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Back when I was in seminary, I went on a study tour of the Middle East. It was an invaluable trip. One thing that you notice when you go there is that there are ancient ruins everywhere, reminders of civilizations that have come and gone. The first ruins that my group visited were in Syria, the ancient city of Palmyra. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Palmyra is a city of nothing but ruins – the ancient temple of Bel, Roman-style columns sticking up, Greek and Roman style tombs, and Roman amphitheatre, massive stone blocks strewn hither and yon. There’s even a crusader castle on top of a high hill overlooking the city. Even though there was hardly an intact building with a roof on it, the ancient city was still inhabited by some very, very poor people who sold trinkets, gum, and re-bottled water and myriads of children who would let you take their picture for a dinar.
In 2015 ISIS captured Palmyra and ISIS had a reputation for destroying antiquities especially if they were reflective of the religions of the people who lived there before the time of Islam. I, like thousands of others who had visited, the ruins said a prayer not only for the safety of the ruins but also for the people who lived there. Those people were quite vulnerable. Fortunately, Syrian forces recaptured Palmyra once and for all in March of 2017 and I was joyed by their discovery that the ruins were not badly damaged excepting the Temple of Bel which ISIS had leveled. ISIS also planted landmines throughout the ruins so that there is no telling when Palmyra will be able to safely receive visitors, not to mention residents. I wonder what happened to the people who lived there.
If you take a tour to other places in the Middle East you will see that rebuilding ancient ruins is just the way they do things. Take Jerusalem for example. Jerusalem is built upon the ruins of a previous Jerusalem that was built upon the ruins of previous Jerusalem that was built upon the ruins of another previous Jerusalem and so on. Archaeologists have found that you have to dig down about ten metres to get to the Jerusalem where Jesus walked the streets and about twice that to get to the time of King David. Building upon ruins upon ruins upon ruins upon ruins…a way of life.
Rebuilding ancient ruins is a topic of our reading in Isaiah today and the city involved is Jerusalem. To give you a little history; the LORD is here speaking as an Isaiahnic prophet to a remnant of his people who said “yes” to his invitation for them to return from their exile in Babylon to the land of Judah, to Jerusalem, to rebuild it, because their time in exile had ended. The Persians had conquered Babylon and the Persian king Cyrus had decreed they could go home. Nearly a century earlier God had cast his people off of the Land he had given to their ancestors where they had been a great nation. They had been worshipping other gods and this idolatry led them into being a people whose way of life did not shine forth the love, righteousness, justice, and peace of the God who had brought them out of slavery in Egypt to be his distinct people. Instead, the wealthy abused the poor and gave no concern to the care of widows and the orphans, the most vulnerable in their day. In fact, they used the poor as a way to get wealthier. Read the Book of Amos. Their legal system, instead of a just and fair legal system, was a cesspool of corruption and bribery. Worst of all, their kings and leading citizens went as far as to sacrifice their own children to the foreign god Molech in order to grow powerful and rich.
So, God sent the Babylonian army and for over a year they put Jerusalem under siege starving everyone indiscriminately. When the Babylonians finally broke through the city wall, they levelled the city, razed the Temple, and led away anybody who considered themselves important on a long march to exile in Babylon. The politicians, the priests, the patrons, the wealthy families – the ones who previously had everything – lost everything and literally had to walk away from it all. The poor – those who previously had nothing – got what was left and lived among the ruins only to be subsumed by squatters from surrounding lands who moved in like rats to a vacant building.
That was the history behind our passage. Let’s have a look at the passage itself now. The prophet is speaking to a remnant of Israelites who had come back from Babylon and resettled Jerusalem and the surrounding area but under difficult circumstances and so they were a disillusioned lot. They were expecting to rebuild everything to its former glory but they just didn’t have the financial and people resources to do that. And, there were the people who had moved into Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside to squat on the land after the Babylonians took the Jews into exile; they didn’t take too kindly to a couple thousand religiously fervent “Babylonian” Jews showing up and saying this place belongs to us because God gave it to our ancestors. (The rubrics of the Israeli/Palestinian problem go back a long way.) The return to Jerusalem did not go according to the hopes of the faithful remnant returning from Babylon.
