Coming Home

Throughout the next several weeks many of us will find ourselves coming home.  Coming home from college, coming home to visit,  and even some will find ourselves coming home to church because we’ve been gone for a little while.  If you have been engaging in this week’s Bible reading (2 Chronicles 35-Nehemiah 6), you realize much of what the Bible is talking about is just that: coming home.

For nearly 40 years the southern kingdom of Judah has been in exile.  After the destruction of the city of Jerusalem in 587 BC, many of the people (except for the poor) were taken to the capital city of Babylon and forced to serve the kings of Babylon.  While in Babylon, God’s people face the threat of losing their identity through cultural assimilation.  But as the Babylonian empire weakens, the Israelites have a chance to return to Jerusalem.  Nearly 40 years have passed when they arrive in Jerusalem.  The walls have been destroyed, the temple is in ruins, and basically the whole place needs a restart.  This isn’t exactly what you want to see when you return home.  And then there are all of the fears: fears of invading nations, fears of war, and fears of returning to exile.  It’s in this atmosphere of instability and chaos that we enter the stories of Ezra and Nehemiah.  Now some fun facts about Ezra and Nehemiah, originally they were one book.  In fact, for years of Christian history they were considered Ezra 1 and 2 it wasn’t until the Protestant Reformation that they began to be divided into separate books, Ezra and Nehemiah.  Although the books were written at different times in history, their content focuses on the restoration the city of Jerusalem.  

The themes of Ezra and Nehemiah include rebuilding the temple, rejecting marriages to foreign women, reestablishing regular practices of worship, rebuilding the walls of the city of Jerusalem, and reclaiming the Torah (first five books of the Bible) as central to faith and the worship of God. There are a lot of fears to overcome, and rebuilding doesn’t come without opposition, but with faith, God’s people are able to restore the Temple and the entire city of Jerusalem.  Even though these two books are very small, they have a large impact on the identity of God’s people and how they relate back to God. The religious practices laid out in Ezra and Nehemiah and emphasis of Temple/ Torah become the foundation for Jewish worship for the next several hundred years.     

Ezra and Nehemiah are books of hope, reminding us that it is never too late to return home.  It is never too late to return to God.  This week I want to challenge you to think of a time in your life when you were exiled (from family, from faith, from God, from church).  Sometimes exile happens because of our choices, other times it happens because of the decisions of others, but what was that time in your life like?  How did you return home?  Are you still trying to return?  You can make your way back home.  God is ready; are you? 

Blessings, 

Pastor Rachel