Homily for 08/02/26

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.

You may be seated.

Friends, the passage that we began from the book of Nehemiah, the ninth chapter this morning, should be familiar to all of us because we just read it in the daily office.

Right?

This is to shame you a little bit.

If you've been following the daily office, we have two lectionaries.

We have the Sunday lectionary, the Eucharistic Lectionary, and then we have the Daily Office Lectionary with daily readings, which gets us through the entire Bible in a year with prayers and devotions.

That's what morning and evening prayer is.

And not that long ago, a matter of days, we read Nehemiah chapter 9.

Nehemiah 9 · chapter mention

And if you were following the lectionary, I should say when you followed the lectionary, you'll notice that this passage we have this morning in our Eucharistic text is shorter than what we read in the ninth chapter of Nehemiah for the offices.

It leaves out a lot.

And so I'm going to read it to you from start to finish.

Here is Nehemiah chapter 9.

Nehemiah 9 · chapter mention

Omitting some of the introductory matter.

Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessings and praise.

You are the Lord, you alone.

You have made heaven and heaven of heavens with all their hosts, and the earth and all that is in it, the seas and all that is in them, and you preserve all of them, and the host of heaven worships you.

You are the Lord, the God who chose Abram, and brought him out of Ur the Chaldeans, and gave him the name of Abraham.

You found his heart faithful before you, and made with him a covenant to give to his offspring, the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Jebusite, and the Gergeshite, and you have kept your promises, for you are righteous.

And you saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt, and you heard their cry at the Red Sea, and ye performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all his servants and all the people of his land, for you knew that they acted arrogantly against our fathers, and you made a name for yourself, as it is to this day, and you divided the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea and on dry land, and you cast their pursuers into the depths as a stone into a mighty waters.

By a pillar of cloud you led them in the day, and by a pillar of fire in the night to light them, from the way in which that they should go.

You came down on Mount Sinai, and you spoke with them from heaven, and you gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and good commandments, and you made known to them your holy Sabbath, and commanded them commandments and statutes and a law by Moses your servant.

You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger, and brought water for them out of the rock for their thirst, and you told them to go in to possess the land that you had sworn to give them.

But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments.

They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them.

But they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to our slavery in Egypt.

But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.

Even when they had made for themselves a golden calf and said, This is your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and had committed great blasphemies, you and your great mercy did not forsake them in the wilderness.

The pillar of cloud to lead them in the day did not depart from them by day, nor the pillar of fire by night to light them for a way in which that they should go.

You gave them your good spirit to instruct them and did not withhold your manna from their mouth, and you gave them water for their thirst.

Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness, and they lacked nothing.

Their clothes did not wear out, and their feet did not swell, and you gave them kingdoms and peoples, and allotted to them every corner.

And so they took possession of the land of Sion, King of Heshbon, the land of Og, King of Bashan, and you multiplied their children as the stars of heaven, and you brought them into the land that you had told their fathers to enter in and to possess.

And so the descendants went in and possessed the land, and you subdued before them all the inhabitants of the land of the Canaanites, and you gave them into their hand, with their kings and their peoples and their lands, that they might do with them as they would.

And they captured fortified cities and a rich land, and put took possession of houses full of good things, cisterns already hewn, vineyards, olive orchards, fruit trees in abundance, and so they ate and were filled and became fat and delighted themselves in their great goodness.

Nevertheless they were disobedient and rebelled against you, and cast your laws behind their back, and they killed your prophets, who you had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great and many blasphemies.

Therefore you gave them into the hand of their enemies who made them suffer, and in the time of their suffering they cried out to you and you heard them from heaven, and according to your great mercies you gave them saviours, who saved them from the hand of their enemies.

But after they had rest they did evil again before you, and you abandoned them to the hand of their enemies, so that they had dominion over them.

Yet when they turned and cried to you, you heard from heaven, and many times you delivered them according to your mercies, and you warned them in order to turn back to your law.

Yet they acted presumptuously again and did not obey your commandments, but sinned against your rules, which if a person does them he shall live by them.

