First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Nehemiah 8 and Luke 4

“Can You Hear Me Now?”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

January 21, 2007

A number of months ago I described an encounter in a hallway at a presbytery meeting- I think it was in a newsletter. Before I recast this situation I want to say it was a moment where I tried to show reserve, tried to be patient. One of my colleagues had just returned from Israel, or Palestine in her parlance. She stopped me in the hall and said, I want to talk to you about Palestine. Knowing of my upcoming trip to the Holy Land (my parlance) it was an assumption that she wanted to relate her recent experience so to prepare me for what I was to see.

I don’t want to talk about that, I said. Honesty seemed to surprise her a bit but not enough to deter the objective. I think we should dialogue, she countered. I think it would be good. No, I said again. I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to talk because you we share nothing in common on regarding Israel. Without missing a beat she started to talk about her trip.

Again and again she would describe the plight of the Palestinians and each time I would respectfully submit that dialogue has to have a common ground and we lacked such commonality. She saw this as a Palestinian issue and I saw this as a question of Jerusalem. I would speak of Yasser Arafat’s orchestration of the intifadas once the loss of Jerusalem was obvious and she would speak of the house keys still clutched by families whose property was taken by Israeli Jews. She spoke of Hamas as a democratically elected government; I suggested not recognizing the right of Israel to exist was a disqualification of their government given the implications and common boarders.

This went on for more than hour. Each time I tried to leave with a strained smile and some sort of placating remark about differing opinions, another outrageous claim would rope me back in. Finally I said, "You see this as something that can be resolved with justice for Palestinians; I see everything you say as pure fantasy talk. I don’t want to talk fantasy anymore." Here I might have abandoned patience.

I was reminded of this encounter while I followed up on the questions people asked of last week’s sermon. Last week’s sermon focused on the recent book of President Jimmy Carter, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Questions were quickly asked about the folks who resigned from the Carter Center over the book. Checking on the controversy it was somewhat predictable. It wasn’t the substance of the book, but the title. First Carter calls the controversy Palestine, which is a not so subtle shot over the bow; second, the use of the word apartheid is going to raise some hackles and sell some books; and third, that his efforts toward peace coming out of Camp David and thus his views on the matter were still relevant.

Each of these prompted 14 members of an advisory board at the Carter Center, an advisory board of 200 prominent Atlantans, to resign. The Center director on behalf of the staff issued a rather dismissive statement suggesting that the 186 remaining members of the advisory board of prominent supporters would some how carry on. It would be hard for the heavy weight of drinking wine and eating cheese to be bourn by the remnant, but they would tough it out.

Reading the articles on the uproar over the book was a bit disheartening. For there is something truly challenging in Carter’s book. I tried to bring attention to it last week yet avoid the inflammatory side, mentioning only the former President’s beliefs. The review of the book in the New York Times, though, saw through the rhetoric and unnecessary use of the word apartheid. The critic pointed to the issue we considered last week. Carter is an evangelical Zionist. The New York Times book review rightly suggested that this was the rub of the book, how clearly this rises from the pages, and that such beliefs have led Carter to either ignore or undervalue the situation on the ground.

The uproar of the book boarders on the comical. Yet the anger of the band of rabbis harassing Carter at book signings is surprisingly also like our reading from Luke. Carter’s claim that the wall surrounding the West Bank is a kind of economic apartheid is a throwaway in terms of the book as the wall plays only a minor role in the lion share of Carter’s argument. Yet, this seems to be the only thing prompting the calls of anti-Semitism.

So it was with Jesus in Nazareth. He reads from the scroll of Isaiah, reading from the portion where the prophet is calling the returned exiles to be a people of justice and mercy and freedom. This portion of Isaiah is all about the restored city of Jerusalem becoming a place where there is good news for the poor, release to the captives. Jesus reads this and says, today this is fulfilled in your hearing. And instead of focusing on the challenge that Jesus was calling scripture fulfilled, they focused on the fact that this was Joseph’s son. What offended them was that a carpenter would be making such a big claim.

