Fifth Sunday After Pentecost

Sunday, July 9, 2017

Zechariah 9.9-12
Psalm 145.8-15
Romans 7.15-25a
Matthew 11.16--19, 25-30

It seems to be human nature when we find ourselves in a time of loss or hardship or dramatic change to look back toward a golden era when everything was supposedly happy and complete. For those of you who remember the TV show All in the Family, recall the opening song by Archie and Edith Bunker, [two members of the GI generation trying to raise baby boomer children.] Their song extolled the glory of Glen Miller, gender role stereotyping and the staying power of the LaSalle automobile. You see the same idea play out in American politics with claims for the incomparable leadership and accomplishments of Ronald Reagan or John Kennedy. In Iowa, we exalt the heyday of thriving small towns before the arrival of industrial agriculture and big box stores. Today’s lesson from the prophet Zechariah offers us an image from a similar golden era, the king modeled after David. Zechariah was one of the spiritual leaders who guided his people through the years following the end of the Babylonian exile. You’ve heard of it, but if you don’t know how it happened, here’s the short version.

Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon (which is in modern Iraq) besieged Jerusalem in the year 605 BCE and demanded payment of tribute. The king of Judah paid up for three years, but in the fourth he refused. Nebuchadnezzar attacked the city and destroyed everything in it, including the temple of Solomon. The king died in that assault along with his sons. His successor and others of the city’s upper classes were captured and deported to Babylon. Successive groups of people, mainly the wealthy and powerful were captured and deported in subsequent Babylonian raids on the kingdom of Judah ten and fifteen years after the initial assault. Together the deportees amounted to 25% or less of the total population. During those attacks, additional towns were destroyed and other inhabitants of Judah fled to Egypt and nearby countries as refugees. Many towns were left unharmed, but Judah ceased to exist in any unified way. About 70 years after the initial assault on Jerusalem, three generations or a little more, Cyrus, the king of Persia conquered Babylon and declared the release of the captives.

The Old Testament accounts of the exile are expressions of terrible sorrow. Psalm 137 begins with the familiar words, by the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept. These stylized interpretations and the archaeological record give us all the information we have about the exile. There are, for example, no first person diaries or extended eyewitness accounts of it.

Zechariah and his prophetic colleagues are spiritual leaders of a community reshaping itself after a catastrophic event that occurred 70 years in the past. In some sense, all of those affected have done a fair amount of reshaping already. We think of them as returning to a homeland, but among their numbers, those still alive who could actually have lived there would have been elders whose memories of life in Judah were formed in childhood. Most of the returnees would have been born and raised in exile. Their idea of Jerusalem is built on the longing and reminiscences of their elders. In the return to Judah, the younger generations will leave behind the only place they have ever lived along with the graves of their ancestors. The archaeological records indicate that some chose never to return, but remained in Babylon.

On the other side of this great repatriation we have the people who never left.  Jerusalem was completely destroyed, but the land of Judah was not entirely depopulated. What was it like when the exiles began to return? How does a nation rebuild community across this gulf of time and experience that lies between its people? The later Old Testament prophets, Zechariah, Haggai, Malachi, Ezra and Nehemiah tell the story of this time.

As we read [REED] of the return in the Old Testament, we might think of hundreds of people flocking back en masse and plunging into the effort to rebuild. In fact, they returned a few at a time, traveling a distance of about 500 miles. The prophet Ezra’s account of the journey says that he traveled four months to get from one place to the other. The new temple they built was smaller than the original. Some parts of Jerusalem lay in ruins for another 70 years after the end of the exile was declared.  The return from exile and rebuilding of Jerusalem were slower and less orderly than we have been led to believe. Whatever else might have brought the people together to rebuild, the idea of Zion and image of the ideal king that Zechariah calls us to imagine in this passage from chapter 9 are recurring themes that the Old Testament books return to across centuries. The idea of return to Zion has been and continues to be an element of the history and politics of Palestine and now Israel for centuries. US politicians seeking a foothold with conservative Christians have introduced it into discussions about our country’s policies. These are ancient ideas that have become iconic. The instances of their realization in time and space are limited if not nonexistent, but the ideas persist. On the occasions when we have seen or at least claim to have seen them realized, the reality has been far more complex than the ideal and the rough edges that were polished off in the icon’s creation have returned full force. Such ideals offer sustenance in times of hardship. They provide continuity through times of uncertainty and offer guidance for those who are called to bring about change. They have the power to inspire people to greatness. They also hold up a standard of perfection that is unattainable through human endeavor, divine providence notwithstanding.

