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When you're the only person in town on the last Sunday of the year, you get to speak in church.
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The Old Testament is often reduced to its most exciting stories. It’s a big book and we don’t have much time so let’s create the world, part the Red Sea, kill a giant with a rock, and get on with our lives.
And I do love the flashy stories. When the Jews are abducted into Babylon you get Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego standing with someone like a son of God in flames so hot the men who’d thrown them in were killed. Their buddy Daniel, later in life, gets thrown to lions. His friend the king is relieved and grateful to Israel’s God that Daniel survives the night—and then killed those who got him thrown to the lions in the first place.
That exile was only seventy years long but it looms large in Jewish memory. When Matthew gives the genealogy of Jesus he notes that “there were fourteen generations...from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to” baby Jesus.
By the end of the Jewish exile, Persia had taken over Babylon, but the reputation of good people like Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Daniel seems to have carried over to the new empire. A Jew named Nehemiah was one of the new king’s closest associates, his cupbearer. Cupbearers were deeply trusted by and intimate to the king they served. In a time of daily violence, a king’s life was only as safe as those closest to him. Nehemiah kept the king’s food safe, would even eat it first, as needed, willing to lay down his own life to preserve the king’s.
Nehemiah and his contemporary Ezra will only get one week of our attention next year in Come, Follow Me, but I was reading a nice little thing on this Protestant site about how Nehemiah is a type for Jesus; and their first point was about his cupbearing:
The book starts with Nehemiah as the cupbearer to the King. Such a position allowed him to sit at the right hand of the King, as he had to drink the King’s cup to test it for poison. He therefore had to be willing to die for the King if necessary. Like Nehemiah, Jesus dwelt at the right hand of the Father, and was willing to drink the cup the Father had for him, even though it meant his death.
But that’s just the beginning. Nehemiah, like Jesus, weeps over the condition of his people. Nehemiah, like Jesus, leaves the king and travels to Jerusalem to help his people reestablish their city and their temple and their faith. Nehemiah, like Jesus, then returns home to his king; during his absence from Jerusalem things fall apart and he has to return to reestablish the right way of doing things.
Studying Nehemiah’s life can teach us a lot about what it means to take on the name of Christ and to live the way he would have us live.
But Nehemiah’s story doesn’t have any fiery furnaces or lions’ dens. He never parts a sea or kills a giant with a rock. The books of Nehemiah and Ezra are more about dealing with rival politicians and building permits and scheduling conflicts. Neither of them is a prophet. They do know prophets but the prophets are always giving them poetic advice that doesn’t really solve the problem of where to source enough rock for both the temple and the city walls. Their city is post-destruction. It’s peopled with the poor and the desperate. They need to serve the least of them at the same time they’re accepting shipments from a king returning Israel’s stolen temple artifacts. Their days were confusing and unclear. They did their best, but couldn’t always be sure their best was best.
Sound familiar?
Today’s sacrament-meeting topic is Hope, Jesus, and the New Year and I think Nehemiah—his name means God Comforts—offers a good example for us to consider.
After all, when the Jews returned to Jerusalem, they recommitted themselves with an oath to obey what they knew from their scriptures, from the Torah. And the Torah, as I just read from a couple rabbis, “is the method of achieving hope…it embodies the principles and pathways that sustain hope.” And, once obtained, Jews don’t “lose hope because, even when waiting for goodness to emerge, a Jew refuses to give up working to create goodness—which in turn sustains hope.”
Hope, Jesus, and a New Year.
This year is ending. A new year is being born.
Every new day follows the death of the day previous.
The world is always being unmade: empires fall, cities crumble, babies become children become parents—and the world is always being created: empires rise, cities are built, babies become children become parents.
Sometimes is it easier for us to see what we are losing. Other times we more clearly perceive what is arriving.
But Jesus wept with Mary and Martha because the things we are losing matter. They matter a lot. Those relationships and events and beliefs and dreams were created to matter. And they matter still. And now they are gone.
The longer we live, the more things we lose.
Mikhail Bulgakov wrote, “Everything passes away…but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no one who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?”
Perhaps it’s appropriate that we celebrate New Year’s at the darkest time of the year, when the stars shine their eternal shine most clearly, so we can witness the oldest creations remind us that creation is ongoing, that creation never ends.
The bit of poetry I always think of when hope comes up is Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers.” I don’t have the rest of it memorized, but here it is:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
Hope as a songbird. Something small and fragile with hollow bones and only ounces heavy. Yet it sings its tune and never stops – at all. It sounds sweetest in the sorest storm, the sort of storm that should batter and destroy things small and fragile. Yet in the chillest land and the strangest sea, on it sings, on it sings, on it sings.
Hope is the thing with feathers.
And it flies alongside us in the sorest storms and chillest lands and strangest seas.
I’m inspired by a former sister missionary, Judith Mahlangu of South Africa, who once told President Holland, “[We] did not come this far only to come this far.”
Here we are at the edge of a new year. If we look, we’ll see plenty of things ended—or ending—or maybe ending.
But listen for the song of hope—the thing with feathers. Let it perch in your soul. Listen to it sing the tune without the words – and never stop – at all.
Paul asked, “What is our hope…? Are not…ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ…?”
Paul told us, even “in this present world; [to] Look for that blessed hope…our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us.”
Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, is our hope.
When cast into the fiery furnace, Jesus Christ is our hope.
When thrown to lions, Jesus Christ is our hope.
When building a city wall from ruins, Jesus Christ is our hope.
When dealing with an obnoxious neighbor, Jesus Christ is our hope.
When puzzling over the words of prophets, Jesus Christ is our hope.
Whether on the chillest lands or the strangest seas, Jesus Christ is our hope.
As one year ends, Jesus Christ is our hope.
As another year begins in the darkest part of the year with faraway stars obscured by rain clouds, Jesus Christ is our hope.
Maybe our lives feel more Nehemiah than Daniel, but whether our troubles are municipal squabbles or ravenous beasts, Jesus Christ is our hope.
Nehemiah didn’t live the sort of life that gets epic films made of it, but he did his best—and now you can get online and read about him—Nehemiah!—as a type of Christ.
As the new year begins, whenever you need Jesus in your life, come to church—this room is filled with Nehemiahs dealing with their own rock-sourcing issues and rival governors—each one a type of Christ as they live their life in faith, having taken the name of Christ upon them.
When we were baptized and took Christ’s name, one life ended and we were buried in the water. But then we were resurrected out of the water into a new life. Endings, beginnings; old, new; death, resurrection.
But, as the Latter-day Saint philosopher Adam Miller wrote, “Resurrection doesn’t solve [the problem of things passing away].... Resurrection doesn’t freeze the world in place.... Resurrection is the promise that, in Christ, life can continue to pass, not that it will finally stop passing.”
And that’s why, in the new year, as we look to Christ, our hope can’t be based on an end of ending. That won’t happen. Instead, let’s base our hopes in Christ and his promise that he is with us, that creation continues in our lives, that on the chillest lands and the strangest seas and during the most pedestrian of hardships, we matter to him, he remembers us, and the song of hope continues in our souls.
Moroni taught us that “whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith…which [faith] would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works....”
That’s what we can give each other in the new year. Hope—lives lived by hope—strengthening the hope of others.
And “what is our hope…?
“Are [ye] not… in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ…?”
Look around.
Yes. You are.
In the name of our hope, in the name of our brother and our fellow-traveler, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
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