Wait for the Final Reel

  • December 31, 2024
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  • John Tillman

Links for today’s readings:

Read: Nehemiah 13 Listen: (5:57), Read: Revelation 22 Listen: (3:59)

Links for Wednesday’s readings:

Read: Genesis 1 Listen: (4:55), Read: John 1 Listen: (6:18)

Scripture Focus: Nehemiah 13.6-11

6 But while all this was going on, I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon I had returned to the king. Some time later I asked his permission 7 and came back to Jerusalem. Here I learned about the evil thing Eliashib had done in providing Tobiah a room in the courts of the house of God. 8 I was greatly displeased and threw all Tobiah’s household goods out of the room. 9 I gave orders to purify the rooms, and then I put back into them the equipment of the house of God, with the grain offerings and the incense.

10 I also learned that the portions assigned to the Levites had not been given to them, and that all the Levites and musicians responsible for the service had gone back to their own fields. 11 So I rebuked the officials and asked them, “Why is the house of God neglected?” Then I called them together and stationed them at their posts.

Revelation 22.12-13

12 “Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. 13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”

— Orson Welles

Reflection: Wait for the Final Reel

By John Tillman

A calendar year is an arbitrary measurement, like a reel of a film. Before digital projection took over, a thousand-foot-long reel would hold about eleven minutes of film. Projectionists changed reels continuously to show complete films.

How is the story of this year ending for you? Whether it’s bad or good…it’s not really the end. It’s just one reel.

In 1986, Saturday Night Live imagined a new reel to end the Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life. After the happy moment of the community coming together and George’s business being saved, they continued the story in a darker direction. Uncle Billy remembers where he lost the money. They discover “Old Man Potter” deposited it. They rush out, find Potter, and beat him to death.

The sketch wrapped up a loose thread from the original in a darkly funny way. However, it illustrates that, depending on where you end it, a story can go from bright and hopeful, showing the best of humanity, to dark and ugly, showing the worst. George’s story would also be very different if it ended at the bridge, before Clarence interfered in his suicide attempt.

Biblical stories change too, depending on when you stop reading. Nehemiah chapter 12 has a perfect happy ending. The hero accomplishes his purpose. Enemies are shamed. Jerusalem is restored. But there’s another reel. Corruption creeps back in—literally. The greedy villain who dogged Nehemiah through the whole story moves into the Temple! Nehemiah throws Tobiah out, but that wasn’t the end. Nehemiah ends by repeatedly calling on God’s mercy.

There’s much to celebrate in Nehemiah, but it’s not a simple, happy story about good leadership or a template for legalistic enforcement of religious laws. 400 years later, Jesus cleansed the Temple of corrupt and greedy robbers and confronted legalistic systems Nehemiah enforced.

Nehemiah is just a reel out of a film we are all in—struggling against sin and crying out for mercy. The story isn’t over when we kick villains out or when they crawl back to power. In this world, corruption consistently creeps back in.

When we fail or when we win, it’s just the rise and fall of a thrilling tale. In the final reel, the real hero returns. Our story ends with Jesus’ ultimate victory.

Where you end a story, changes what kind of story it is. Wait for the final reel.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting

Happy are they whom you choose and draw to your courts to dwell there! They will be satisfied by the beauty of your house, by the holiness of your temple. — Psalm 65.4

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

Read more about It’s Not Over When It’s Over

Can we save falling things? Perhaps. But failing that, we can rise from destruction…endure to the end. All will fall down. We will stand up.

It’s Not Over When It’s Over

Read The Bible With Us

It’s the perfect time to join our Bible reading plan. Invite friends to read with you at a sustainable, two-year pace.

https://mailchi.mp/theparkforum/m-f-daily-email-devotional

Tobiahs and Little Foxes

  • January 23, 2020
  • /
  • John Tillman

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.

Repair What Is At Your Door

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.

Moving Into the City