All their neighbors assisted them with articles of silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with valuable gifts, in addition to all the freewill offerings. – Ezra 1:6

Today’s Scripture Reading (July 9, 2017): Ezra 1 & 2

I think we are tired of partisan politics. It really doesn’t matter what the issue is; we want the people who represent us in our governments to work together to solve the problems of our society. But that almost seems to be impossible. The problem is that we have constructed political structures that tend to be polarized. And, as the people of our nations, we swing like a pendulum between the two poles, when the truth is actually found in the unoccupied middle ground – somewhere between the Conservatives and the Liberals (or the Republicans and the Democrats). But since no one exists on the vacant middle ground, solutions to our problems are few. Ultimately, politics has become a team sport where one team feels that it has to defeat the other teams in the process of the game. (Our ideological framework is the right one, all others are wrong.)

Christianity was never supposed to exist in that kind of an ideological framework. The words of Luke in his history of the early church seem to me to be important. He says that the early church enjoyed “the favor of all the people” (Acts 2:47). In other words, the Christians were valued by the community,  both those on the right and those on the left. They occupied the middle ground. The people, in general, were impressed by the way that Christians had lived their lives. It was not that the Christians focused on one ideological part of the society. They seemed to be able to find the middle ground and, as a result, the people responded positively.

Today, we appear to find a spiritual compliment from being hated by the world. Maybe we leap off of Jesus’s words as he tells the disciples that “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 15:33). But I am not sure that Jesus meant that we were supposed to be hated. His intention was to encourage his community to love the world even though his love for the world was about to carry him to a cross, knowing that our love for the world might take us to a similar place, and we would be put there by those on the poles who do not understand our love. Too often the modern church is hated with good reason, we have been judgmental and have refused to love when we should have loved. Therefore, there can be no spiritual compliment in the fact that we are hated “by the world.”

What I love about this passage in Ezra is that it reveals a love for the Jewish people and a desire to help the Jewish people restore not only their homeland but their temple. The process started with Cyrus at the top but was supported by the people, non-Jews who wanted to help their Jewish neighbors with the task that was at hand. In this, the Jews were honored. And God’s agenda was moved forward.    

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ezra 3