The prophet comes to bring this tired, disillusioned lot good news and joy. “The Spirit of the LORD is upon me” he says so that he could proclaim the good news to God’s faithful remnant that God is still with them and that his purposes for them will in time come to fruition. He reminds them who they are and what God has done for them. In Babylon, they had been oppressed, held captive, even imprisoned and God freed them and brought them back to their homeland. They will rebuild the ancient ruins for it is what God wants to happen. They are a nation of priests who will reflect the glory of the LORD to the nations and the day will come when the nations will bring their wealth to them and call them blessed in realization that the one true God is among them. But…the process of how it all happens will not be an overnight kind of thing. It will be like how plants grow; a natural, timely spouting and growing of righteousness and worship. It will not happen quickly.
In the meantime, this remnant of tired, disillusioned people will need to be mindful of their own righteousness and be joyful. They will need to avoid going the way of the nations and try to gain a false sense of security by means of pursuing power and wealth. God loves justice and hates it when people rob and cheat and lie to get wealth and power. They must draw close to the LORD and walk in his ways.
I think what the prophet is really trying to say here is that before the ancient ruins of Jerusalem can be rebuilt, the ancient ruin of the people themselves needs to be rebuilt. They are an ancient ruin that needs to be rebuilt. To do that they need to walk in the ways of the LORD and rejoice. Rejoice means be joy-filled, be joy-filled about what the LORD had done and will do for them. They are the ancient ruin and they need to be rebuilt with joy.
Throughout this passage the prophet refers to himself. Yet, it is not a stretch to say that he is speaking of himself as representative of the whole people. What he says about himself is true for the people as well. The Spirit of the LORD is upon him. So, it is with the people. The Spirit of the LORD is with them, dwelling in and among them. He wears the joyful wedding garments of salvation and so it is with them. He says, “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my whole being shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, and covered me with the robe of righteousness.” That’s true for the people as well. They were in a foreign land oppressed, held captive, and some were even imprisoned and now they are free and in their ancestral land to be the people on earth through whom the LORD shines forth his glory. That is the garment of salvation. They, too, wear the robe of righteousness for the Spirit of the LORD is upon them. Therefore, they should rejoice, be joyful and praise God with their whole being. Yes, life back in Jerusalem is not as they had hoped. Jerusalem still lay in ruins and they do have to spend all their time protecting themselves from the folks who have been living there, but God had done so much for them just to get them home and so they should feel the joy and let the slow growth as God rebuilds them happen because it will.
Well enough of the past. How about us today? Last year and this I have been serving as the Moderator of the Presbytery of Grey Bruce Maitland. This position has certain ceremonial tasks associated with it. One of them is pronouncing a congregation closed. So far, I have pronounced closed two churches in our Presbytery and there is the possibility of a third. These two congregations have joined the fellowship of the ancient ruins of Christianity in North America – small church buildings all over the place looking to be repurposed or, as in a lot of cases, just torn down for the land is apparently worth more than that old building in which God touched the lives of so many people. The “Church” as most of us remember it is today an ancient ruin and we are like a faithful remnant holding to the hope of rebuilding it but we lack the resources of finances and people.
I’m the minister of four small churches and I can say that the demon of disillusionment is not far from our doorsteps. But, inside our doors it can be said that the Spirit of the LORD is upon us. In our midst good news can be heard and found. Jesus the Christ risen from the dead is alive in our midst. We each wear the garment of salvation. The LORD God who built and rebuilt ancient Israel has stepped into each of our lives and proven himself faithful in steadfast love. We each wear the robe of righteousness – the Spirit of the LORD is upon us and shines through in the way that we live our lives. Though we are part of those remnant inhabitants living among the ancient ruins of North American Christianity we have joy. We have peace. We have hope. We have love. Though we may be growing old, there is in our midst the New Life of the New Day coming, a foretaste of Creation and human community healed.
Friends we have something to smile about. We have reason to have joy. Even though the masks we wear for COVID protection cover it, it is important that we smile. Something I’ve been doing the last couple of months is I’ve been making the effort to smile, to just have a smile on my face even when nobody can see me. I practice smiling. A smile changes things, even the chemical make-up of our brain. It brings forth chemicals of joy and changes how we feel. God has given us all a reason to smile, so smile. In these days when contagion has us down, a smile is contagious and whispers joy. Smile. Amen.
