January 24 Epiphany III
Winston Churchill once said, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” That’s an odd notion to many of us, particularly to us Americans perhaps. We still entertain the illusion of the self made person. So we’re used to describing buildings only as expressions of ourselves. We design our dream houses, situate them in neighborhoods that appeal to us, paint them the colors we like, and fill them with furniture and artwork and knick knacks according to our tastes.
So, for instance, I know a woman, we’ll call her “Carol Sue”. I know a woman named Carol Sue who has a great affection for the color purple. She wears purple clothes and buys purple things, and I’m told she once had her office painted purple. So we say the color purple is something Carol Sue uses to express who she is.
But if Churchill was right, we might ask a further question: What have all those years of living in purple rooms among purple things done to Carol Sue? We won’t try to answer that question completely today, but I will point out that a very close friend of hers was made a bishop a few years ago. Call it coincidence, but I’m not so sure.
“We shape our buildings; thereafter our buildings shape us.” All Churchill meant, of course, was that our environments are not just expressions of who we are. Our environments are part of what makes us who we are. Our buildings, our houses, our neighborhoods, our cities are constantly shaping us and changing us.
So I’m changed a little over the years if my house has a front porch that entices me outside on a spring morning. And it makes a difference to who I am, whether, once I sit down on that porch with my newspaper, I see people walking on a safe, pleasant sidewalk or whether I see only empty, abandoned houses, boarded up and withering.
Our buildings aren’t the only things that make us who we are. But they play a part.
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah are about a building project, and part of that project was about building physical things. The Hebrew people are returning to Jerusalem after their exile in Babylon of nearly 50 years. Their city and their temple had been destroyed during Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion. But what was also destroyed with the walls of Jerusalem was a way of life.
The temple was the building that shaped Israel’s common life most profoundly. The temple, of all buildings, was a structure that didn’t just embody who the Hebrew people were. Day after day, week after week, year after year, the temple was forming this peculiar people in a particular way. And one day it was gone, and they were taken away to live as slaves in a place where the buildings and the religion and the culture were all different.
It’s obvious that these people had to make up a new life in Babylon. But it’s just as true that they had to make up a new life fifty years later when they returned home to Jerusalem.
Part of the way Israel began to make that new life seems pretty severe to us. They built walls. And the priest Ezra insisted that marriages with people of other religions be dissolved. In many ways this seems to be a great act of intolerance. In fact, it probably was.
But there’s a sense in the story that before Israel could find a way to go forward, Israel had to learn again who they were and who they might become. As right and appealing as breaking down walls and barriers may sound, some walls shape us. Some barriers direct us. Some buildings form us in one way and not another. Israel had to figure out what it meant to be Israel in a rebuilt Jerusalem after the exile. Israel had to figure out what it meant to be Israel before it could be the light to the nations it was called to be. We have to have a self before we can give of ourselves, don’t we?
So Ezra read from the Torah, from the Law, from the books of Moses. Ezra read from the writings that provided those patterns for living that told Israel who they were and that shaped Israel into what they were to become. Torah instructed them about their towns and buildings and agriculture and economic dealings. The buildings of Jerusalem were rebuilt. Now it would be up to Israel to move into the future and be shaped into the people God would have them be.
Last Thursday I had breakfast with leaders from a variety of churches. Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Roman Catholic, nondenominational, and other traditions were represented. People from predominately black, white, and Hispanic congregations were at the table. And we began a conversation about how we might make a better life together.
Interestingly, there was never suggested that any of the churches lose their identities. No one suggested that the Episcopalians start shouting and raising their hands. No one suggested that the Baptists start bowing at things and shortening their sermons. We didn’t propose dumping all our traditions into a pot and stirring them into some bland, gray, tasteless religious soup. No, we talked about what seems to keep us apart. And you might be surprised that we didn’t talk much about different cultures or worship styles or theologies. We talked about something quite literally concrete: a highway.
We talked about Interstate 630 and the way that this road has been shaping life in Little Rock for decades now. People at that table wondered aloud why it’s so hard for us to make relationships with people on the other side of that divide. As Churchill might have put it, we shape our highways; and thereafter our highways shape us.
Even the configurations of our towns and roads are part of the patterns of our lives. And while the people who built I-630 might have sincerely believed it was a path to a New Jerusalem, it’s hard to argue that it hasn’t helped continue and even deepen a kind of exile from one another.
Everybody at that breakfast table had more than enough to do each day, and no one was looking for another meeting to attend. And none of the black pastors were trying to keep from spending time with white pastors or vice versa. But the patterns of our lives, the houses we live in and the streets we drive, just continue to keep us naturally apart, and we wondered if those patterns could change. Maybe just beginning with a cup of coffee each month with a few folks whose paths we can’t seem to cross.
The odds are against us. I’ll admit that I’ve been in meetings like that one before. But I left that breakfast hopeful for one reason: the laughter was different this time. The gathering ended not with firm resolution to be better. It ended with joy. It seemed like a joy that might just bring the strength we need to live differently.
The story of Ezra’s time seems so powerfully relevant to us because it acknowledges that we can’t become anyone we want. The physical context of our lives matters and contributes to who we are. It matters whether we’re enslaved or free. It matters whether we’re in exile or whether we’ve returned. And the things we build matter as well. Why else would the Israelites have gone to the trouble to build a new temple from the rubble of the old one?
But Ezra’s story acknowledges our choices as well. The way we inhabit our cities, our buildings, even our interstates, these choices will also contribute to who we are. And when we admit our limitations and our choices, new life is possible whether we’re in exile or in Jerusalem.
To a people who had lost touch with who they were, Ezra didn’t offer only judgment for their forgetfulness. In fact, he spoke to them some of the loveliest words in all the Bible, I think. “Go your way,” Ezra said. “Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our LORD; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”
The Law wasn’t going to whip these people into shape. It was going to shape their common life and move them in the direction of joy. And it is that joy, God’s own joy, that would be their strength.
Today is our annual parish meeting. There will be more fat than sweet wine up in Bowen Hall for lunch. But eating chili and hot dogs together in a joyful gathering is utterly appropriate for this day. Because the joy of the Lord is still our strength. This neighborhood, this city, this world probably won’t be changed much if we just cross our arms and stand in judgment. But it can be changed by our joy. Portions of our life together can be sent out to people for whom nothing is prepared. People on the other side of the highway, people in strange churches and different neighborhoods. Real godly joy can’t be contained.
So, “Go your say, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared… Do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” Amen.