Prayers for the People - Neh 1: 3-10

Sometimes we receive news and all we can do is weep. The death of a loved one. A national disaster. A school shooting. Someone we love making poor choices. Sometimes in the midst of so much hurt and destruction in the world, crying seems to be our only response. 

Two weeks ago I was at a fellow pastors home after giving a presentation in her area. When I walked into the house I found her slowly rocking in her chair as images of Moore, OK flashed across the TV screen and the death count scrolled along the bottom. She has a one year old son who is usually giggling with laughter, but even he was quiet, seemingly feeling that something wasn’t right. In moments like these, when news is so devastating, it seems like tears are the most appropriate response.

The prophet Nehemiah has just received disturbing news, that all of the hard work the Israelites had made on rebuilding the temple and the city of Jerusalem now stood again in shambles after a siege. The gates have been broken down and destroyed by fire. When Nehemiah heard these words all he could do was weep. He sat down in the ground and cried for days. Cried for hard work lost. Cried remembering the destruction of the temple before. Cried for a people who kept having set backs as they tried to come back together as a community. And admist these tears, Nehemiah prayed.

Author Anne Lamont in her newest book says that we basically pray three types of prayers - prayers of need, prayers of thanksgiving, and prayers of amazement. Nehemiah was praying the first type of prayer, crying out to God to help the Israelites and to remember them in their time of need. At a time when others certainly had received this news as well, we are only told that Nehemiah prayed - taking the burden of the people on to himself. Often it is easy for us to pray these prayers of help when we are in personal distress, but Nehemiah was crying on the behalf of an entire nation. 

Two times in the past year I have traveled down to Washington, DC for meetings at the General Board of Church and Society. Part of being a connectional church means that we have boards and agencies that work in various areas to bridge the gap between church members and needs. Sometimes those gaps are discipleship, sometimes they are higher education or missionaries. But GBCS has the unique role of bridging the divide between the church and the government. This agency is located in the only non-governmental building on Capitol Hill. While I was there one of the staff told us that the buildings unique shape allowed it to be pointing right towards the buildings where decisions were made, reminding them of the presence and prayers of the Church for decisions that honor God. But sometimes such decisions are not made, and those staff people who have worked so hard weep. Weep for a broken nation. Weep for hard work that seems in vain. But like Nehemiah, their tears are prayers for a better world as they cry out to God. They stand and cry out to God for an entire nation , pleading for help.

As Nehemiah mourned before God his character was revealed. In his rawest moments we can see that he was a man of deep compassion and feeling, as he wept for days. And he was a man of prayer - fasting on behalf of the people of God. But he was also a man of confession. 

Let us pause here. When bad things happen there one of a few different responses. Some people blame God, saying that God caused the bad event to happen. Other’s take some of the blame off of God by saying the sin of people caused God to act a certain way. Other times people picture God as the Divine who is distant, and wonder why God did not intervene. Nehemiah certainly doesn’t view God as distant, but in his prayer it seems like he is saying that the sin of the people caused God to punish them in this particular way. 

However, there is another way to view God when bad things happen. That is to say that God has given humans free will and does not intervene in their choices, which have consequences. But when something trying happens God walks with us through those dark and troubling times. And because human sin causes calamities to happen, like this one, it invites us into a time of confession, not because our personal sin caused God to punish us, but because we know we could have just as easily sinned in this manner for our sin is just as wicked as the next persons. 

Nehemiah lived in a society that believed in a retributive God who blessed people when they were good and punished them when they were bad. We know that life is hardly that simple, but within Nehemiah’s worldview, the sin of the people must be confessed for their punishment was directly linked to their disobedience. So he confessed. He confessed the sin of the entire nation. He confessed the sin of he and his family that played into the collective sin. He brings all of his short comings before God and honestly repents.

Whether we believe that we live in a world where everything is part of an equation or we don’t quite understand how God works into disasters that take place, we all need to confess. To lay our own faults before God’s throne of grace and ask for forgiveness. Daily. This is why the prayer of confession is so important in our worship service, for it is our collective chance to ask for God’s forgiveness for the sin that has lead us astray. And it also models how we confess our personal sin before God. 

For we too have violated God’s law. Nehemiah was a man of spiritual discipline. He knew the law of God as handed down to Moses. He knew it well enough to know that he faltered and broke it. He knows it well enough to quote it. Yet knowing something does not always mean that it has sunk into our hearts or changes how we act. Sometimes we simply follow God’s will because we are scared, not because we are in relationship with the Holy One. And other times we deliberately break it, as if to test God. Nehemiah knows these responses, for he too has fallen short from keeping the law. So in his prayer he confesses his inability to uphold God’s commandments.

Finally, Nehemiah closes his prayer by reminding God that these are the chosen people. The people whom God delivered from Egypt and returned to the land after their captivity in Babaloyn. They testify to others by their very presence of the God who delivers them with a strong hand. Because of God’s actions in the past, Nehemiah pleads for the Israelites to be delivered once again.

Friends, those times when we simply weep for our pain and the pain of others, what is revealed about our character? Like Nehemiah are we revealed to be a people of compassion? A people of prayer? Of confession? A people who know God’s law and try to follow it? Do we sit down and weep in prayer for others? For this nation? For our own sin? I hope that when things touch our hearts and spirits that we are not a people who quickly forget or move on, but a people who turn to God in honest prayer. Prayer that reveals who we are at our core. May we be the ones pleading before the Lord to deliver us. Amen.