Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10; Luke 4:14-21
January 21, 2001
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
One of the most competitive games that I play is the game of Scrabble with Joy. We are fiercely competitive trying to use up all of our letters in every turn. We take or Joy would say, “I take.” an extraordinary amount of time trying to have more than one word created in each turn. We finally had to set a kitchen timer to hurry me up. Rather than to be happy giving Joy a chance to get a ‘triple word square,’ I would try to block her by putting a hard letter there so she couldn’t create a new word on that square. But in the end—the long scheme of things—she is usually the winner! Creating words on a Scrabble board even if it’s very competitive gathers Joy and me together.
Words do matter. In some countries, words and language are so important that people die for it. Recent language riots in Algeria resulted in the deaths of four Berbers protesting the government’s decision to make Arabic the official language of Algeria, a slap at the Berber’s Tamazight tongue.
In Pakistan, riots broke out protesting Urdu over Bengali, Sindhi, Punjabi and others. Even in our own country, we have a long tradition of language battles including the fight over whether we have English-only or bilingual education in our schools.
And it goes without saying that our church has seen and experienced occasions in our own history the conflicts over English-speaking and Chinese-speaking matters. Words do matter—more than we think.
I can remember growing up as a Chinese-American in Boston where prejudice and racism reign when we were told, “Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but words never do.” Words to play with. Words that cause riots. Words that can hurt deep down inside. Words after all do matter.
Words of God
Words are so important that they are used by God to create the world. In Genesis, when God began creating the world, how did God do it? Through the word. “And God said, ‘Let there be light.’ ” And there was light. Just by speaking, God creates the world.
God continues to speak. On a starry night, God speaks to old Abraham, making a promise to him, “Abraham, even though you and Sarah are very old, I am going to make a great people out of you.” Israel is created from the word of God. From out of nobodies, this ragtag nation of nomads, a great nation comes forth that is a blessing to all the peoples of the world.
From out of nothing, God created the world by using words. The words of God make the world.
So why are we here this morning? What has brought us together today? Now as the preacher, I would like to think that the sermon was the reason why you came to church this morning! No. What convened us this morning is not my words, but the word of God. God is calling us to be the church. Jesus is calling each of us to come forth and to be disciples.
When you think about our church or any church, it’s amazing that we are here together., As the world judges these things, we have little to hold us together. We come from a dizzying variety of backgrounds, perspectives, economic classes, and places where we live. We are Chinese-speaking and English-speaking. That we are here at all is a miracle—a great testimony to the power of God’s word.
When we come to church on Sunday morning, it’s like Genesis all over again. God speaks and something comes into being that was not in existence before God gave the word. God said, “Let there be FCBC.” And there was FCBC. God brings something out of nothing through the word. God brings nobodies like us and makes us a great church.
Return from Exile
In our Scriptures for today, we see the people of Judah had just returned from exile in Babylon. Their governor Nehemiah—a good and faithful man—led them in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem and instituting social and religious reforms.
While in exile, the people missed hearing about God’s laws. So while they were rebuilding the wall, a scroll was found. It is a Torah scroll, a scroll that contains the words of Israel’s law.
When Ezra, the priest read the Torah, the people began to weep. They wept perhaps it has been so long since anyone in Israel has heard the law, or because they realized, when the word is read, how far they have strayed from faithfulness to God’s law.
Or perhaps they wept for joy. They wept because they joyfully realized that God has not left them, forsaken them to their own devices. God has come as the word to them. God speaks to them through these words of Scripture. Without these words, they would not have survived. They couldn’t have made it. These words constituted the people of Israel and preserved them through the thick and thin of life even to today.
Reading the Bible
Unlike these exiled Israelites who were deprived of the Torah, we don’t have a problem with access to the Scriptures in our own languages. We have pew Bibles. And it’s a sure bet that in every one of our homes, we have at least a Bible or two sitting around. Regrettably, our problem is that we don’t read our Bibles as regularly as we should.
This past week, there was an article in the newspapers about how the Oakland schools were not making the grade. Seventy-five percent of Oakland middle school students—about 10,000 children—read below the national average. In this article, there was a sixth grader at the after-school homework club at King Estates Middle School with her friend coaxing her to work harder, “You have to try, C’mon.” She crosses the classroom to a couch, where she says in a whisper, “I don’t know it. In church, I’m afraid the pastor will call on me to read.”
Whether it is the lack of reading skills or biblical illiteracy or simply we are too busy, the word of God although readily accessible to us, is often time absent from our lives.
In chapter 8 of Nehemiah, Ezra cracks open the ancient Torah, the law of Moses and begins to read it to the gathered people. They hang on to his every word, from early morning until midday. And as he speaks, the Hebrew text is interpreted to them by people standing nearby. You see, even though Ezra is reading the Scriptures loud and clear, the people cannot understand them completely until they are interpreted in the more familiar Aramaic. When they grasp what they are hearing, they are so moved that they wept.
This big pulpit Bible that sits at the center of our sanctuary even with the pages opened up for us to read can’t be understood until we read it. It can’t have any impact on our lives until we interpret it in our own everyday language today. Regardless of how big it might be or how fancy the cover is or whatever translation it is, it has no meaning for us until we read it and interpret it for our loves. It might as well be the lost scroll hidden from Judah during all those years when they were in exile.
Coming for the Word
One of the reasons why you come here on this gray and wet January Sunday morning, even if you didn’t fully know that is why you came, is that you need the word. Your faith needs the refurbishment, encouragement, and sustenance that come from reading, preaching, and hearing of the word. Every Sunday is recalling of the first chapter of Genesis when God called the world into being through the word.