And they turned a stubborn shoulder and they stiffened their neck, and they would not obey.

Many years you bore with them, and you warned them by your spirit through your prophets, yet they would not give ear.

Therefore you gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands.

Nevertheless, in your great mercies, you did not make an end of them, nor did you forsake them, for you are gracious and merciful.

Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, the awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love, let not all the hardship seem little to you that has come upon us, upon our kings and our princes, our priests, our prophets, and all of our fathers, all of your people, since the time of the King of Assyria until this day.

Yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully, and we have acted wickedly.

Our kings, our princes, our priests, our fathers, have not kept your law or paid attention to your commandments and your warnings that you have given them.

Even in their own kingdom, and amidst your great goodness that you gave to them, and in the large and rich land that you set before them, they did not serve you, or turn from their wicked works.

Behold, we are slaves this day, and the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts, behold, we are slaves, and its rich yield goes to the kings, whom you have set over us because of our sins.

They rule over our bodies and over our livestock as they please, and we are in great distress.

Because of all this we make a firm covenant in writing.

On the sealed document are the names of our princes, our Levites, and our priests.

The word of the Lord.

If you don't read the whole chapter, it would seem as if there was one great sin, and then God bears with that one great sin.

The prayer which is recorded for us, which is all of Nehemiah chapter 9, it's one long prayer before God.

Nehemiah 9 · chapter mention

It is many deliverances, it is many, a superabundant set of gifts that God has given to his people.

And yet around every corner, every turn, there is rebellion.

But amidst this rebellion, does God ever forsake them?

No.

It is not a matter of God showing mercy in one great moment.

As if he were to say, Alright, that was your one.

Do better.

Everybody gets one.

This is myriad, this is thousands, this is murder, this is theft, this is idolatry, this is the forsaking of all good things that God had given to his people, and every act of betrayal against the living God.

But the chapter begins by saying has formed the heavens and the earth, who has created all good, every experience of good that we have had in this life has come from this God, and we know this.

And every act of repayment towards him has been betrayal, idolatry, the slaying of his holy prophets, the tossing his law behind us, the profaning of his Sabbaths.

And it is not met with utter destruction.

Instead, it is met with mercy again and again and again and again.

A God who is long-suffering, the God who has delivered goodness to us in the beginning, despite ourselves, has preserved us in this goodness.

And so in these myriad acts of betrayal, God shows himself steadfast and loving, merciful.

We see it when Moses strikes the rock instead of speaking to it.

Does God abandon Israel that day despite his disobedience?

No.

In fact, there's a miracle.

In fact, there is literal salvation that day.

They were thirsty, they were dying, and now they are not thirsty, and they are alive.

And God used this act of betrayal, a willful putting aside of the commandment of God and acting contrary to what he has said was the means that he used to save Israel in that day.

Or think of St.

Thomas, the doubter, who speaks cruel, wicked words about Christ.

I think we don't take it into account.

I don't think we reflect on what St.

Thomas says enough.

The apostles have seen the risen Lord, and Saint Thomas says, I will not believe unless I do what?

Touch his side of his hands.

Stick my fingers in the holes of his hands, unless I stick my hand in his side.

Could you imagine if I came to one of you, my friends, or you came to me, that's a better example.

You come to me, your priests, and you express some grief, and I say, I don't believe you, unless I can put my finger in the most sensitive part of it.

You were harmed, you were maimed.

I don't believe you unless you let me poke and prod at it, unless you pull off the bandages and you let me mess around in there.

I don't believe you.

Imagine saying this to the living God.

Imagine saying this to our Christ who bore the weight of our sins upon his shoulders, who suffered upon that cross.

Saint Thomas is not merely doubting.

Saint Thomas has spoken cruel, unsympathizing blasphemies against the Son of God.

And how does our Lord respond to him?

Does he say, well, to hell with Thomas?

We'll just take him out of there, just like we took Judas out of there, right?

We got Paul coming.

Do we really need Thomas?

No.

We find the opposite.

We find the condescension and love of God for even Thomas, where he asks self-serving, cruel things of God.

And God says, okay.

