Suddenly, the rules were laid out for them plain as day, and they didn’t know how they could possibly ever make up for what they had left undone. 

But Ezra and Nehemiah don’t see this as a moment to pile on shame. 

They urge the people to dry their tears, to end their lament, to let go of their guilt and instead to gather in their homes and feast and give thanks.  

Because this is a fresh start!  

As one of my favorite hymns reminds us:

This is a day of new beginnings,

Time to remember and move on,

Time to believe what love is bringing,

Laying to rest the pain that’s gone.

This is their chance to let go of the past and put into practice the word of God that they have rediscovered. 

What has come before this moment is in the past. 

This moment they get a clean slate to start afresh and rededicate themselves to God. 

As they continue to hear God’s word read, they rediscover rituals and traditions.

One of these is Festival of Booths that takes place in the seventh month… and lo and behold, they are in the seventh month!

So they follow all of the instructions and for the first time in generations, they honor this week-long holiday.    

They also hear once again words that shape their identity as a people.

They remember how they were called together out of slavery in Egypt to be a people, set apart and holy.

That meant things like following a certain diet, refraining from intermarriage, and being dedicated to the Sabbath…

None of which were things that they had been practicing.

So, later that month, they join for a fast of repentance and recommitment. 

They rededicate themselves to the law, trusting in the God who has been steadfast and merciful. 

All of the officials, priests, and officers, singers, temple staff, gatekeepers and all of the people who were old enough to understand joined together in a binding oath to follow what they read about in Deuteronomy. 

They recommitted themselves to the law.

Their focus was on crossing every t and dotting every i. 

Keeping the Sabbath.

Refraining from intermarriage. 

Practicing Jubilee.

Offering to support the temple. 

Dedicating their first fruits.

Bringing in the tithe. 

As we think about what it means to rebuild our community, a huge part of what we need to do is remember who we are. 

A key difference between us and the people of Judah at this time is that we have a different frame of reference and a different calling.

We are not called to be a people, set apart and holy, isolated, focused on following every letter of the law.

God knows that we will fail if we try… because the people of God failed over and over again.

Last year, we joined together in UMC 101 and we explored together some of OUR foundational beliefs and practices. 

We remembered things like:

Our focus on grace and faith put into practice.

The call to reach out and share the love of God with all people.

A charge that makes room for difference and invites us to use our brains and celebrates diversity. 

All grounded and centered in the core of Christian tradition… praising the God of all creation who became flesh and lived and died and rose again so that we might truly know life. 

In Jesus Christ we have been redeemed and made right… not because we followed the law, but by his grace, and God continues to empower us by the Holy Spirit. 

And we remembered that our congregation exists for a purpose.. to help people accept and confess Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and to live their daily lives in light of their relationship with God. 

This is who we are. 

A people who love God and accept the grace God offers… and then live out that love and grace in our daily lives. 

We are called to be a witness… a light and a leaven in society, a reconciler in a world that is divided, to go into places of pain and show Christ’s hope. (Book of Discipline ¶220)

In just a few minutes, we will be invited to the table. 

Just like the people of Judah embraced their traditions and practices, this is a practice that is at the core of our being.

This is a place where we are empowered to start again.

This is a place where we recommit ourselves to God and one another.

This is the place where we find God’s strength and grace for the new beginning that awaits us.

Friends, it doesn’t matter what has come before.

There is no reason to weep or grieve or feel shame for what has been done in the past.

Because here we receive the grace of God that is our new beginning.

So may we, too, come and recommit our hearts to God on this day. 

Comfortable In Our Skin

My gym regularly has challenges that help us to stay motivated and accountable with one another and our goals. For almost three years, Elite Edge has pushed me and shaped me and it is an important part of my week and how I care for myself.

But I have to admit that I have this internal struggle going on with one of the key reasons I go and show up and put all sorts of limits on what I eat in order to accomplish the goals I set there:

I don’t always feel comfortable in my body.

