Scripture Focus: Nehemiah 13.26-27
Was it not because of marriages like these that Solomon king of Israel sinned? Among the many nations there was no king like him. He was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel, but even he was led into sin by foreign women. Must we hear now that you too are doing all this terrible wickedness and are being unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women?”* 

*When reading condemnations of relationships with “foreigners,” such as Nehemiah’s, it is easy to be confused or shocked. Verses like these have been misused to defend White supremacist principles against mixed marriages and to support anti-miscegenation laws. 

However, Nehemiah is concerned, not with racial purity, but with purity of worship and being fully committed to God, forsaking all others, clinging only to him. Other passages in the scriptures help us to understand this truth by showing us God’s compassion for all people, including the “foreign women” in the genealogy of Christ. The point here is that the people were being unfaithful to God, not being unfaithful to their race or country.

Reflection: Tobiahs and Little Foxes
By John Tillman

Nehemiah, after a whirlwind campaign to successfully rebuild the wall in only 52 days, returns to his post with the king, but the story isn’t over. When Nehemiah comes back to Jerusalem later, he has to clean house. In a pre-visualization of Christ’s cleansing of the Temple, Nehemiah has to literally throw out the old baggage of the past (Tobiah and his belongings, Nehemiah 13.4-9) that had somehow crept back into the city and the very walls of the Temple itself.

Many times we stop reading Nehemiah’s story once we see the joyous celebrations of the newly dedicated Temple and the dedication of the wall. It is a great place to stop the story and be happy about the near miraculous pace of reconstruction. We like happy endings. Nehemiah doesn’t quite have one.

Nehemiah leaves us with a note of doubt that the people can ever be faithful. It shows us that after the echoes of the emotional celebrations and worship services faded, many of the people went right back to living the same compromised, religiously ambiguous lives they had been living.

Tobiah had teased Nehemiah and the Israelites that their wall would be toppled by a fox running on top of it. (Nehemiah 4.3) He may have been wrong about the literal wall, but he was right about the emotional commitments the people made. Those crumbled under the “little foxes” of life. (Song of Songs 2.15) 

That should feel very familiar to us. How many times have we been swept up emotionally in a religious experience on Sunday, or at a camp or a retreat, but then when Monday rolls around we can’t find the will to live up to the change we longed for. Normality crushes out of us the new-life that Christ wants to build in us. Our wall crumbles when the foxes jump up on it.

The ending of Nehemiah shows us the limits of human moralism and the law. We need the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to truly rebuild on a firm foundation of Christ.

When we celebrate emotionally, may we then respond practically and tangibly with action.

May we not allow Tobiahs, who opposed our repentance, to move into our lives to places of influence and comfort.

May we throw out the old baggage, and maintain our walls so that the little foxes do not wreck the spiritual life we cultivate before God.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Call to Prayer
Sing to the Lord and bless his Name; proclaim the good news of his salvation from day to day.
Declare his glory among the nations and his wonders among all peoples.
For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised; he is more to be feared than all gods. — Psalm 96.2-4

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Nehemiah 13 (Listen -5:57)
Acts 23 (Listen -5:15)

Read more about Repair What Is At Your Door
May God’s church—men, women, youth, children, leaders, laborers, the wealthy, and the poor—join in the work of God that he is calling you to in your community.

Read more about Moving Into the City
Jerusalem wasn’t a glittering capital, even with its restored Temple and rebuilt wall. Being chosen to move there was more like being drafted into military service.

Scripture Focus: Nehemiah 12.31, 38, 40, 42-43
I had the leaders of Judah go up on top of the wall. I also assigned two large choirs to give thanks. One was to proceed on top of the wall to the right, toward the Dung Gate….the second choir proceeded in the opposite direction…The two choirs that gave thanks then took their places in the house of God…the choirs sang under the direction of Jezrahiah. And on that day they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God had given them great joy. The women and children also rejoiced. The sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away.

Reflection: Orchestrating Our Prayers
By John Tillman

Imagine John Williams walking in to conduct Star Wars or the Jurassic Park score or one of his other masterpieces and there being one banjo and a kazoo… 

Ezra and Nehemiah were rebuilding not just the physical structures of the wall and the Temple, but the logistics and schedules of the workers and musical performers who made worship happen. And as the text emphasizes, this took a considerable investment (Nehemiah 12.47) from the community. 

Music, like little else, has the power to move us, touching us on an emotional and spiritual level. For many reasons (often involving finances) church music in many, many places has retreated from the large orchestras and choirs of the past to pragmatic, small combos of musicians. 

