Kate’s family used to visit a ranch in Wickenburg, Arizona, each spring around Easter. I had the opportunity to visit the first few years of our marriage. It was a magical place. There’s nothing like the Sonoran Desert in spring, especially after a long Ohio winter.

The ranch held a certain lore. There was a close connection to the owner who had recently died. The place was beloved from the memories of those who used to visit. Kate’s grandparents, who discovered it. The food. The rituals and familiar sights and sounds and events of the weeks spent there.

It was great learning this side of Kate. Of imagining her growing up there. How it fed her love of horses. How it formed her, and all my in-laws. I loved the ranch. It was a celebration of family and memory and relaxation and friends.

One year, I met another family. All this family did was complain. They complained about all the change that happened after the beloved owner died. How the ranch wasn’t what it used to be. How they would do it differently. This was the subject of every conversation. I kept my distance from them.

Both experiences of the ranch happened. There was the celebration, the joy of learning and celebrating all the ranch was and is to Kate’s family. And then there was the lament, the wails of how it used to be. Both mixed in that week and made an impression on me.

I remembered that week when I read our Ezra passage. Let’s take a running start at this.

Nehemiah got approval from the king to head to Jerusalem and rebuild the city. Scholars point out the amount of time that passes in Nehemiah. We learned in chapter one how Nehemiah heard about the state of the city of his ancestors and went into the first two stages of grief: Shock and anger. Then around 4 months pass. Nehemiah moves to another stage of grief: depression. Nehemiah wears it on his face, so much so that the king takes notice.

The king must have experienced Nehemiah’s depression for those months. It’s hard to get the sense in the passage due to the different months used to tell time then, but this goes on for awhile. I wonder if the king noticed before, but shrugged it off. “Oh, Nehemiah must be having a bad day. Oh well, I have people to rule, places to conquer, king-stuff to do.” But after awhile the king takes notice and asks, “What is it you want?”

Nehemiah has a project that will help lift him out of his depression. He will rebuild the city of Jerusalem. It’s a big project. How does one go about rebuilding an entire city that’s been ruined? Where would you even start?

Nehemiah takes a few days upon his arrival to inspect the city. Talk to the elders. Figure out a place to start. Nehemiah is a good leader. He knows that no one will pursue another person’s goals. They have to see how they can benefit. They have to have ownership in the project. Otherwise you get a false-agreement. False agreement occurs when someone says “Sure” but as soon as the going gets tough, they abandon it. They don’t need the stress. They have their own lives to live, their own projects.

Nehemiah decides to start with the walls. He’ll start rebuilding the walls. Back then, there were no police forces. One had to be on guard from thieves within the city, and from raiders without. Walls were defense from the barbarians at the gate. Communal trust was the defense within the gates. Nehemiah seeks to rebuild both trust and community within the gates by rebuilding the security of the walls and gates around the community.

Years later, Ezra leads a similar project with the temple in Jerusalem, the center of religious and community life. When the builders laid the foundations, there was a mixed response. The old, who remembered the original temple, wept. Like that family at the ranch. They only remembered how it was before. They couldn’t see past their memories. They could only see what was and feel what they lost. This launched them back into their grief.

Meanwhile, the young… those who had only heard about the temple through the stories of their parents and grandparents. They never saw the majesty, never experienced it firsthand. They saw the construction begin and they shouted for joy! They would get to finally experience the temple for themselves. The stories were true! They weren’t just bedtime fables, this place was real! It really existed. And it gave them joy and hope.

And the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping… and the sound was heard far away.

One group only saw what was lost. The other celebrated the possibility.

This is the way of the heart. Logically, we would think that people would rejoice at the rebuilding of the city. The walls, the temple, the investment being made to bring back the community. But the heart operates by its own rules. The heart can feel joy and sadness at the same time. Hope and worry. Feelings we don’t have names for that are a mix of paradoxical feelings.

To add to the confusion, we have 2 hecklers. Sanballat and Tobiah the Ammonite were like Statler and Waldorf, the two hecklers from the Muppet Show who jeered from their balcony seats. Sanballat mocked the Jews hoping they would give up and stop building.

Sometimes the voices of Sanballat and Tobiah are external. Those who doubt our plans. Those who tell us that we’ll never amount to anything. They point out what we’re building could be knocked over by a fox. They are the unhelpful, loveless critics.

Sometimes the voices of Sanballat and Tobiah are internal. We question our ability. Our worth. We question our knowledge. Sometimes that unhelpful inner monologue only brings up our failures and regrets. “You’ve tried this before, and you will fail.” You know this voice. I think many of us have this voice. The most successful of us are, I believe, those who can best ignore this voice and trust themselves. The punk band Idles sings in their song Television, “If someone talked to you, the way you do to you, I’d put their teeth through. Love yourself.” I listen to that song a lot. It’s advice I need.[1] Maybe you do, too.

There will be doubters. But sometimes we know our need for the project. Sometimes only we see a vision of how life can be after this impossible thing is done. And look, that’s how we know it’s a call: it’s impossible.

