On April 7, 1987, members of our church gathered for the last time at the Grange hall where they had met for several years. They formed a car caravan and drove down the hill honking and shouting and into the parking lot of the new church building at 18th Ave. and Bailey Hill Rd. With Pastor Jim Gaderlund leading, they then processed in excitement and joy into the new permanent sanctuary to celebrate their first worship service there. The young congregation had been waiting twelve years for this.
Joy like that reflects the celebration of the congregation of God’s people in Jerusalem in our text this week from Nehemiah 12:27-43. After the exile to Babylon ended, the first couple of waves of returnees had rebuilt the Temple. But Jerusalem’s situation was insecure in the ancient world, where safety for a city required a protective wall. Back in Babylon under the Persian king Artaxerxes, Nehemiah was moved by the precarious situation of his fellow Jews who had returned to their land. He approached the king and was granted governorship of that area and permission specifically to go there and oversee the rebuilding of the city’s wall.
The rebuilding of the walls in Nehemiah is a wonderful story of community cooperation, with each family or district taking part. However, scoffers and enemies surround Jerusalem and wished it to remain vulnerable to raids and looting. At one point, in Nehemiah 4:3, one of these foreign foes, Tobiah, remarks that the construction being undertaken is so flimsy that it could not support even the weight of a fox upon it. Which makes it all the more wonderful that to celebrate the wall’s completion, nearly the whole city assembles atop the wall in two groups to march its circumference while making music and singing for joy.
It’s St. Augustine’s great insight to realize that as Christians we are part of and participate in the building of the eternal City of God. The bricks and boards of earthly buildings may aid in that construction, but the true structure that God enjoins us to raise is a community which is growing into His City on earth, His kingdom.
Like that ancient city of Jerusalem, God’s City in this world may often seem beset within and without by scoffing enemies. The whole thing may feel flimsy, even to us who so much believe in it and wish it to stand strong. That is why we need the moments of joyous celebration like the Jewish returnees experienced that day when the walls of their city were dedicated. Eternal joy in God’s City is our destiny. The smaller joys of worship in celebration of current blessings and victories keeps us aware of that to which we aiming, so that we might not lose heart.
A little like those builders of the wall in Nehemiah, our congregation here today is planning to make repairs next year to the walls of our nearly 35-year-old church building. The completion of that task will, I’m sure, be rejoiced in and celebrated. In so doing, we stand in the long line of God’s people who keep building joy as we look toward the completion and fulfillment of that joy in the City whose ultimate builder and maker is God.