By Simon Mattholie
A friend recently discussed his sense of the church emerging from exile, finding many resonances with the words of Isaiah 49 and our current situation. Over the past few years, many, including ourselves at Rural Ministries, have drawn parallels with the Exodus, leaving Egypt and wandering in the wilderness. While it may not have been quite forty years that the children of Israel experienced, perhaps we should begin considering what comes next.
I recently discovered Jeffrey Jones’s book Facing Decline: Finding Hope among my bookshelves. Written in 2015, before the pandemic, it provides several intriguing insights into navigating a liminal (in-between) time when traditional answers and strategies for being church are no longer applicable. I concur with his hypothesis: evidence of our liminal state has become more apparent since the pandemic.
I don’t recall buying this particular book, but I was quickly engrossed in the content and marking various standout sections with my highlighter (this is why I love a physical book!). In the second chapter, Jones opens with the words, “Despite the high esteem in which they are held, Ezra and Nehemiah were wrong.” I was about to write a very large ‘no’ in the margin, but I thought I should go a little further before passing a verdict, and I am glad I did. Jones was being deliberately provocative, but for good reason. He argues that the narrative of return and reconstruction provides a critical perspective that might offer insight into the challenges many of us face today.
Nehemiah is often used today as an exemplar for many building programmes or church revitalisations; I myself have used this example in many sermons where I have talked about vision and re-establishing the church. However, I am coming to recognise that if there is anything the church needs today, it is not new walls – quite the opposite; we need to break down our walls. Please hear me (and Jones) right; Ezra and Nehemiah are not the villains, but the pertinent question forms: what might have happened if Ezra and Nehemiah and those who joined with them had understood what God was up to in a different way? What might have happened if they devoted their time to doing a new thing instead of rebuilding old institutions? Admittedly, this is an enormous oversimplification of the text, and one could argue that Haggai, Zechariah and Zerubbabel are more straightforward examples of rebuilding the temple. (1) However, Ezra and Nehemiah seem to be the pivot point that sees the priestly tradition's revival and the demise of the prophetic tradition.
The priestly tradition focused on re-establishing old structures, systems, and offices, emphasising that correct practice leads to the right relationship. Uncritically adopted, this approach seems dangerously close to saying, ‘If we have all the right things in place, growth is a given,’ suggesting that human agency is key. Indeed, as many of us continue to learn, our time is all about God’s agency, not our efforts to try harder, devise strategies, vision statements, or wall-rebuilding programmes.
As Jones identifies, ‘The work of Ezra and Nehemiah led to the final triumph of the priestly tradition and the demise of the prophetic tradition.(2) Does this not offer an insightful perspective from which to view our own time? It may be rather a simplistic observation, but to Jones, the prophetic tradition recorded in the latter chapters of Isaiah looked forward to hope in the coming reign of God. In contrast, the priestly tradition focussed on the temple as the central feature of Israel’s religious life. It could be argued that today, we are replacing ‘temple’ with ‘institutions’ and, dare I say, church.
Please hear me right; I do not wish to suggest we abandon the priestly role, as it still holds an important function and place. I argue that favouring it over the role of the prophets could lead to repeating mistakes made over the centuries. We need both priests and prophets today, and both working in synergy can help us grow communities of hope. By limiting the role of the modern-day prophet, we risk treating the shifting cultural seascape in which the church finds itself as a technical issue where we understand both the problem and the solution and believe we can resolve it with our priestly experts. Instead, if we view the present time as one of adaptive challenge, where both the problem and the solution are unknown, the only thing we can rely on is God’s agency.
That, to me, sounds far more exciting to me. It suggests that there is hope. So, if you sense you are one of today’s prophets, be encouraged; we need to hear you alongside the priests. You are the ones who can help us understand we don’t need renewal in the church; we need resurrection.
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(1) See Jones, J (2015) p.19
(2) Jones, (2015), p.20
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