But they—our own ancestors—acted arrogantly.
They became stubborn and wouldn’t obey your commands.
They refused to listen.
They forgot the miracles you performed for them.
They became stubborn and appointed a leader
to take them back to slavery in Egypt.
But you are a forgiving God,
one who is compassionate, merciful, patient,
and always ready to forgive.
You never abandoned them,
even when they made a metal statue of a calf for themselves
and said, ‘This is your god who took you out of Egypt.’
They committed outrageous sins.
But because of your endless compassion,
you didn’t abandon them in the desert.
The column of smoke didn’t leave them during the day,
but it led them on their way.
The column of fire didn’t leave them during the night,
but it gave them light to see the way they should go.
You gave them your good Spirit to teach them.
You didn’t keep your manna to yourself.
You gave them water to quench their thirst.
You provided for them in the desert for 40 years,
and they had everything they needed.
Their clothes didn’t wear out, and their feet didn’t swell.
You gave kingdoms and nations to the Israelites
and assigned them their boundaries.
So they took possession of the land of Sihon,
the land of the king of Heshbon,
and the land of King Og of Bashan.
You made their children as numerous as the stars in the sky.
You brought them into the land you told their parents to enter and possess.
Their children took possession of the land.
You defeated for them the Canaanites, who lived in the land.
You handed the Canaanite kings and their people over to them
to do whatever they wanted with the Canaanites.
The Israelites captured fortified cities and a rich land.
They took possession of houses filled with all sorts of good things,
cisterns, vineyards, olive trees,
and plenty of fruit trees.
So they ate and were satisfied and grew fat.
They enjoyed the vast supply of good things you gave them. (God’s Word Translation)
The Jewish people had experienced the Babylonian Captivity. The walls of Jerusalem had been torn down, and the Temple was ransacked and destroyed.
Years later, the Persians overthrew the Babylonians, and many of the Jewish captives were allowed to return to Judea. One of the returning groups was led by Nehemiah, who was a cupbearer to the king.
Nehemiah engaged in an ambitious project of rebuilding Jerusalem’s wall and securing the city. It was a large undertaking. Yet, even more daunting was restoring the Jewish people’s worship of Yahweh, and following the Torah, God’s law.
Today’s Old Testament lesson takes place in the fifth century B.C.E. Nehemiah, along with the religious leader Ezra the scribe, organized a public assembly. The people listened to the Torah being read, and were fasting, confessing, and repenting of the ways they had neglected God’s law.
A group of Levites (the priests) stood up and said a long prayer of confession. Our verses for today are a part of that extended time of confession of sin and profession of faith. The people’s past history was very much a part of their present circumstances.
The Levities emphasized that it is God’s nature to be full of faithfulness and steadfast love. So, the Lord preserved the Israelites and rescued them out of Egyptian slavery through a series of miraculous wonders.
While their ancestors were out in a desert sojourn, anticipating entry into the Promised Land, God was faithful to provide for the Israelites both physical and spiritual food – Torah and manna.
And yet, despite the incredible rescue from Egypt, and miraculously escaping through the Red Sea, the people were rebellious. Their disobedience to God in the golden calf experience prevented that generation from entering into the promised rest. (Hebrews 3:16-19)
Every generation has its “sinners,” those who seem to have a bent toward selfish behavior, and refuse to see the needs of the entire group. They only serve God if it serves their own self-centered purposes. And they stubbornly refuse to bend to anyone’s wishes, including God’s.
Unfortunately, that sin of pride and arrogance gets passed down to the next generations. It’s not only, in some ways, taught; this sort of stubbornness also appears to have a genetic component, as well. Whenever our minds and hearts are rewired with injustice toward others and disobedience toward God, that wacky wiring gets passed down to the next generations.
It is quite likely that past trauma has a lot to do with skewed minds and hearts.
Epigenetics is a scientific field which investigates how environment influences our genes. Trauma does not alter our actual DNA sequence; but it does impact how that sequence is read and utilized in our body.
When an individual experiences trauma, their body may adapt by adjusting gene expression, and some of these changes can be passed on to their children. It’s like passing on genetic notes to our progeny – which means that these notes can be rewritten (and rewired) by our own life experiences and actions.
I am not a genetic scientist, yet this may be something akin to the divine warning about generational sin, arising from a generation’s trauma experience, after being enslaved and mistreated for 400 years in Egypt. In giving the Law to Moses, God then said:
“The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6-7, NIV)
Whether any of us knows anything about genetics and epigenetics, or not, there yet remains the need for a prayer of confession. It is necessary to acknowledge our own sins, as well as the sins of our ancestors.
In their prayer of confession, the Levites in Nehemiah’s time acknowledged and confessed their own guilt, and the guilt of their ancestors, of being the following:
- Obstinate. They stubbornly presumed God would be with them, then obstinately did whatever the heck they wanted.
- Stubborn. They were “stiff-necked” and refused to obey God when they didn’t want to.
- Forgetful. Not an accidental forgetting, but a purposeful neglect to remember what God had done for the people.
- Idolatrous. It was the people’s impatience with waiting for Moses on Mount Sinai that led to the golden calf idol disaster. Failing to accept God’s timetable will always lead to a bevy of bad behavior.
- Disobedient. The most sinister form of this is obeying halfway, and believing that you have completely done your duty for God, i.e. the sin of one person, Achan, affecting the entire community. (Joshua 7:1, 10-12, 20-26)
- Complaining. Murmuring and grumbling is the dissatisfying attitude and speech of ingrates. When directed at God, it is a failure of faith, replaced with a belief that God is mean and/or capricious.
Confession and repentance are the remedies to both individual and communal guilt. And that is exactly what Ezra and Nehemiah organized the post-exilic Israelites to do, publicly.
Not only did they offer a prayer of confession and repentance, but they also acknowledged and believed God’s faithfulness and mercy to forgive, renew, and restore.
Indeed, God’s grace is greater than all of our sin.
The Levites were not simply offering a mechanical liturgical formula for corporate confession. They were crying out with heartfelt confession to the God they believed was listening and would respond.
As the Levites led the people in confession and repentance, they pointed to the following attributes and activities of God which they put all of their trust in:
God forgives.
He made known his ways to Moses,
his deeds to the people of Israel:
The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:7-12, NIV)
God guides.
He guides me along the right paths
for his name’s sake. (Psalm 23:3, NIV)
God provides.
He has caused his wonders to be remembered;
the Lord is gracious and compassionate.
He provides food for those who fear him;
he remembers his covenant forever. (Psalm 111:4-5, NIV)
God sustains.
I lie down and sleep;
I wake again, because the Lord sustains me. (Psalm 3:5, NIV)
When all is said and done, the centrality of God is humanity’s ballast. As we orient all of life around the Lord, this is what makes all the difference in coming to grips with our past, present, and future.
May it be so, to the glory of God.
Rev. Tim Ehrhardt 