Expansive worship can be expensive. Especially if you are, as Nehemiah and Ezra were, following the precise directions and orchestrations dictated a few centuries ago by a master musician (David) composing in his golden age and having his music performed and arranged by the virtuosic voice of Asaph. Virtuosos don’t skimp on instrumentation.

As much as I personally enjoy a variety of instrumentation and both modern and ancient musical styles, there is something powerful about hearing the full range of sound that orchestral composers imagine. 

Hans Zimmer, for the score of the mind-bending film, Inception, assembled the largest brass section that had ever been recorded. For his lofty, dreamlike score for the film, Interstellar, Zimmer employed the unique sounds of the 1926 four-manual Harrison & Harrison organ, currently housed at the 12th-century Temple Church in London and played in the movie by its director of music, Roger Sayer.

We worship in spirit and truth, not according to musical styles and yet, at times, I long for the thick, layered instrumentation that stories in movie houses get, but are rarely supplied to the story of the gospel. Sometimes I miss the inclusive sound of a choir that carries my voice with theirs.

In our hearts, however, we are the new temple of God to replace the one Nehemiah built. No matter what echoes around our ears, in our hearts, we can antiphonally sing scripture back and forth with the Holy Spirit in perfect harmony.

May we become virtuosos of prayer, playing every note in a harmonious crescendo.
May the prayers of our hearts be louder than a thousand brass instruments, and the sighs of our spirit be more vibrant than the air thrumming through a thousand pipe organs.
May the music of praise spill forth from our hearts, as the music of Ezra’s Temple, spilled over Nehemiah’s walls.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting
I will offer you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call upon the Name of the Lord. — Psalm 116.15

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Nehemiah 12 (Listen -6:30)
Acts 22 (Listen -4:26)

Read more about Praying as Music
If music is a universal language, prayer can be similarly described.

Read more about Praying Through Ancient Hymns :: Worldwide Prayer
All creatures of our God and King, lift up your voice with us sing…Alleluia…

Scripture Focus: Nehemiah 11.1-2
Now the leaders of the people settled in Jerusalem. The rest of the people cast lots to bring one out of every ten of them to live in Jerusalem, the holy city, while the remaining nine were to stay in their own towns. The people commended all who volunteered to live in Jerusalem.

Reflection: Moving Into the City
By John Tillman

In our urban-slanted view of culture, it is hard for us to imagine why the population of Jerusalem needed to be propped up by a lottery, choosing one-in-ten men to move into the city. “Who wouldn’t want to live in the city?”, we might think to ourselves.

But when we drill down, we find that in this situation, the city was literally being rebuilt from the ground up and there were armed forces threatening attack. Jerusalem wasn’t a glittering capital, even with its restored Temple and rebuilt wall. Being chosen to move there was more like being drafted into military service than getting to move to a midtown condo.

Cities of the world today need God’s people in them, just like Jerusalem did. Cities simultaneously hold some of the greatest potential for our planet and the greatest evils. 

The urban population, 34% in 1960, has continued to grow over the past 60 years. Today 55% of the world’s population live in urban areas. By 2050, it may be 68%.

The growth isn’t happening primarily in Western mega-cities. Urban population growth is concentrated in less developed regions of the world where for the first time a majority of people are living in urban areas. 

But this is not a situation in which people are trading horrible conditions and deprivation in the country for blissful, glittering, city-of-tomorrow dwellings that futurists expected humanity to be living in a fifth of the way through the 21st century. In fact, 40% of global urban population growth is happening in slums which exacerbates health risks and introduces new hazards.

Cities also produce 80% of the world’s GDP but this statistic is misleading. All the financial productivity of the cities is literally fed by the rural areas surrounding them. Also, very little of the financial benefits earned by cities ever manages to make its way to helping the workers who live in the slums or the rural residents who support the city’s elite.

As we wait for the day we will live in the New Jerusalem, let us not abandon the “Jerusalems” in our own nations.
May we, the church, pray earnestly for cities and ask the Holy Spirit to prompt us what we can do to help the most helpless, and confront the most powerful.
May we make our light shine through good deeds, showing God’s mercy and his grace to us, and turning slums and suburbs into cities on a hill.

*Statistics from World Health Organization.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence
Early in the morning I cry out to you, for in your word is my trust. — Psalm 119.147

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Nehemiah 11 (Listen -5:05)
Acts 21 (Listen -5:55)

Read more about Christ: Temple, River, and City
Christ is our city. He is our refuge and rest—our strong tower and protected place—our park of peace in the midst of a frantic and fracturing world

Read more about Christ, the True Hero
It is Christ, not us, who is the hero of our cities and our world.