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Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Psalm 19:7-14
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:16-30
Probably most of us have passed through seasons in our life when things didn’t look very hopeful. Perhaps we went through a health crisis when there didn’t seem to be much hope for recovery. Maybe we found ourselves in a financial bind, and we didn’t see how we could recover from it. Some important relationship turned sour, and it didn’t look like there was much hope for reconciliation. Possibly we found ourselves in some situation of great danger, in a violent storm or on a battlefield or facing some kind of imminent collision, and we didn’t have much hope of coming through without great damage or injury. And it could be that our sense of hopelessness doesn’t relate to our personal situation; we may not be very sanguine about the prospects for our business, or some organization we belong to, our church, or even our country.
Hope is a critical factor in our general outlook on life, and being able to sustain hope in the face of difficulty is one of the benefits of the Christian life. The apostle Paul wrote that three things abide, three attitudes that are always with us as believers: faith, hope, and love (1 Corinthians 13:13). We have the assurance of the victory of God over evil, and that gives us hope. How do we get that assurance? As Paul wrote to the Romans, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4). Hearing and responding to the Word of God is a key factor in developing and maintaining that hopeful outlook we all need to move forward in life.
The readings for today bring this out in different ways, so let’s take a look at them. We’ll start with what Paul writes to the Corinthian Christians about the various gifts of the Holy Spirit. “You are the body of Christ,” he reminds us, “and individually members of it.“ And he lists a variety of spiritual gifts: working of miracles or signs or mighty deeds; the ability to heal various diseases or afflictions; helping, or supporting others in their different responsibilities within the life of the Christian community; administration, ensuring that the work of the community of faith proceeds smoothly and on target; different kinds of tongues as utterances of praise and thanksgiving in worship.
But before all these, Paul lists three functions within the body of Christ: apostles, prophets, and teachers. These are the “offices,“ let’s call them, that set forth the Word of God in the community. If we’re going to experience the hope that comes “through the encouragement of the Scriptures“ we need to have teachers of the Word, people who can explain what the Lord is telling us in the Holy Scriptures so the application to our life, and our life choices, becomes clear.
We need to have teachers, but we need to be teachers as well. Of course, we teach the Word in various ways. As parents, we do our best to model the principles of godly living so that our children can more easily “catch“ the Jesus way and follow it for themselves. And, in general, we try to exemplify that way in our conduct toward all people we deal with, imparting to them the same hope for a satisfying and victorious life that we ourselves know. But, beyond teaching by example, there is always the need for explicit teaching of the Scriptures by parents, by pastors, by Sunday School workers, by Bible instructors and professors in our various institutions, by lecturers and presenters in different media, by bloggers and web site creators. A teacher might be anyone who makes it his business to present the Word of God in truth, and in fidelity to the intent of the inspired writers — those who, as Peter says, “spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit“ (2 Peter 1:21). In this way the “living hope“ of biblically grounded faith can be made available to many.
This takes us to our reading from the Book of Nehemiah, where we find Ezra, who is called “the priest and scribe of the law of the God of heaven“ (Ezra 7:12), leading the people of Judah in their affirmation of loyalty to the teaching of Moses. The Judeans have been through a tough time, with the destruction of their city by the Babylonians and with their leaders being carried into exile. But now the Persians have allowed them to reestablish their community in Jerusalem under their governor Nehemiah, and Ezra the priest is reading the Law of Moses to the people to set the tone for their restored way of life.
But Ezra needs some help; he’s reading the Law in Hebrew, but the language of the empire is Aramaic and that’s what the people understand. Somebody needs to translate, and the translators’ names are given here. The people who put together our lectionary left out those verses, I suppose because they thought most lay readers would have trouble pronouncing these Bible names! But these were teachers of the Word along with Ezra, and the original editors of the Bible thought it was important to record their names. I don’t want to leave them out either, so I will read the whole passage:
And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that they had made for the purpose. And beside him stood Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah on his right hand, and Pedaiah, Mishael, Malchijah, Hashum, Hashbaddanah, Zechariah, and Meshullam on his left hand. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and as he opened it all the people stood. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,“ lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Also Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, the Levites, helped the people to understand the Law, while the people remained in their places. They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense [i.e., they translated], so that the people understood the reading. (Nehemiah 8:4-8)
Once the reading and translating from the Law has been completed, Ezra and the leaders dismiss the people with the reminder that the teaching of the Scriptures has made this an especially holy day. The people are inclined to be sad, perhaps because upon hearing the words of the Law they realize how far short they have fallen in living the life the Lord intended for them. But Ezra tells them, “Don’t be sad, don’t grieve. Instead, be happy and celebrate, “for the joy of the Lord is your strength“ (Nehemiah 8:10). The reading of God’s word has given the people hope, just as it gives us hope of better things to come as we hear it read to us.
