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Nehemiah, our “hero” says and does some unsavory things. What are we supposed to do with that? We Christians like to put people into categories. Hero/villain. Good guy/bad guy. Positive example/negative example. But, these last chapters of Nehemiah’s autobiography really complicate things.

The truth is—Nehemiah isn’t a good guy or a bad guy. He’s a typical human mixture of both. Church—only comic books have heroes. The Bible, however, has saints and a savior. And, Nehemiah might be the former, but he’s certainly not the latter. 

And he doesn’t need to be.

Jesus is our savior—the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. When we look to him, we see how to have right expectations of other people, even the ones we meet in scripture.

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This Sunday, we continue the wisdom-soaked story of Nehemiah rebuilding the city of Jerusalem.  Surprisingly, the construction work is completed in chapter 6, but the process of rebuilding and restoring the city isn’t. 

Nehemiah leads the people in a time of celebration and rejoicing, which makes perfect sense to us. But, what he does next is shocking. It’s the last thing we ever want to do—but this part we would avoid is the most crucial part of the rebuild. 

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This Sunday we welcome Pastor Cedric Lundy to the pulpit. Cedric is a StreetLeader Director at UrbanPromise Charlotte, and a Teaching Pastor at Watershed Church. Previously, he has served Charlotte churches in roles such as Pastor of Mission and Justice, and Pastor of Middle School Ministry. Cedric’s faith is characterized by his passion for justice, his heart for young people, and his zeal for the Lord. He and his wife, Emma (a native of Scotland), share a daughter, Isla. In his free time, he co-hosts a wonderful the podcast, Token Confessions, runs a small coffee-roasting business, and enjoys making pasta and bread from scratch.

Preaching from the first half of Nehemiah 4, Cedric will be sharing Nehemiah’s strategic response to the opposition and resistance that he encountered as he fulfilled his call to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. As believers, we, too, are called to join God in the work of renewal and redemption. And, since we have a call like Nehemiah’s, we should not be surprised if and when we experience the same painful backlash and hostility that Nehemiah faced. But, also like Nehemiah, we can learn how to remain steadfast in this work.

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We are spending this month learning about rebuilding and renewal from the book of Nehemiah, an ancient autobiography that sits right in the center of scripture. 

Last week we met Nehemiah and learned that he rebuilt the city of Jerusalem, but not because he had superior engineering skills, relevant experience, or exceptional spiritual gifting.  It’s really much simpler and more challenging than any of that. 

God used Nehemiah to rebuild Jerusalem because when Nehemiah heard the city was in desperate need of renewal, he chose to go and let God use him. 

For most of us, when we hear something tragic, is not to go but to wait–to wait for a perfect leader to follow, to wait for a gilded invitation, to wait for a sign from the Lord.  But Nehemiah knew he wanted to be part of God’s good work.  He was an ordinary guy who understood that God uses ordinary people.  He knew it wasn’t his call to wait–he knew it was his call to go.

And this Sunday we are looking at the next chunk of Nehemiah’s story and marveling at the next remarkable thing about Nehemiah.  Nehemiah knew it was his call to be part of the rebuilding.  But he also knew it wasn’t only his call.  

So often when we are brave and foolish enough to believe that God has called us to be part of something–we make the mistake of believing that God has only called us.  Nehemiah avoided that trap.  He began his work by inviting others in.  We must do the same.

I hope you will listen in as we learn from Nehemiah that the first step of living out our calling is sharing it with others.

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This Sunday we begin a new worship series on the book of Nehemiah.  Buried in the middle of the Old Testament, it is a record of the struggle to rebuild the city of Jerusalem after a long period of forced absence.  For more than a generation, tragedy separated God’s people from their sacred city.  For more than a generation, the people had been praying and crying and dreaming of returning.  When the time to return finally came–it was bittersweet and unexpectedly difficult.  Is it possible for scripture to be too relevant?

As we begin to prepare to return to our campus–to one another, to the sacred space we love and the rituals we have missed so terribly–we too will have the work of rebuilding and repair to do.  And like our ancestors, we will discover that while we can come back to the place, we can not return to who we were before we left.  We can learn so much for Nehemiah about the challenges we will face and how to walk with great hope, vibrant faith, and the right expectations in this season.

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We are made in the image of God–and our God is a creator. 
So we were made to create.
When we think of God creating, our thoughts spring to galaxies and mountains, ecosystems, and cellular systems.
But that kind of creation was complete after the 6th day (and God said it was good).   

After that, God’s creative force took a different direction. God began creating a people–a peculiar people who can be ‘salt-seasoning to bring out the God flavors of the world’ and ‘light bringing out the God-colors of the world.’ A people who are known by their love–for God, for one another, for the least, the lost and the enemy. A people who already live on earth as they will in heaven. A people who are alive together in Christ.

That’s our final communal spiritual practice–creating a community with God, in the image of God.  It’s not something we get or find or buy–it’s something we make together with God. And our part is so simple, so practical, so spiritual–that if you aren’t careful, you can be so busy ‘doing ministry’ you miss it altogether.

I hope you will listen-in as we learn the very unlikely way we co-create community with God.  

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When Jesus gathered for the last supper with his friends he gave them–and us–a new commandment.  After washing their feet, he told them to ‘love one another as I have loved you.’

