Sermon given at Choral Evensong at St Stephen’s Church, Rochester Row on Sunday 9th October based on readings from Nehemiah 6.1-16 and John 15.12-end.
If you take a trip to Jerusalem as part of an organised tour, it is likely that early on during your visit you’ll be taken up to a vantage point - perhaps somewhere on or near the Mount of Olives - to get an overview of the Old City, as you look out to the north and west.
The city walls that are visible today were restored under the Ottoman ruler Suleiman I in the sixteenth century, but stand on earlier foundations. Even at a distance, the outline of the great ashlar blocks of Herod the Great’s walls, built some fifteen hundred years earlier, can be seen. Huge cut stones with a three inch recess carved into the edge of each face and set back slightly from the one below, to stabilise the mount behind.
Most tour guides will come prepared with historic maps and will use the location of the walls to help make sense of the city today - showing how it has expanded and contracted in different phases over time; explaining, for instance, how at the crucifixion, Golgotha was outside the city walls but today lies within them.
Nehemiah is described as a high ranking Jewish official of the Persian King, living in the fifth century BC. The book which bears his name is presented as a first person account of the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem which he oversaw.
Despite having a book named after him, Nehemiah is not the most exciting figure we find in the scriptures. He’s not a prophet, nor a great poet or great storyteller. He seems to me to be a bit like the Chairman of a major public infrastructure project! (Perhaps a dangerous comparison to make here in Westminster! Apologies if you are the person in charge of Crossrail!) Nehemiah doesn't have a hugely inspirational persona and isn't someone who arouses strong emotions either way, but he's highly organised and a canny navigator of political and economic power structures; knowing just the right thing to say at the right time to brush off criticism and challenge so he can get on with the job.
But for all Nehemiah’s lack of pizazz, he comes across as devout - and human.
The Israelites had begun to return to Jerusalem after their exile and a new temple had been constructed, replacing Solomon’s temple, which had been destroyed by the Babylonians. Nehemiah is said to have been moved to tears when he learnt that the temple had been rebuilt while the walls of the City still lay in ruins. He sought permission from the King of Persia to travel to Jerusalem to oversee the repair and restoration of the walls. The King agreed, sending Nehemiah off with an army, money and letters of support in case he ran into difficulty en route.
My first encounter with the walls of Jerusalem earlier this year was also a moving experience.
Due to the imminent arrival of President Biden, our itinerary had to change to accommodate the various road closures and security checkpoints. This meant our first stop was not the Mount of Olives to get an overview of the topography of the City - but Bethlehem, to the south; to get to which we had to pass through the separation barrier which has been built along the border of the West Bank.
In this location the barrier takes the form of a thirty foot high concrete wall, topped by barbed wire and surveillance turrets. The Palestinian side of the wall is adorned with protest graffiti, including famous murals by Banksy, which have become tourist attractions. But despite all the colour, the wall remains an inescapable symbol of divison. The refugee camps built up against it are dense and crowded. Right of passage through the few gates in the wall strictly controlled.
On returning to Jerusalem we visited the Western Wall, which is today the holiest site in Judaism. Part of Herod the Great’s expansion of the City, this stretch of wall is the closest most Jewish people can get to the site of the Temple - the Holy of Holies; the Temple Mount now the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
In front of the wall is a large plaza, formerly the site of a Moroccan community whose homes were demolished shortly after the six day war when Israel took control of the Old City from Jordan in 1967.
The plaza is used as a synagogue, with separate spaces for men and women. People come to sit and pray and read the Torah. A number of Bar mitzvah celebrations were taking place during our visit, with scrolls paraded through the square, accompanied by singing and dancing. It was a hive of activity - and slightly chaotic. The group I was with stayed close together, not wishing to get in the way.
Having covered the top of our heads, we eventually plucked up courage to move closer to the wall. What seemed from a distance like mortar filling the cracks between the stones turned out to be hundreds of folded pieces of paper. I saw people writing on scraps of paper by the wall, folding them up and twisting them in to the crevices. I could just about make out some of the words. Names of people. What looked like the words “Peace” and “Love”. The tightly rolled scraps of coloured paper looked like roses or lilies. Prayers to God growing out of the wall - placed there in contact with this holy site but spilling out, as if prizing the wall apart; their power greater than these huge stones; prayer gradually eroding the wall as each year these scraps of paper are purged to make room for others.
For Nehemiah, the restoration of Jerusalem, this Holy City, and his people was focussed on rebuilding the wall; a task he felt called by God to achieve. Despite the distractions of external pressures, Nehemiah succeeded. He seems to have been a Master Project Manager. The passage we’ve read tonight would be a brilliant press release - ending as it does with the wall being completed in just fifty two days! A triumph!
Reading a little further on and a ceremony is held to dedicate the rebuilt wall to God. The people undertake a sort of marathon scripture reading session. The completion of the wall seems to have spurred on a renewal of faith just as Nehemiah had hoped. He returns to Persia for a time.
But when he travels back to Jerusalem he finds things have taken a turn for the worse. Space in the temple has been let out for hire. The city walls have become market stalls - traders even working on the Sabbath.
Nehemiah flies off the handle, enraged, cursing the people and pulling out their hair. Despite trying his best to restore the City and its people, his work seems to have been to no avail.
In the past twenty years, archaeologists have unearthed what they believe to have been part of the city wall dating from the time of Nehemiah. It is made of low-grade materials and is poorly constructed. Perhaps it really was built in just fifty two days. In any event, it didn't last
As Nehemiah found out - and as the prayers spilling out of the cracks of the western wall symbolise today - bricks and mortar alone are not enough to build the kingdom.
We are called to model our lives on Christ; to become the living stones of God’s temple. Through prayer and acts of humble service to break down the walls that separate or divide and build in their place bonds of love between all people.
So in the words of the great hymn, let us make Christ the sure foundation and precious corner-stone of our lives; and let us pray for improved relations between Jews and Gentiles; as Christ bound these ‘two walls underlying’ into one.
Lord, hear thy people as they pray;
And thy fullest benediction
Shed within its walls for ay.
Amen.
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