Monday, May 16, 2011

The plunge into joy

Some of my favorite writings in the Old Testament share Ezra's return to Jerusalem. Ezra, a priest and scholar, had spent time in Babylon with the captives before Cyrus of Persia set those same captives free and allowed them to return to the great old city. Ezra, my Message Bible says, took charge.

"Ezra wept," the scripture says of the time when they began to give support to the rebuilding of the Temple, an event that is almost impossible to believe. "Ezra wept, prostrate in front of the Temple of God. As he prayed and confessed, a huge number of men, women, and children of Israel gathered around him. All the people were no weeping as if their hearts would break."

Days later, the Israelites responded to notices put up. All the people met on the 20th day of the ninth month, sitting down in the plaza in front of the Temple. It was raining. The people were restless, uneasy, anxious.

Then Ezra stood up and confronted the people about an issue of marrying "foreign wives." It was a terribly divisive sin. It could have split those who had just returned from captivity, those who spent 70 years put away. It could have stopped the young country in its tracks. It certainly could have split those who were beginning again to worship after years without a Temple.

It is always this way, isn't it?

It's dancing, drinking, smoking, homosexuality, abortion, adultery. It's the hot topic of the day. All serious subjects. All threats to ones who take their "religion" seriously.

We have great difficulty in understanding how and why marrying foreign wives would be such a serious sin. Perhaps in 50 years there will be many who don't understand why so many denominations had to suddenly deal with this serious sin and that serious sin. Aren't the scriptures clear on this subject and that?

The truth is that in many cases, the scriptures aren't actually that clear. But more importantly, one can make those scriptures less than clear merely by putting one's own interpretation into the mix. It's always that thing we don't have a problem with that we rail against. In other words, if one has no alcoholic tendencies, one is absolutely sure the Bible is 100 percent, dead-certain against all forms of drinking alcohol. Heck I have two persons who come to Sunday School but don't stay for church because, if I understand it correctly, they think my way of worshipping is less than reverent and they won't stand for it.

But I'm not here this morning to talk about being more strict with sin.

I'm here to talk about those wonderful moments of worship where sin is the furthest thing imaginable. For it is in those moments that clarity about sin makes itself known.

When the Temple was finally complete, the Israelites celebrated, Passover actually. The priests and Levites made themselves ritually clean. They prepared themselves for the event.

Then, according to the Message translation, "God plunged them into a sea of joy..."

In the midst of celebrating what God had done, what God was about to do, all thoughts of sin were washed away even as the blood of the lambs flowed like water into the desert around the great city.

My point is this: instead of worrying so much that we are right, let us worry if we are pleasing God. Instead of worrying if our brother or our sister are proving to be righteous, let us worry about our own righteousness. Instead of judging what the persons next to us is doing, let us take the plank out of our own eye.

Let us worship God, in our own way, in our own time, as we can. Then let God plunge us into joy.

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