Because, as the Psalmist reminds us in our Psalm for today,
The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes . . . (Psalm 19:7-8)
The satisfaction of knowing that we respect, and try to follow, the Lord’s design for human life — instead of our own design or one imposed by our corrupt culture — is a source of hope. As the Psalmist says, it “revives our soul“ and “rejoices our heart“ when we hear the teaching of the Word of God, for the Word reminds us of our Creator’s care for us and his great desire that we enjoy his healing, his abundant provision, and his deliverance from whatever keeps us from experiencing the full and joyful life he has for us.
In our Gospel reading Jesus, given the opportunity to teach the Scriptures in Nazareth, turns to the words of Isaiah that proclaim this very hope: “good news to the poor,“ that the Lord would address and meet their need. God will act to release those enslaved by evil forces and harmful influences; to restore sight to the blind and give insight to those who’ve been prevented from seeing the truth of God; to liberate those oppressed by falsehoods, whether arising from their own distorted thinking or from ideologies imposed upon them by others.
Jesus’ message is a message of hope because it proclaims “the year of the Lord’s favor,“ the time when God will act to bless and deliver his people. It’s a message of hope because it’s a message from the Word of God, from “the encouragement of the Scriptures“ as Paul says. It’s a message of hope because Jesus, himself, is the bringer of that hope. “The spirit of the Lord is upon me,“ he says, to bring the good news to the poor. The ultimate good news is that Jesus is alive, praying for us and by his Holy Spirit creating in us those impulses and inclinations and expectations that propel us toward our hope, “Christ in you,“ as Paul said, “the hope of glory“ (Colossians 1:27). The risen Jesus pointed out to his disciples that all the Scriptures lead to him: “Everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled“ (Luke 24:44). The Scriptures give us hope and encouragement because they lead us to Jesus. As Martin Luther famously said, “All the stories of Holy Writ, if viewed aright, point to Christ.“
We can be even more specific about the hope believers in Jesus receive from the Word of God. Sometimes people say the New Testament gives us the hope of life after death, or our hope of heaven. But if you actually read the New Testament you don’t always find hope stated in exactly that way. Instead, you might find Paul, for example, expressing our hope differently. He says we are to “live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ“ (Titus 2:12b-13). Our hope is the hope that Jesus will assume and extend his dominion over all worldly authorities, sweeping aside the forces of evil and establishing his righteousness and truth in world affairs. As John states in his First Letter, “For this purpose was the Son of God manifest, to destroy the works of the evil one“ (1 John 3:8 KJV). Our hope is the hope expressed by the prophet Habakkuk, not that we should escape this world but rather that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea“ (Habakkuk 2:14). Peter, in his Second Letter, expresses the hope this way: “According to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells“ (2 Peter 3:13).
In today’s world many people are without hope. On a recent train trip to California we passed by encampments of homeless people who had set up their tents under viaducts or wherever they could find a spot — a hopeless sort of life, if you ask me. Some passengers I met told of having been held up while driving to the depot because someone was threatening to take his life by dropping from a bridge. In fact, our train was held up for several hours while police dealt with a trespasser who was purposely endangering his own life on a bridge ahead of us. The holiday season we recently passed through is well known as a time when hopeless people take action to put their own lives in peril.
Millions today are impacted by the effects of warfare, whether in Ukraine, the Middle East, or elsewhere, rendered hopeless perhaps by the destruction of their communities and their livelihood, their injuries, and the loss of their loved ones. And think of the seemingly hopeless situation of the many families displaced from their ruined homes by the horrible wildfires in the Los Angeles area. The world needs hope today, as it has so often needed it in times past. We can be thankful that “through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope,“ and that by whatever means are available to us — and especially the teaching of the Word of God — we can extend that same hope to others.
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