A counterpart to the ideals of Zion and the Davidic King for Christian churches in the 21^st century is the church of fifty or sixty years ago. It’s a step or two down in grandeur from the hope of Zion, but it’s closer to home and within the scope of memory for a lot of people here. In the 1950s and 60s, church membership was normative as was weekly attendance on Sundays if not more frequently. Parishes outgrew their buildings and Sunday schools were jam packed. Volunteers always materialized when we needed them to teach children, organize potlucks, staff committees, take care of the building and look after the sick, bereaved and newborn. Gossip moved at the speed of a telephone call or a walk to the back fence. Churches and the opinions of their leaders were considered sources of moral authority, automatically worthy of respect. References to the Bible were commonplace in popular culture and everyone recognized and understood them. There were bestselling novels and major motion pictures about religious topics. It’s a far cry from our era of spiritual but not religious, declining membership and contempt, all too often justified, for the hypocrisy of religious institutions.

Whether or not we believe we could actually do it, the question in the back of people’s minds is “how do we get back there?” Why can’t church be the way it was then? Before you assure yourself that’s the question we really need to be asking, recall a few things about those years: like how strictly the churches of that era were segregated racially. Our racial divisions are still painfully obvious on Sunday morning, but we have, at the very least, gained some level of understanding about how wrong that is, that we did not have sixty years ago. Imagine that question “why can’t we go back” coming from a gay or lesbian couple, a single mother or a young woman who senses a call to the ordained ministry. Imagine a survivor of clergy sexual abuse asking that question.

I do not mean that we have nothing positive to remember from the mid-century church. It formed the faith of many of us who are in this room in a way that has stayed with us over decades. The culture assured the church committed membership and a position of respect. But the church in that era had its problems. If it looks like a golden era it’s only because we aren’t in the midst of it, struggling to deal with the challenges it posed. The more time we spend looking back at that time that never was, the less able we are to deal with the challenges before us now.

I’ve returned in the last few days from a training conference for work in young adult and campus ministry. Some of you know that Trinity has received a grant for collaborative work with Geneva Campus Ministry, our tenant in Trinity Place. The vast majority of attendees at this conference were Episcopalians age 35 and younger. I learned that they and their peers are targets of relentless messaging from products, organizations and other offerings like campus and young adult ministry, trying desperately to get their attention in a barrage of electronic communications. The most hopeful message I took away from this conference was: If you’re trying to figure out how to do young adult and campus ministry, keep trying new ideas but don’t even imagine anyone really knows how to do this anymore. There is no simple answer. There is no - thing we can do - that will fix our problems and take us back to a happier time. Anxiety is futile. Let’s let it go.
         The people who returned to Jerusalem to rebuild under the spiritual leadership of Zechariah and his colleagues kept trying. There was no grand plan for the future when they returned from Babylon. They knew that their ancestors had kept the faith in the face of catastrophic loss, both in exile and at home. The vision of King David’s descendant and that golden era of the kingdom’s greatness remained alive in their imaginations as it had in the minds of their forbears and those who would follow after them. But it has not yet ever been fully realized in the way they imagined.

The words of the prophetic oracle that surround the lesson appointed for today speak of warfare, the victory of Zion over its neighbors. But the king who is to lead them in that day ultimately commands peace not war. At the end of the passage we hear today he names his audience “prisoners of hope.” Peace, hope and faithfulness are the ideals that the people of God have carried through the ages. We are distracted by anxiety over what we have lost or what we might lose. For the church in the 21^st century that’s frequently membership and along with it money, power and possessions. The community that Zechariah inspired had lost all those things but they never ceased to be a people of God. At our best we hear the words of Zechariah ringing in our ears rejoice greatly. God remains faithful, and hope holds us captive.