Jesus comes to him and says, Thomas, see my hands.

Put your fingers in them.

Behold my side.

Put your hand in it.

And in fact, there's an intimacy here that I think we miss because none of the other apostles are invited to this kind of nearness.

None of the other apostles are told to hold on to these wounds, to clutch them.

To be able to see the monuments of our salvation.

Only Thomas, he who doubted, and not just doubted, he who spoke cruelly and blasphemed the living God.

And Jesus says, okay.

Is this unique to our Lord?

No.

This is the character of God.

Once again, the Psalm that we read this morning, Psalm 79, is it 78, excuse me, is a very long psalm, and because I am merciful, I will not read all of it to you.

But it is truncated in our recitation this morning in the Holy Communion.

And it doesn't go on.

If we were to go beyond the bread of angels bit, we would find out that we were not satisfied with the bread of angels.

And we asked for something else.

We wanted meat to satisfy our craving.

And how did God respond?

Okay, you can have it.

We desired that which was less than, that which was not profitable.

He offered us the food of angels, that which sustains the heavenly host, has now been given to us as a gift.

And we say to hell with it, give me quail, give me chicken.

I would rather eat a pigeon than the bread of angels.

And God does not strike us down, he does not harm us for our blasphemies, he gives us over and allows us to indulge in this craving.

But it comes with a price.

While the food was in their mouth, they are cut down.

And they flattered him with their mouth and spoke deceitfully to him with their tongue, for their heart was not fixed on him.

Neither did they continue steadfast in his covenant.

And yet he was merciful, and he forgave them their iniquities, and he did not destroy them.

He gives us what we desire, even when those things are blasphemies.

This too is a mercy, but it comes with a cost.

I mentioned Moses.

Moses strikes the rock instead of speaking to it.

Israel is saved that day, but what happens to Moses?

It's not good.

He's cut off from the promise.

He loses the reward.

He is not permitted to enter into the land, which is that great type, that great symbol, that foreshadowing of that heavenly Jerusalem.

He is cut off from the promise made to his father Abraham.

What he worked for and diligently sought after, what he led other people to, he could not take possession of himself.

Remember the great fear and trepidation of Saint Paul, who says, Lest I preach to others and lose the reward myself.

St.

Paul is fearful of such a fate because it has happened before in Moses, who instructed people in the law of the Lord, but did not keep that law himself, transgressed and is not permitted to enter into the promise.

St.

Paul does not want us to fall into the same fate.

All of the scriptures warn us against presuming upon the mercies of God.

In this passage in Nehemiah, you may have meant noticed that constant refrain, but we presumed, but we presumed, but we presumed, but we presumed.

And every time there comes a neglecting of the commandments of God, and through it a judgment, and through it a loss of some kind.

St.

Paul asks this question where sin abound, grace abounds.

Do we sin that grace may abound?

Why?

What happens when you do?

You die, usually.

That's what happens there.

It leads to death, spiritual or otherwise.

And so there is a mercy of God despite ourselves.

We may not presume upon that mercy.

God is with us, truly.

God empathizes with our weakness, truly.

God sits with us, despite our blasphemies, and despite the cruel words that we utter against him.

But in order to bring us to repentance, never to endorse these actions.

And so we have this promise from the scriptures that we have taken up this morning, that God is with us always, and nothing can separate us from God, even ourselves.

That is even more scary.

If we are a wicked and sinful people in the presence of the living God, that might be the worst thing that could ever happen to us.

That might be the greater judgment.

He who will not turn us away from himself.

But if we are not fitted for him, that's scary.

That burns, that scorches, and that hurts.

But this is the basis for what St.

Paul can write in his epistle to the Romans.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

As it is written, For your sake we are being killed all the day long, we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, because He will not permit us to depart from Him.

He holds fast to us, who keeps us near Him.

We do not have to fear circumstance.

We do not have to fear the angelic or demonic forces.

We do not have to worry about the circumstances of this life, whether it be the sword or whether it be our sins.

Because we are with God.

Again, the warning remains.

Might it not be better to depart from God to be a sinner in his presence?

