Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Advent is here. I hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving, and that it was peaceful and filled with meaning. Some were sick and needed the holiday for recovery. Others went on tremendous adventures and have stories to tell. 

Whatever you needed this long holiday weekend to have been, I hope you enjoyed it safely. But the countdown to Christmas has knocked on our door and Advent wants its collective moments.  

Now we worship with hope, love, peace and joy in these days. Advent will usher us right up alongside the baby’s Manger for a look inside, if we allow. So we enter a period of sight, sound, color and song. 

For our purposes here, though, We’re going to continue for another week or so in our series. We arrive at the biblical book of Ezra today. I hope you’ll find that Ezra actually turns out to be a fine way to look at where God is headed. 

Ezra and Chronicles before it. Nehemiah after Ezra. Many scholars believe that the person who wrote one of them wrote all of them. Why did they do this? Well, someone needed to tell the story of what happened as Israel went into and then came back out of exile. That’s what this writer did, across Chronicles through Nehemiah.

We don’t know a lot about Ezra the person, except that he was a scribe and a descendent from the Levite tribe. He was a traditionalist, for sure. Oh, and one other thing. In these writings, he covered a lot of ground. 

Both parts of the divided kingdom of Israel had been taken captive finally in Chronicles. Most of the Israelites had been sent off into exile to live in parts of succeeding empires like Assyria, Babylonia and then Persia. 

You see, if Israel was a small fish that got swallowed up by a bigger fish then the Assyrians also had problems of their own. By the time the southern kingdom of Judah fell, it was the Babylonians who were largely in charge of the region. 

Small fish and bigger fish get swallowed up by an even bigger fish. By the time any of the Jewish exiles will finally be given the option of returning home, Persia will have taken over. 

Flash forward to Jesus’ arrival? Well, you know by then that no less than the might of the Holy Roman Empire will then rule most of the known world. That’s a lot of fish getting swallowed up by larger fish. 

What happened here next is quite remarkable in the larger biblical story arc. The Jewish exiles are not merely set free to choose where they would live. That would have been enough. What Cyrus did was remarkable, considering that he himself was not a follower of Yahweh God.

They are given cedar and other treasured materials specifically intended to rebuild their central place of worship, Solomon’s Temple that had been destroyed when Babylon took over. He provides them with money to help underwrite the effort and encourages other governors to join in the financial support. 

Cyrus also provides them with a guard to escort them safely back across the territories with all of their newly given valuables. He also makes clear that as many ethnic Jews as would like to get in on this pilgrimage home are encouraged to do so.

Rebuild they did. Oh, everything wasn’t the same. Not everyone even chose to come home. But they did rebuild. They reestablished a faithful practice under the Covenant they had at the moment.  

Some young priests dug into the very walls of the old Temple and discovered scrolls where they read things they had never before heard. They ran to old priests and asked, “Is this what we were supposed to have been doing all along?” 

In our time, here is what Advent does. It gathers our collective conscience. Advent shines a candlelight on some basic and traditional texts and practices until those who are paying attention at least utter inside them, “Is this what we were supposed to have been doing all along?”

Advent lends us fresh lenses through which we can see God moving among us. Advent will gather us up and provide us with the treasures we’ll need to make it home safely and with a fair chance to heal and to rebuild that which needs refreshing. Then, alongside those who remember how everything used to be done, we can also begin some new practices and traditions.

DR. CHARLES QUALLS is senior pastor at Franklin Baptist Church. Contact him at 757-562-5135.