Like rebuilding a church in the 21^st century. All the data says that the church is in decline. Not just the church but all social groups like Rotary, the Lions, scouting and bowling leagues. People just aren’t joining groups like they used to. There’s a great shift happening. Church is becoming more and more counter cultural.

Some hear this and they weep. They remember what it was like in past generations. All the women’s circles. A robust choir. A full Sunday school. People packing the place each and every Sunday. A pastor they really connected to. Those are the foundations, the stories that some of us remember and we weep. We are in grief that those glory days, yeah… they’ll pass you by.

Yet at the same time, there are folks here who see this as the glory days. They see the possibilities. They feel the welcome and they want to serve; love and be loved. They hear of what’s going on here and they shout for joy.

And the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping.

Which makes it hard to be a leader. A friend who recently resigned from their church spoke about when they first arrived. They were told by someone on their search team, “We need to grow!” The pastor then spent years helping the church to grow only to hear from that same person, “It doesn’t feel like the same church anymore, so I’m going to leave now.”

Grief does weird things. There’s a part in the grief process where we have to bargain. This process is completely natural, and it happens anytime we feel a loss, not just in death but in the face of change. The bargaining stage feels like we did something to cause the grief. We think irrational thoughts like, “If I never did this, then I wouldn’t be here.” Or, “I’ll never drink again, if I could get this thing back.” Or other deals we try to make.

This bargaining can be internal. Where we try to talk to our inner Sanballats and Tobiahs and strike a deal. What we fail to realize is that Sanballat and Tobiahs only goal is our failure. There’s no deal to strike, no compromise we can make that will bring us back to where we were. They will only keep us in the ruins. These are the secret bargains we make with ourselves or God.

There’s also the external bargaining. “Please, doctor, I’ll do anything.” Or, “If I never did this, we’d never have gotten here.” These are natural feelings. Or like I heard at the ranch from that particular family, “Things would be like they were if we were in charge.” But they wouldn’t be. Not really. The loss has happened and we must face it. Learn from it. Coming to terms with some painful truths. One of those truths is that we’re not as in control as we think we are. Some part of us knows this, but it’s a hard pill to swallow.

Nehemiah’s plan is doubted, and Ezra hears the mixed reaction at the temple. Yet they stick to their vision. They know the course to take. It would be a hard one. There would be no bargaining out of what they would have to face and what they would have to do. They would be different because of it. They would change, evolve. They would experience loss, but they had faith that what they would gain would be greater than the loss. That God had a future for them.

I hear this a lot as your pastor. So many of you courageously face what you need to face: surgeries, rehab, diagnosis, job loss, infertility, addiction, and so much more. No one wants to face what you all have had to or are facing currently. Yet everyday, you get up and do what you have to do. A day at a time. A step at a time. You silence your inner critics and go about your day, yet sometimes those critics are hard to ignore and you come to me… a trusted friend… a mentor who will help you through.

It is a time of weeping, and yet a time to celebrate when you discover the path forward. Both shouts go up in your soul and you might not be able to distinguish between the two. Yet the vision comes in bits and pieces until you see some security. You see your future. You understand how you can rebuild trust. Rebuild the center of your community and spiritual life. And you start to work, a day at a time, a step at a time.

One beloved did this very thing at the end of their life. When many of us would bargain, he stated, “I lived a long and good life. I would like more, but death is the next step and I believe I’m ready.” And he was. His loss is a hard one. I miss him every day. He was fun to talk to and I loved spending time together. He found the reserve of faith at the end. I read Paul’s words found in 1 Corinthians 2:9 at each funeral. “That eye has not seen nor ear has heard nor human imagination envisioned what God has prepared for us in Christ Jesus.” and it’s a verse I return to when the voices of the critics are loud in my ears.

These are words I think we all need to hear when we start to wonder if we’ll always feel like this. Grief can tear down our walls, set fire to our gates, and leave us feeling exposed and vulnerable. It can leave us feeling like we can never trust again.

But then what happens? We find a new vision. We find a new hope. We find our people and our community, and our faith is restored. Yes, we aren’t where we were and there’s no returning, but where we are is pretty great, too. People still love us. We are held by a love greater than us. The love of our friends and family, and the friends that have become family, and by our Creator.

As for the ranch… Well, we started to become the family who only lamented how things used to be. We don’t go there anymore. It’s best to find new places that give you joy and new experiences than to lament how things used to be. We’ve found so many places in our travels. So much joy and community and love. Places that lead us to praise and restore our soul. Places that connect us to a sense of praise and wonder and silence the inner critic.

I believe this is one of those places. I believe we currently inhabit that place, and we’re surrounded by God’s people. I believe that future generations will benefit from your presence here and now, and that lives can be rebuilt, purpose found, and community found and love flowing here as our ancestors have done for 202 years. We are the people we’ve been waiting for.

After all, as the great prophets of Rage once sang… It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?

Works Cited

^[1][1] I wrote about this in more detail in this Pastor’s Q&A: https://www.uccmedina.org/qa-final-three/