So…that looks good on a coffee mug but—how do we DO that? How do you love someone like Jesus loved you when they are gossiping about you? How do you love someone like Jesus loved you when their behavior is harming you? It’s hard enough to try and love Jesus the way Jesus loves us—but loving each other the way Jesus loves us feels dangerous, and that’s on the days it doesn’t feel impossible.  

Many of us were taught that loving someone means being willing to sacrifice anything to keep them comfortable and happy at all costs.  But—did Jesus do that? Sacrifice—yes.  Make people happy and comfortable all the time—HECK no!

If loving one another can’t be measured by how people feel—how can we know when we are being loving in a faithful way? I’ve got a one word answer for you:

Boundaries.

I hope you’ll listen in—we’ll learn about setting, articulating and respecting boundaries.  It’s the communal Christian practice that will make our church a lot more uncomfortable—and a LOT more healthy and loving. 

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Christ is Risen! 

Now what?  

The days after Easter can be filled with glory and…disappointment.  That’s certainly what Thomas felt.  All of his friends were together in the upper room when Jesus appeared in his resurrection body, filled them with his Spirit and released them for a new era of ministry.  

And Thomas missed it.  He wasn’t there. 

So while his friends’ fear and grief was transformed into joy and hope, his heart was still full of pain.  If anything, his spiritual burden was even heavier because he bore it alone.  Whatever had happened to his friends, hadn’t happened to him.  Whatever Jesus had given to them, Thomas hadn’t received. 

There is no loneliness like the loneliness we experience inside our faith communities.  

This month we are beginning a new worship series called practices–about the habits, customs and traditions that can form us in healthy and holy ways.  On Wednesday of each week, you can look for a short video created by one of our church members about an individual spiritual practice that is giving them life and drawing them closer to the Lord.  On Sundays during the preaching moment, we are going to consider the actions we can participate in together to create a healthy and holy church culture.  We find the first communal practice modeled in Thomas’ story–in the way his community allowed him to tell the truth and belong before he believed.  His friends, who had themselves only recently learned how fully they could trust Jesus, had the courage to trust Jesus to meet Thomas in his doubts.  

As people who love and follow a savior who defeated sin and death for love’s sake, we can trust Jesus with our lives and with the lives of those we love. We aren’t called to believe for one another, resolve one another’s doubts or fill one another’s empty spaces.  We can trust God to be God in one another’s lives.  That’s what Thomas’ friends did–and the story of their faithfulness blesses us still.

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We are formed by our stories; the stories we tell ourselves about the world; the stories the world tells us about ourselves.  We become the stories we believe.

This week is full of our most sacred stories.  The story of the Holy and Innocent one–betrayed, abandoned, denied, falsely accused, unjustly convicted, tortured, sentenced to death, and executed.  It is a story our flesh knows too well.  

But this tragically familiar story is interrupted.  God–author of all our stories–intervenes and creates a new ending, which becomes our new beginning.  Out of sin comes forgiveness; out of violence comes healing, out of death comes life. 

And if it only happened in the life of Jesus, this story would be worth remembering and celebrating.  But the extraordinary twist is that Jesus gives us his Spirit and it becomes our story too.  Our sin can also be forgiven, our lives can also be transformed, we too can live fearlessly–unafraid of suffering or death.

So the question is–what story will we allow to form us?  Will Easter just be a day we celebrate–or a story that defines us?

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This Sunday we begin Holy Week–our second during this pandemic.  Things are beginning to shift and change (more on our timeline to return to on-campus worship below), but still–it will be another Holy Week without some of our most cherished traditions.  Instead of gathering around one long table in a beautiful room to live out the Maundy Thursday story together–we’ll be zoom-linked at separate tables.  Instead of gathering in a beautiful darkened sanctuary to bear witness to the death of Jesus together on Good Friday–we’ll gather wherever we are to share a video of testimonies of our members–linked by our faith, not our location.  We will be able to gather–separately but in person–on our beautiful campus to walk the stations of the cross set up in our labyrinth on Holy Saturday. We will be able to flower the cross separately and have that edited into a video we can share on Easter Sunday.  It will be closer–but still so far from where we want it to be.

It’s okay to be sad and sick of it and honest about those feelings.

And–it’s good to let the Spirit remind us that all of these cherished traditions we won’t have this year–as beautiful and meaning-filled as they are, they are not our faith. We enjoy them, but they are not our faith.  They are gifts from God, but they are not God.  They are the outward signs of what Jesus has done for us, but they are not the gift of grace. 

We don’t have new life and hope in Christ because we flower the cross or sharing a beautiful meal or have joyful engaging in-person worship services.  All these things are good and of God and the Holy Spirit uses them–but they are not the gift.  They are only the signs of the gift.  Just as when Jesus healed the blind or multiplied loaves or stilled the storms–those acts weren’t the gift–they were signs of the gift.  They were startling acts of beauty and goodness meant to point us to the power, tenderness, mercy, and abundance of the Kingdom of God we have access to through Jesus.  We don’t worship the signs–we worship the God they reveal to us.

Everything we’ll miss this year (and pray God, only this year) is good–but they were never the things we came to worship.  The Resurrection of Jesus–the power and love of God’s heart towards us, this is real.  This will not be missing or altered.  This is the reason we sing–even now.  especially now.

I hope you’ll listen in as we think about how to participate Holy Week together–even when we’re apart.  I know that if we come to this week asking, seeking, knocking–seeking abundant life in Christ and a fresh anointing–the Lord will be faithful to give it to us.

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