What an awful thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God.

Should we maybe take the holiness of our Savior a little more seriously and not presume, because with it comes our destruction.

Presumption, that great act of idolatry that our heart makes again and again and again and again and again.

We must be willing to hear and receive him as he has presented himself to us.

With receiving him in himself comes that great promise, though.

We find this in the gospel.

We have seen how he is constantly spoon feeding us those things that we detest, giving us the things that we are so quick to reject, handing over to us the treasures of the kingdom that we want to throw behind us and trample under our feet, the pearls we want to cast before swine.

He hands them to us again and again and again and again and again and again.

I think the gospel gives us a glimpse.

The gospel we've read this morning gives us a glimpse of what happens if we receive those things in faith according to God's self-revelation.

The way that God has depicted himself, the way that God has revealed himself to us.

If we take him on his terms, what's interesting is it's no longer God who's giving.

Jesus goes into a barren place.

He does this a lot.

The barren place in the New Testament is referred to as a place of refreshment.

I've always struggled with that one.

But just like in the wilderness, God was nearest when we were in a place of barrenness, and God was nearest when he mounted a barren tree, making it the tree of life.

And so the barrenness has become the means that God has used for his nearness to us, this great mystery of the gospel.

If we go into this barren place with him, we see this crowd, 5,000 men, plus women and children, and they're asking for something from God again.

And they're asking for food again.

And they're having cravings again.

Do we think God will give it to them?

But is God the means of giving it to them?

What's the instrument that he uses in order to feed these 5,000?

It's the apostles.

Jesus says they need not go away.

You give them something to eat.

Jesus, when he speaks with the Pharisees, is very clear that it was not Moses who gave us bread in the wilderness.

And he's very clear here that it is the apostles who give bread to these people.

There's an invitation to participate in the goodness of God here.

I think we see a kind of transfiguring where those who are consuming and taking are now, because of that nearness of Christ, are the ones who are giving and delivering.

Those who before who satiated their cravings, but while the food was in their mouth, their souls starved.

Have taking a lot, lost all.

Now we have the inverse where these men who have nothing, five loaves and a couple fish, give all.

The abundance of God now moves through these instruments.

I don't think it's a matter of receiving or not receiving things from God.

I think it's a matter of being transfigured and transformed by the grace of God in order to be ones who participate in his works.

This is what we call the sacrament.

This is that great mystery of the Christian religion that somehow God has made us fellow workers and laborers, not just with the angels, not just with the church, but with himself.

The now, it is not God alone who gives us manna in the wilderness.

Christ's church gives us manna in the wilderness.

A manna in which we eat every Sunday.

That which was the food of angels is also the food of the Christian, and it's delivered to us not by a mist that comes upon the earth, not by the opening of the clouds, but by the hands of his apostles and their successors.

This transforming work, where we who could not be satiated, we who are constantly consuming, we who are constantly taking, and in doing so found ourselves spiritually starved, in our lack, in our nothing, in our absence and inability to give, because we have Christ, we find others satiated, we find others satisfied, we find others full.

And then that great tremendous unneeded piece of the gospel.

That there is food left over afterwards.

What a silly detail.

Not only was there enough for them to eat, but it seems that perhaps there was even enough for the apostles to eat as well.

That they who had nothing in and of themselves by giving to others received back to themselves that which they didn't have to begin with.

This great inversion of human history that we experience through Christ.

He who makes the desert into a paradise, who makes the tree of death into the tree of life, he who has also given us spiritual food, and in doing so filled bellies, where we who try to fill our bellies lack spiritual food.

We who have drawn near to Christ.

I think this is the great scandal of the gospel, and I'll conclude here.

I think the scandalous, strange unreasonableness of this gospel that we've inherited from Christ and his apostles is not that we must be holy.

It's that we may be holy.

The fact that it is possible at all should frighten us.

We who, when we re-examine our history, see how much trouble we run into when I am placed in the presence of the All Holy God.

Here before me, I am told I can do the same works as Him.

Because I can be holy like Him.

This is what has been won for us, and we do not deserve it.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.