Heard Far Away

Passage: Ezra 3:7-13

The impossible has happened. After almost a century of lying vacant the city of Jerusalem has been repopulated and the temple of the LORD is being rebuilt. The inhabitants of the new city have gathered to celebrate. Together they revisit the ritual that has marked the life of God’s people from the beginning. Fires are ignited. Sacrifices are prepared. The right words are given and the right melodies are played. And everyone praises God. Maybe it’s because they can’t believe their good fortune. Maybe it’s simply because they’ve been commanded to do so. Whatever the reason, they lift up a shout of praise that can be heard for miles.

But for some gathered, the smells of the burnt offerings and the sounds of the old songs cause a jumble of complicated memories and feelings to crowd in. Seventy years ago they were kids, clinging to the hands of moms and dads, uncles, aunts and grandparents. They were herded out of their homes and out into the road leading away from Jerusalem. They watched wide-eyed as smoke billowed out of the doors and windows of the temple – the anchor of their city and their lives. The temple quickly faded behind them as they were led farther and farther from home. But that image has remained – as though burned into their eyelids – for all the years that have drained out of them in Babylon.

The image of their once-glorious temple, indelibly pressed on their memories, rises above the crude new foundation. The young ones – the builders and the new priests and their families – they don’t know any better. They don’t see what it used to be. What it could have been. All they know is the joy and excitement of a future they will have a hand in building. But the old ones – the survivors – cannot choke out the words of the praise songs through the debris of their memories.

So instead they weep – softly at first, then louder and louder until they too are shouting at the top of their lungs. Shouting at their ancestors for screwing up all the good stuff God gave them. Shouting at God for meting out the judgment he’d promised so many times. Shouting at the sheer futility of trying to live right in a world that has gone so badly wrong. The shouts of praise and the shouts of mourning are heard far away. As far away as the throne of heaven. As far away as the ears of the God of heaven and earth. As close as the ears of a God who didn’t leave, even when his people knew he should have. A God who is here, even now, with the people he promised never to forsake.