I actually remember why I signed up in the first place. I had looked at this image of myself in a conference news story and it was rounder than I remembered it being. A lot rounder. To be honest, I hadn’t stepped on a scale in a while. I was filling my life with work and family and wasn’t doing much to take care of myself in healthy ways.

There are two parts of this realization that are important. My relationship with my body was virtually non-existent. I just wasn’t paying attention to it. And from a health perspective, that’s not a great thing. I was experiencing a few symptoms of dis-ease that I was ignoring but that photo of myself caused me to ask some questions of my doctor. I want to be strong and healthy and full of life as I age and this was a moment to change the story I was writing for myself. And I did.

But it also stirred up all sorts of anxiety about how I should look. What other people thought about how I looked. What I thought it meant to be young and sexy. How society portrays what a fit body looks. And success at this gym was predicated around lowering our weight and losing inches, which wraps itself all into those expectations of body image that we should be smaller, thinner, more like the images we see in the media.

There are a hundred layers of this that could each be pulled back: double standards, the objectification of women’s bodies, class and racial expectations of beauty, consent and sexual violence… and they all gravitate around a harsh reality. We do not allow people to feel safe and comfortable in their own bodies. We do not respect one another’s bodies.

These over-sexualized expectations and fat-shaming perspectives are all around us. They dominate our advertising. They feed our economy as they are used to drive our consumer desire to buy products that will help us achieve these goals. And I buy into them sometimes. It’s honestly the thing that got me to stop into the gym that morning. I was willing to try something new, to spend my money, to buy into this crazy idea that I could lose twenty pounds in six weeks… because I didn’t like what my body said about who I was.

Now, having been to this gym for a few years, I have a completely different relationship with my body.

I know how strong it is.

I have walked people of all different bodies and sizes and shapes walk into that gym and we all give that session our all and leave equally sweaty and gross and energized.

I know that I do five straight minutes of jumping jacks and know every single muscle that goes into one… because those muscles hurt for nearly a week after.

I wear skinny jeans now. And I never felt comfortable in them before because they accentuated how large my thighs were, but now, I daily wear form-fitting leggings to the gym and there are huge muscles there and I don’t hide them or cover them up and no one cares or judges. And having that space where I could stop worrying about what someone else things freed me up to stop worrying in other places too.

I notice how different foods and drinks impact how I feel in a given day. Which give me energy and which leave me feeling tired and bloated.

Because I’m more comfortable in my own skin, I’m also more comfortable in my own sexuality and that part of my relationship with my spouse has grown as we actually talk about how what we are doing makes us feel and I have let go of shame or embarrassment about how I think I look.

And in all of these three years, I’ve been a variety of different sizes. I take breaks from healthy eating. I have seasons where I push harder at the gym and where I give myself a rest. I try to focus more on what is leading to my overall health, rather than getting too wrapped up in what the scale says.

And yet… there is this part of me that still cares.

Still cares about wanting to look a certain way.

Still is uncomfortable when the scale reads over a certain number.

Still worries about the curves and love handles.

This winter, instead of a numbers based challenge, my gym is focusing on non-scale victories and so we each set three goals. And one of those primary goals for me is to get to a point where I am more comfortable in my own skin.

Where I don’t just pay attention to my body, but I love it.

I embrace it no matter what the scale says.

I respect it by taking care of it to the best of my ability.

I cherish it by holding to good boundaries between myself and others, protecting it from the actions or words that could harm it.

I celebrate it openly in the world instead of feeling shame or guilt.

I’m not there yet… but I’m working on it.

This past weekend with the Super Bowl, much has been said about Shakira and J.Lo but I have to say the very first thought I had was: look at how their bodies can move!

Here are two women, older than I am, who just shared with us a celebration of who they are with every cell of their bodies.

I saw the incredible strength it took to climb and maneuver a body on a pole. (and honestly, I thought Cirque du Soleil before someone mentioned a “stripper pole”)

I saw the sweat and hard work of incredible footwork.

I saw curves and sparkle and life and energy.

I saw a full-throated embrace of a cultural reality that is not my own through words and music and images and bodies.