In Carter’s book the uproar is about the implication of apartheid when it should be about his questioning Golda Meir concerning secularism in modern Israel and wasn’t she concerned of God bringing punishment because of the people not honoring God. There is flack over what maps Carter used in his book, but there doesn’t seem to be any problem over his claims about the Camp David Accords. No one is writing columns about his failure to mention that Sadat being assassinated over the concessions they sought to make to bring peace and Carter is still alive. What I found offensive was Carter’s willingness to make foreign policy based on events 30 years ago, suggesting if people would just have tried harder there would be peace.

Even this though is diversion. The powerful claim of his book, what should be discussed, is exactly what you heard in our passages today. The powerful claim of our passages is that God is at work. God is doing things, bringing things about. And not things in general, not a kind of keeping the world spinning sort of activity, but specifically and in particular. At the heart of our reading from Nehemiah we see the people weep when they hear the law. What they heard was that God was at work in the past bringing the captives to this land, giving the land to them. When Ezra read the law this is what the people heard about themselves.

This land, this place, this city, this people, us, we’re God’s work. This was a promise, a blessing, an act of God for us. Jerusalem wasn’t hard work, or cooperation, or a good plan; it wasn’t a reasonable return for a wise investment. It was God stepping into the midst and muck of life and bringing hope to the captives, or as our passages suggests the people heard, to us.

That was the meaning of Jesus’ words in Nazareth, today this is fulfilled in your hearing. God is at work right here, right now. Not God in the overall, providence of creation, sort of hey I am sure glad God brings rain for the crops, but God is going to set the captives free right here.

If Carter’s book is to spark a discussion it should not be about apartheid, but whether or not we believe God is working here and now and if God is crafting Zion in Jerusalem. Again it would be very easy to get caught up in the offense of Carter being so politically naïve. I hesitate to say this but it bears out the point. How can an also-ran pastor in Northern New York be calling a former President of the United States politically naïve? Yet, when Carter speaks of the West Bank and water and casts Arafat as someone who tried to do good, rather than a pawn in the ideology of radical Islam, he sounds pretty naïve.

This was why I was so reluctant to speak to my colleague: this has nothing to do with Palestinians, this is about Jerusalem. And the more you speak of the Palestinians and Palestine the more you put in harms way the remnant of Jordanians living in the West Bank. This is not about water or economics or maps or accords, this is about Zion. This is about what people believe; what do people believe about God creating peace; what do people believe concerning what is sacred and holy.

In Carter’s words and memories of his trips to the Holy Land he makes persistent reference to passages of scripture. In so doing he aligns himself with our scripture readings today. Our passages seem so innocuous, but they are truly provocative. In Nehemiah there is a picture of God restoring the land of Israel and the grandeur of Jerusalem as God’s holy city; and in Luke we see Jesus saying not only does God choose to act and bring healing, but God chooses not to help, not to heal. Jesus mentions the acts of God as almost tightfisted and insulting. His dialogue with his neighbors leads not to accord, but to such a frenzied pitch of anger they are ready to throw him off a cliff.

Recently there were rabbis who met with Carter after a protest in Phoenix. A hasty meeting was put together and after some dialogue, they gathered in prayer, holding hands before they left. Either Carter backed down, or he and the rabbis found they shared a lot of common ground about Jerusalem.

Intellectually I want to be rather dismissive about Jerusalem and suggest that God is at work all over and no one place should take precedence over another. In my more academic moments I want to suggest that perhaps Zion would be achieved if we made it a place of worship for all. But then I remember that the Bible is not my intellect or academic musings; the Bible is God’s word, God speaking. As Jesus said, these are words God is fulfilling.

Here is the big challenge of our passages and the Carter book and the question of Israel: do we believe God is at work? Is God making something of this church? Is God making something of you? And do we live believing?

If we are prepared to say that God is at work in the church, and this church in particular, then why would we balk at the idea that God wants to make something of Jerusalem?

When the people in Jerusalem heard the law and understood, and wept and worshiped, they believed that God was doing in their midst what God had done for the Egyptian slaves. When Jesus stood in the synagogue of Nazareth and said, this is fulfilled he was claiming God at work. God was doing this here and now. Do we believe God is at work here and now? Is God at work in this sanctuary making a church, are we worshipping the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel?

I believe God is at work in us, in this place, just as I believe the dreams of Isaiah are still being fulfilled, that Jerusalem will be a place of mercy and justice for all. And I believe the scriptures are God speaking to us, for us, and with us. I believe. Amen.