As you can imagine, 15 minutes is not a lot of time to study a Bible passage.
To combat that a little bit, I've asked the leadership team to spend the entire week prior to the meeting in that passage during their quiet times with Jesus. They can study it however they want. They're encouraged to pray through whatever comes to the surface for them. They're expected to come to our meeting having spent much more time with this Word on their own than we're able to do so together, armed and ready to share what came up for them during the week.
We're going through the book of Nehemiah, and this past week we went over the first chapter, where Nehemiah hears about the tragic state of condition of Jerusalem and Judah: "The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire" (Nehemiah 1:3, ESV).
Like I said, 15 minutes is not a lot of time to study the many layers of scripture we could unpack.
So we focused on one point - how Nehemiah responded to the news. Here's what we found:
He immediately wept and mourned for days. Nehemiah must have cared deeply enough about Jerusalem and his people that it brought such grief into his heart, as one would if someone very close and dear to them had passed away.
He fasted and prayed. Nehemiah is brought to his knees, but not only that, he does not pray a prayer of, "Please help and deliver them, Lord!" or, "Why must my people go through this suffering?". Instead, he interestingly prays a prayer of confession.
He identifies with the good and the bad of his people. Not only does Nehemiah pray a prayer of confession (weird), but he identifies with his people in their sins! "We have sinned against you," Nehemiah 1:6b says. "Even I and my father's house have sinned." He doesn't try to put the blame on anyone else. He doesn't distance himself from his confession; even though he seems like he has the right not to involve himself.
He wasn't physically there. This was in response to news that someone had brought to him from afar - he hadn't even seen the state of his community with his own eyes. Either Nehemiah was super touchy-feely and sensitive, or he cared so deeply and identified so deeply with his community that he was moved deeply by this tragic news, even though he was miles away from the desolation itself.
As we discussed these observations in our mere few minutes, one question kept coming to mind:
Why don't we respond to the brokenness on RIT's campus the way Nehemiah responds to Jerusalem's brokenness?
It was a question I posed to the Servant Leadership team. I asked them to imagine if they had gotten some news from someone during the winter break that RIT's campus was in shambles, would they react the way Nehemiah did, in weeping and mourning and praying prayers of confession on behalf of the sins we as a community committed? Definitely not, we all agreed, myself included.
But why not? I wonder. And what would it take for us to get to a point where we did identify and care so deeply with the RIT community that we wouldn't hesitate to respond to and lead out of the spiritual shambles we face everyday?
Amen.
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