Virtue #3: Flourishing Churches Love the Local – Nehemiah 2, 4, and 6
/Lectionary Readings for Jan. 23, 2022 3rd Sunday After the Epiphany, Year C
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 v10 Go back to your homes, and prepare a feast. Bring out the best food and drink you have, and welcome all to your table, especially those who have nothing. This day is special. It is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve over your past mistakes.
Psalm 19 v14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a v13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free – and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
Luke 4:14-21 v15 Jesus would regularly go into their synagogues and teach. His teaching earned Him the respect and admiration of everyone who heard Him.
But this week we’ll look at Nehemiah 2:2-5, 16-18; 4:6, 11-18, 23; and 6:15-16 as we continue an eight-part series looking at the virtues of flourishing churches.
Weekly Meditative Exercise
Christianity includes a long and rich tradition of embracing meditative practices as a way of keeping us connected with God, ourselves, and each other. I encourage you to spend some time each week (ideally 10-30 minutes) trying each weekly exercise. You will naturally find some more appealing and effective than others. You’ll like some but not others, and after 6-12 months you’ll better understand what’s available and what helps you.
This week’s exercise focuses on Unity (pages 177-179)
From Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun. InterVarsity Press, 2005.
Desire: to live in harmony with Jesus’ desire for the church to be one; to be a bridge-builder and peacemaker in the body of Christ.
Definition: Christians across time and cultures are unified when our words and actions reflect our professed faith that we should love God, love ourselves, and love others. We are unified when we, the Body of Christ, function as a healthy, coordinated body.
Scripture: “How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters live together in peace!” (Psalm 133:1)
As you engage with this exercise, I encourage you to ponder these questions...
Where do you find unity with God, with yourself, and with others?
How can you celebrate the joy found in that unity?
How can you include others in the unity you enjoy?
Where do you find a lack of unity (i.e. conflict) in your relationship with God, with yourself, or with others?
What steps can you take to identify and resolve that conflict through God-led connection or disconnection?
Peace through Leadership Quotes
“Society is unity in diversity.” ~ George Herbert Mead, 1863-1931
“Unity is strength... when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.” ~ Mattie Stepanek, 1990-2004. Mattie described himself as “a poet, a peacemaker, and a philosopher who played.”
As Christians, we are strongest when our diverse skillsets, personalities, and interests are unified through our faith. When we are unified in our quest for creating spaces and moments of peace, we will have the strength to overcome obstacles, endure setbacks, and continue following God’s lead.
Any time I preach or lead a group, regardless of age, I start the same way. I’m going to say three short sentences. Please repeat each sentence, with enthusiasm.
God made me. God loves me. God has plans for me.
Preface to Today’s Scripture Reading
We’re now three weeks into our eight-part series based on the book Eight Virtues of Rapidly Growing Churches by Matt Miofsky and Jason Byassee. As I’ve mentioned, I prefer the term “flourishing” to “rapidly growing.”
To recap, the first virtue focused on miracles. Flourishing churches believe that God has worked and will continue working in the life of their church in miraculous ways. The second virtue is that flourishing churches quickly integrate new people into the life of the church.
The third virtue is that flourishing churches love everything local. Churches flourish when their members (and leaders) love where they live and, more importantly, the people who live in their community.
We live in a mobile society. According to the US Census, nearly 10% of Americans move EVERY year. That means 31 million people – parents, kids, grandparents, college grads, etc. are uprooted from who and what they know and often love. One in their new location, they have hours to months to figure out local streets, stores, resources, and relationships. Moving can be heartbreaking and/or renewing.
In today’s Bible story, a fellow named Nehemiah has found personal success in a foreign land, but he misses his hometown, Jerusalem. He loves Jerusalem and the people who live there. His love for the locals drove him to return and rally the community to restore their physical structures. In doing so, they also restored their spiritual relationship with God and each other.
Let’s open our ears, minds, and hearts as we hear a story of how loving the local can lead to reunion, restoration, and growth.
Read Nehemiah 2:2-5, 16-18; 4:6, 11-18, 23; and 6:15-16.
