
At this time of year when New Year’s resolutions are either being embraced with the zeal of the convert or are hanging by the most tenuous of threads and as we face continuous onslaughts from the elements that make the possibility of spring seem eternally distant, much of our attention can be grabbed by self-help, life hacks and other proferrings of counsel and solutions of varying credibility to existence’s challenges. There is a lot of it in books, orders of magnitude more on the internet and the social media drivel river is unending in its flow of unsolicited advice and guidance.
In fact there is too much of it; the human condition does not lack for wisdom or insight, rather there is a superfluity of it – we need the discernment to perceive where the right guidance is, what guidance we need and how to cleave to it.
Into this dizzying vortex of how to do the everything of everything, comes the simple majesty of today’s two readings, a pair, a dyad, where in both we have the reading of scripture in the holy place. The Gospel gives us Jesus reading Isaiah in his hometown Nazareth. The excerpt is a prophetic text, giving Jesus the authority to be referring backwards to enable him to exhort others to look and go forwards.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
He is reading aloud the prophecy about himself in Isaiah to his kith and kin, his besties – he is saying and pointing to the Torah – look folks it’s here, I am here from the Lord and I am going to do the job foretold. Look no further everyone it’s in the book, eight hundred years ago it was written, and the truth has been there all along and I am going to fulfil it.
Our first reading from Nehemiah is on the same theme of coming back to ancient truth – reverting and renewing. The man for whom this Old Testament book is named, Nehemiah was a Jew but a high ranking official in the court of the Persian King. He is the cup bearer, not someone who wanders around with a beaker of wine, but rather someone responsible for the security of the royal family’s food and drink: a key figure, a place of the highest trust and authority. The state of Jewry at the time was pitiful, the land had been sacked by the Babylonians, the Temple of Solomon lost, the culture was wholly shattered, and the law observed no more. Out of Nehemiah’s own zeal and inspired concern for the state of his people and religion and also because it suited the geopolitical machinations of Artaxerxes the Persian King to have Judah in his sphere of influence, Nehemiah returned home to rebuild the Walls of Jerusalem, and to rebuild the foundations of Faith and Law and Culture at the same time. He was returning, going back to allow the Jewish people to be renewed to go forward.
In the element that we have had this morning Ezra a teacher and authority in the Law reads the Law in a public place from daybreak ‘til noon and the people listen, for six hours, he’s clearly good at his vocation, articulate and expressive because they weep openly. They see, they have the realisation that through all the dissipation, dissolution and despair that the wisdom, the structure, the how to be and how to live had been there all along. All the comfort, reassurance, direction and arrangements for life had been there beside them. Nehemiah tells them to cheer up and have a party.
The essence though that I receive from these two readings is that this, the Bible, in its various manifestations over the millenia, is it, it’s all in here. From Ezra and Nehemiah’s exertions to pull the Jewish people back into the fold to Jesus pointing to the prophecy of himself in Isaiah and all else it’s here. If we are looking for wisdom, reassurance and truth, it’s all here and has been quietly and continuously, we have no need of the latest fads, fancies and trends.
I had this brought home to me the week before last. An Harrovian in my class, let’s call him Cecil, because no boys at Harrow are called Cecil, said something that gave me great courage and a renewed resolve to delve back into the wisdom we’ve had all along at our fingertips to allow us to face the future. The context was a group I teach about Human Evolution, and how humans evolved to use tools. I asked them to think about what they would take with them into the wild in a post-apocalyptic survival scenario, what tools would they rescue. The rest of the class, suggested the things you would imagine, knives, rucksack, first aid kit, tinned food etc., Cecil said “The Bible – it’s the only survival guide you could need”.
So here it is, The Bible it looks enormous – Martin tells me that the books he gets at school now, with chapters, are just sooo long – but look at this one wow – it’s huge, plenty of chapters – but as I have heard from Reverend Alison, Father Nic and Reverend Graham there is incredible economy in it too – few words are wasted and patient reading shows the layers of meaning and give us greater depths of richness. It is taut, layered and piled with impact and depth – perhaps what you would expect for something that is our guide to all life.
The passage from Nehemiah is no exception, behind the story itself, which is powerful and instructive, there is more. Ezra the priest, there is significance in his name, it’s an Aramaic nickname from the Hebrew Azaryahu – “God Helps”. A signpost that as we embrace the challenges and chances of life’s changes, through the wisdom of the book, that we don’t do so alone and in our own strength – God Helps. Tradition held Ezra to be a descendant of the last High Priest of Solomon’s temple – making him a figure of origins and continuity, deepening his gravitas, an ancient one. There’s more, the action takes place at the Water Gate in Jerusalem is where the Solomon’s Temple had been, it was where the Gihon Spring was – city’s source of water, the source therefore of life, probably the reason Jerusalem was on that spot at all – the reading of the Law is intertwined with the same space as gives organic life and sustains it.
So, as we look the rest of 2025 in the eye with all our aspirations and tribulations swirling around us in this winter’s storms, we need only to look back to this – to go ever forwards.