When we are separated from each other, we find it more difficult to know God. It’s like the Israelites separated and fragmented in exile. But when they gathered to hear the Torah read by Ezra, they weep for joy.
You experienced how God brings our nobody lives together and in his word, makes something amazing like our church. I know that there have been times when you come here empty, down, depressed, despondent. Then in this very service, through the word—the words of the hymns, the songs, the Scripture, even the sermon preached—when it was as if you heard your name called out. You heard God speaking into your darkness and brings order out of your chaos. There was creation, a reality formed not by you but by the word of God.
A couple weeks ago, I preached a sermon on signs and miracles. One of you told me that you came to worship with your mind preoccupied with the many demands of life—raising children, making ends meet, fulfilling obligations—all the things that fill our waking hours and stir us even when we sleep.
Then you heard a word, something I said in the sermon like, “In our everyday life, we are constantly seeing signs of God’s creative splendor all around us. These signs and miracles are windows that we can glimpse the presence of God. We just need to open our eyes to see them.”
At that moment you remember how difficult it had been to get through each day. Here you are worried about the present crisis, without giving thanks for what a great miracle it all had been in the first place. Your eyes were suddenly, almost miraculously opened, and you saw the miracle of God’s grace in your life. And then you found yourself going through the entire week seeing that truly there are epiphanies and miracles of God’s presence all around us. You left church quite different from the way you came in.
All that happened on the basis of nothing else but the word.
Take for example of how a child of three or four years of age reading a picture book with her mother. The page is turned, the mother says, “This is a zebra. Zebra.” The next time, when the page is turned, the child says, “Zebra!”
Something has been added to the child’s world through the power of the word. It is as if the word has created a world that was not there before until the word was learned and spoken.
When the world was created, all of the creatures were paraded before Adam. God did not create the animals alone, but invited Adam to assist by naming them. In naming them, it was almost as if Adam created them. To say the word is to create, to bring something out of nothing.
As parents and grandparents, we want our children to not only know the difference between a zebra and an elephant. We want them to exhibit the meaning of being grateful. Children are not born grateful. They become grateful by being taught gratitude.
“Say thank you to the nice man for the lisee.” That’s the way gratitude arises. There are some experiences that you can’t have until you first learn the words for the experiences.
And that is also true about God. I wonder how many modern people, who say they have never had an experience of the reality of God, didn’t have the experience simply because they never heard the words of God and for God. They have seen the Bible but never learned how to read it. They have heard others read the Bible but no one was nearby to help interpret it. They have experienced epiphany after epiphany happening in their lives
but no one has ever told them that these are windows for us to catch a glimpse of God’s presence in the world.
Jesus is the Word
Besides Ezra gathering the people in the square before the Water Gate entrance of the Temple and reading the scroll of the law of Moses, Jesus came to Nazareth where he had been brought up and went into the synagogue. He also took a scroll. This one is of the prophet Isaiah and he unrolled it to read,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of
sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord’s favor.”
All eyes were fixed on Jesus and the people were amazed. Jesus announces to all those who gathered that this Scripture has now been fulfilled in their hearing. The power of the word of God declares Jesus is the liberator, the healer, the savior of the world.
So today, we are hearing the word of God too. As Christian disciples, we too are to proclaim to the whole world that the acceptable year of the Lord is today. The Holy Spirit empowers us to speak the word of God.
We came to church today just like the people of Israel gathered to hear the Torah from Ezra, just like the worshippers in the synagogue heard Jesus read Isaiah. We came to hear the word of God.
Without the word of God, we wouldn’t be here as Christians or as a church. The word of the Scriptures reaches out to touch you, to grasp your life and redirects it. The word of preaching enlivens you and makes relevant the word of Scripture. The word of God in the prayers, the songs, and the testimonies that we share with each other reconfirms our faith. We live by the word.
Words to Evoke the World
With religious freedom in America, we rarely are persecuted for the faith that we practice. But it hasn’t been too long ago when the Nazis attempted to decimate the Jews in World War II.
When the Nazis took over Prague, they rounded up all the Jews. In one of the synagogues, before they torched it, they found an old rabbi sitting in his study, working on his sermon for the next Sabbath. To completely humiliate the old man, they forced him to strip naked. They had him stand up in his pulpit naked, clad only in his rabbi’s hat.
“Say something in Hebrew for us,” they taunted. “Yes, preach to us, preach what you were going to say at your next service. Preach!”
The old rabbi stood there. Then he began to speak in Hebrew that none of the Nazi tormentors could understand. He spoke the words that had time and time again constituted Israel.
“In the beginning, God created the world. And God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light. And it was good.”
Power shifted from the cruel Nazis to the old rabbi in that moment. In speaking the word, just speaking the words, the rabbi was dismantling all that the Nazis believed. A new world was being claimed, reclaimed for God. Nothing those Nazis could do, not even their reign of death, could defeat the ultimate triumph of the word. Nothing the Nazis could do would negate God ‘s word with the world.
That is the way of God. God will have the last word. You and I have come to church this morning to hear the word of God. And I hope that through our modest efforts that we have proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favor.
We may have come feeling empty, depressed, discouraged, and perhaps weeping, but I hope that you are leaving this place having heard God’s word feeling renewed. For God is continuously creating something new in you.
Ezra said,
“This day is holy to the Lord your God: do not mourn or weep.” For all the people
wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, “Go your way,
eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom
nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the
joy of the Lord is your strength.” (8:9-10)
Let us pray.
Precious God, we give you thanks for giving us the Word of Jesus Christ who was in the beginning when you created the whole world. Lead us to hear your word in our daily life and equip us to know your word so that through us, others may come to believe in you in faith. Amen.