If you look behind our church office building, the playground’s fence-corner is covered by the creeping branches of a Trumpet Vine which is growing up the adjacent telephone pole. Last summer, I gathered several instruments of destruction and spent a few hours cutting branches so it wouldn’t grow farther up the pole and weigh down the various wires. But... you might also notice that the vine seems to be as healthy as ever today and has grown just as high as it was, if not higher.
Why is it still growing? Because I didn’t kill the plant. I left a battered remnant that, though a fraction of what it once was, remains fundamentally healthy and stubbornly grows using whatever resources God provides: sunlight, air, and water. Despite my harassment, it continues to... flourish.
I love this photo of the Kalaloch Tree of Life near Forks, WA. Against what appear to be all odds and its precarious situation, this tree hangs on and continues growing, though much slower than the trumpet vine. Finding enough sunlight, air, and water, it also continues to... flourish.
In both cases, we can learn from two observations:
Both plants continue living and growing because they have healthy roots embedded in their local context which makes them resilient.
Compared to each other, “flourishing” looks very different. Comparing them to each other to pick a “winner” seems preposterous. Congratulating each of them for overcoming obstacles and setbacks as they continue to grow seems far more appropriate.
Getting back to the story of Nehemiah, one verse that has stuck with me for decades is 4:17, “Even common workers carried their loads in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and held a weapon with the other hand.”
Since I have neither served in the military nor as a first responder, it’s difficult for me to imagine working in such conditions. But that was life 2,500 years ago. The Israelite’s city – and their relationship with God – was in shambles. Nehemiah knew that restoring the city and the people to their full potential would take hard work, which would naturally draw the attention of their enemies. But he embraced the work ahead because he loved his community, and he inspired others to join him by reminding them how much they loved their town and the people who lived there.
Though we today are certainly not in shambles, our buildings and our relationships with God, with ourselves, and with each other require regular maintenance. While the ancient Israelites needed to build walls to ensure their safety, today we need to continue the Methodist tradition of social justice work that tears down walls of prejudice and phobias that lead to fear, exclusion, and oppression.
When we do the hard work of starting something new or taking a public position and speaking against what we believe is wrong and speaking for what we believe is right... like Nehemiah’s crew, we too may face verbal attacks from people who consider us “enemies.”
For example, when explaining our church’s ever-evolving policies on wearing masks, several of us have endured everything from eye rolls, to sarcastic or mocking comments, to profanity-laced screams. Nevertheless, we persist in our work to serve others as we carry shields that protect us from believing we are anything less than precious children of a God who loves us. And we carry swords that cut through pessimism, negative assumptions, and misplaced anger so that we can open up space for God’s Spirit to connect our hearts with the hearts of others.
We do this hard work because we love our community and want it to thrive. Since the day I arrived here, all of you have told me how much you love our community. All of us share the frustrations of slow internet connections and days without power; Susanville is not perfect. But deeper than those gripes and groans, you love the people and places that make Susanville home.
The more time and energy we invest in our community, the more our community will trust us and thus be open to hearing the Good News of God’s love for them. We’re already seeing new sprouts of growth, new connections with people at local businesses, non-profits, and city agencies. We will need to continue patiently nurturing this growth, anticipating what may blossom in our future.
I love the last verse we read today. After seeing the wall around Jerusalem rebuilt in record time, the Jewish community of faith looked at their accomplishment and declared, “Only one possible conclusion could be drawn: it was not just our efforts that had done this thing. God had been working beside us all along.”
If we look at the success of our own HOPE Food Pantry during the first six months we were open as well as how that success has led to new connections, new relationships, and new opportunities, I think you can all agree, “Only one possible conclusion can be drawn... God has been working beside us all along.”
Thinking about the trumpet vine and the old tree, we might not be the biggest, the flashiest, or the fastest growing church in town, but we are growing; we are flourishing. And God is miraculously working beside us as we share with others what it means to be part of the Kingdom of God, part of the family we love, the family we call our church.
Amen? Amen!