I saw two women who were absolutely comfortable in their own skin… who trusted their bodies and their identity and celebrated it in front of the world.

Maybe if the first thing we see is sex, it’s because we aren’t comfortable with bodies. We aren’t comfortable with our own… or with other people’s.

Maybe it’s because we have already bought into the belief that every body is an object, rather that belonging to a person with a story and feelings that come in flesh and blood. We have no respect for the bodies of others – especially those who look or sound or think differently than us.

What if we were comfortable enough in our own skin that we could allow others to fully celebrate and be comfortable in their own without judgment or revulsion or drooling?

What if we allowed the bodies of others to teach us, inspire us, push us, free us from our own limitations?

What if we created space for all bodies, for everybody, to be celebrated and cherished, embraced and respected?

What are you even doing here?

I am exactly nine days into my renewal leave and I had a dream last night about an Administrative Council meeting.

I was back at church with all of those familiar faces, reconnecting and catching up and it was wonderful… only something was terribly wrong.

I wasn’t supposed to be there.

Last night, in reality, there was an Ad Council meeting at church and I didn’t actually go. We have great capable leaders and they are awesome without me.

But in my dream… I was there.

In my dream, I had stopped by for some reason or another. And I kept talking with people. I kept answering questions. And before I knew it, I looked at the clock and it was 10:15 pm!

I remembering a feeling of intense panic. I was on renewal leave. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was supposed to be home with my spouse and I had completely blown him off. I turned to a colleague who was sitting next to me with terror all over my face. He looked at me, partly with pity and partly with frustration. “What are you even doing here?” he asked.


One of the things that I find incredibly difficult is disconnecting from work. Because I love it. Because I’m good at it. Because it feels good, even when it is stressful, to help other people and make things work the way they should.

So far, I confess, on this renewal leave I have checked my email once.

I was looking quickly for responses to a very last minute proposal I had about changing a meeting date when I returned. I wanted to see what the responses were so I could communicate the date change with my family.

But I also glanced and saw a notification from the hospital about a church member who had been admitted. The feelings of guilt started to creep in. What if they need me? What if no one shows up? What if, heaven forbid, someone dies while I’m gone? I had to pray to God for peace and talk myself down for about an hour. “This is why you left them in the absolutely capable hands of an amazing colleague… Even Jesus took breaks… You are not the be-all and end-all of the care system at that church… Even if you miss a funeral while you are away, that doesn’t mean that you can’t still provide care when you get back...”

But there was also that pesky internal critic: “See, this is why you shouldn’t check your email when you are supposed to be on break. It sets you on a tailspin of wanting to be there and respond and make it all better. And that’s not what this time is about.

And you know what… that internal critic is right. There do need to be boundaries between my church life and my home life. I need to be able to have some dedicated space carved out for sabbath and family and renewal – not just during these four weeks, but every week. Every day, really.

For years I have had a signature line on my email that reads, “Fridays and Saturdays are my Sabbath days. I look forward to responding when I am back in the office on Monday.”

But in the past year, have I actually stopped checking my email on the weekends? Have I been holding firmly to that boundary?

The week before I left, I sent a pretty important email to my SPRC chair. Before bed, I checked my email, saw he had responded, and shot off a reply.

And immediately I got another back. He said something to the effect of: Are you on call 24/7?

It was a reminder that the expectations I have been putting on myself are not the same as what the congregation actually needs or expects.

Or maybe it should have been heard more like that colleague in my dream, with pity and frustration: “What are you even doing here?

There have been legitimate emergencies and exceptions in the course of my ministry that have called me away from my Sabbath and home time. The panicked texting of a teenager in the middle of the night who feels unsafe. The early morning trips to the hospital before a surgery to pray. The call on a Saturday afternoon that someone has died. Two entire weeks spent out of state for General Conference.

But an email is not an emergency.

A meeting I am not responsible for is not an excuse for breaking boundaries.

A text or voicemail that can wait until the next day is not a sufficient reason to give up time with friends or family.

And maybe in those spaces and those moments when I am tempted to show up or respond or engage I need to keep that voice in the back of my mind:

What are you even doing here?

