“Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb.”
Psalm 126:4
This season when I have been preaching sermons based on the words of Old Testament prophets, and especially sermons based on passages from Jeremiah and Habakkuk, has provided an opportunity to reflect on the era of the Babylonian exile. The catastrophic losses that Israel experienced through this event made an indelible impression them. It changed everything. It meant loss of home, loss of culture; but hardest of all it meant a breach of trust in their relationship with God. Suddenly God was not who they thought he was. The One who promised that David’s descendants would be on the throne in Jerusalem forever seemed to have reneged on that pledge. Who were they now without Zion and, more to the point, what was Zion now that God had withdrawn his favor?
In light of this, prophets like Habakkuk and Jeremiah invited people to step back, to wait, to watch. If God is not who you thought he was, then who is he? If God has withdrawn you from Zion, then take this opportunity to enquire whether or not he might still be with you even here by the waters of Babylon. Where might you find God’s comfort now that all the familiar sources of comfort are gone? The work they did in this era was fruitful. In the absence of the Temple new ways of worship were developed, new songs of praise and lament were written. The synagogue was born and became place where the words and the promises of God were heard, and exile proved fertile soil for the composition of some of the most enduring Psalms.
Then after 70 years away from Zion, after the deaths of many of the people who were sent into exile, after Cyrus of Persia had defeated Babylon and decreed that the Jews could return to their beloved homeland, they went home. But home was not at all what they had left 70 years before. Biblical scholars label this period “The Restoration,” but little of their earlier experience was restored. The work of rebuilding the Temple and the wall of the city was started but the early results of that work were not very promising.
Ezra reports an example of this at the occasion of the laying of the foundation for the Temple (Ezra 3:8-13). At the worship service celebrating this event the priests led the gathered crowd in the familiar response: “The Lord is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” Yet there were competing perceptions about just how good God had been to them. For while half the gathered crowd shouted in affirmation, the other half, made up of older people who had seen the earlier version of the Temple, “wept with a loud voice . . . . so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping.” What was a sign of restoration and renewal for some, was for others an invitation to hopelessness that did little more than underscore the irreversible history of their defeat.
While it is a bit of a stretch to draw too strong of a correlation between our 17 months of COVID-19 sequestration and the 70 years of Babylonian Exile, there are lessons from the Exile that speak to our current place in this saga of the pandemic. Now that we are in the process of what we call “opening up” there are some truths about Israel’s experience of restoration that might help us to understand what to expect in the transition that is before us. The most prominent of these lessons is to remember that “restoration” is rarely about going back to the way things were before the dislocation. If our comfort is derived merely from an experience that things are getting “back to normal” we are bound to be disappointed. COVID has changed many things and the process of opening-up our sanctuary as we come out of COVID will be a much longer and more complex process than our quick response to the crisis that closed us down in March of last year. Going forward is not necessarily a return to normalcy, rather it is a matter of moving forward into a new place that is based on the truth that COVID could not touch: God’s love is steadfast, and Jesus is still Lord.
I am grateful for your prayers and positive spirit as we anticipate our return to in-person worship. I ask for your gentleness and patience as we walk across this familiar threshold in the wake of very unfamiliar circumstances. When we return we will be “returning” to many new things. We will have a congregation gathering not just in-person but a congregation also gathering on-line. We won’t initially be singing but listening to music recorded for the worship service. We will be wearing masks and there will be fewer chairs in the sanctuary. The shoulder-to-shoulder post-service levity and libation in the narthex will not be a part of our experience. And we will not initially have programing for children during worship. Those are all loses; all reasons to moan along with those at the laying of the Temple foundation who could not see what might lie ahead but could only feel the loss of what had not been restored.
It’s ok to feel grief and dissatisfaction that is born of loss. But it is also important for us to recognize that loss is not the only reality at play in these times. There is a kind of “severe mercy” that grows out of loss. Sometimes having things taken away highlights what cannot be taken away and so leads us into a deeper appreciation of the grace and love of God. Isaiah says it well:
Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
Wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people,
the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.
Isaiah 43:18-21
David Rohrer
05/22/2021