That voice comes along with other questions like:

  • Why have you given this energy when it can wait?
  • Why are you sacrificing this time you have set aside for family?
  • Is this really about them? Or is it about you and your own need to feel needed?
  • What are you avoiding by choosing to spend your time this way?
  • Who else can help/support/respond?

I woke up from that dream with my heart in my throat. I’m anxious that this time of renewal and rejuvenation will simply result in a return to old patterns and behaviors.

I mean, I’ve never been five hours late home, like I was in this dream… but I have spent an entire evening only partially present: checking emails, responding to texts, thinking and pondering something that needed to be done the next day.

And when I’m in that space, the truth is, I’m not really home. Not fully, anyways.

So if nothing else, one of the things I want to carry back into the real world with me is the avoidance of that little voice: “What are you even doing here?”

And I think that I can prevent that question from needing to be asked by utilizing some tools that have been really helpful during this time away. Things like changing my notification settings on my phone so that emails don’t show up during evening hours. Or, putting my phone with my wallet instead of carrying it around all the time. Or removing the Facebook app from my phone. Honestly, its randomly coming across a pastoral care concern or a church polity question on facebook that often prompts me reaching out with an email or a text or response when it could legitimately wait until the next day.

I think remembering that little voice will hold me accountable to my boundaries. I think it will remind me that I don’t have to be “on” 24/7. I think it help me think of those who are impacted by where I choose to spend my energy – for good or for bad. There is a whole lot of truth jam-packed in that little question: “What are you even doing here?

law or grace?

i was talking with a friend tonight about guilt and its absolutely pervasive impact on our lives. She was talking about something that is a normal and healthy part of her life and yet there was still residual guilt from societal standards that come up afterwards.

Guilt is such a terrible terrible thing. And I think I feel that way because I’m troubled by the fact we just can’t figure out how to live as people under grace…. we still think we are under the law and that we are constatnly being measured up against something.

I know I do it all the time. I neglect to spend an afternoon visiting church members and instead spend it connecting with colleagues online and I feel guilty. I don’t practice my guitar, and I feel guilty. I look at the dishes piled up on my counter, and I feel guilty. And those are just simple things. Guilt pervades our lives.

And it pervades my church. I think my biggest uphill battle in this congregation is trying to get people to stop talking about hell and the law and having to “straighten up and fly right” (they say this ALL THE TIME!) and to just focus on loving one another and loving ourselves and loving God. I think it comes down to Paul’s own struggle with the law that he had lived with his whole life. He wanted so much to live by grace, but was constantly seeing his body in the light of the law.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but there is a guy I visit with who wants to know why I don’t talk about hell more, why I’m not preaching for people to flee from the wrath to come. I don’t see our faith that way. My faith and my salvation is about restoring my relationship with God, not making sure I don’t spend an eternity burning in hell. And in relationships, we are constantly growing and changing and we make mistakes, but it is the willingness to keep being in the relationship that matters. I think that is why the idea of covenant is so important and why God, no matter now many times Israel was unfaithful to the covenant, found ways to bring them back into relationship. the problem wasn’t that they did bad things. the problem was they neglected their relationship with God and put something else in God’s place.

I’ve been married for only a year and a half – but even in that short time, I know what that is like. We make mistakes all the time. We treat each other like crap somedays, and sometimes we make poor choices like putting work or down time or making dinner before each other. It happens. But if we were to let the past and all of the ways we have not fulfilled our marriage covenant determine our future, if we were to carry all of those mistakes with us and bring guilt into the present, we would never be able to forgive and love one another. The biggest piece of marriage advice I got was to never go to bed angry with one another. On the flip side, never go to bed feeling bad about something you have done.

What if we lived that kind of relationship with God? Where inspite of our failings, we went to bed leaving the past behind us and with a renewed commitment to be in relationship for another day? Covenants are not about prescribed standards and boxes to check and things we have to do – it is about a choice to be in relationship. And in a healthy relationship, there can be no guilt.