Have you ever sensed the excitement of archaeologists, as they unearth the exciting wisdom of a bygone age?  I still remember the period following World War II, when a construction crew was clearing bomb debris around the old city wall in central London.  Suddenly, a sharp eye spotted remnants of a Roman temple, long hidden under newer buildings.  The structure was dedicated to the Persian sun god, Mythras.  This discovery taught people a great deal about Mythraism, once popular not only with the Persians, but also with the Roman legions that occupied London.  The central motif was the sacrificing of a mystic bull.  A ceremonial shedding of the bull’s blood purified the earth, as devotees celebrated Mythras’ great deed of slaying the dreaded beast and fertilizing Mother Earth.  Rituals of the cult included a sacred meal, and a process of personal purification that included baptism.  Followers who partook of the bull’s body and blood were promised salvation, for when Mythras had completed his exploits on this earth, he had ascended into the heavens.  The Emperor Constantine was once a follower of Mythras.  So, scholars quickly spotted many parallels between Mythraism and Christian traditions.  They even suggested that some of the ceremonies and sacraments of the church could be gifts brought to Christianity by wise men from the east, Persian followers of Mythras.  Indeed, the cosmic battle between Mythras and the beast seems to foretell the battle Christians wage between good and evil.

During the years 1946 and 1947, archaeologists were also digging in the baking heat of the Dead Sea valley.  In caves on the desolate hillside to the east of Masada, scholars found precious early manuscripts which threw new light on many obscure Biblical passages.  They also came across many writings of the Essenes, the Sons of Righteousness, underlining the gifts that these ascetics brought to the thinking of both John the Baptist and Christ himself.

The passage from the book of Nehemiah offers a tantalising glimpse of an even earlier dig.  We are back in the Fifth Century BC.  Cyrus has decreed that a small party of Jews can leave their Babylonian captivity.  We can imagine human skeletons, staggering from internment camps in their prison rags.  They brave the rigours of the long march to Jerusalem.  They arrive in great hope, but alas! - the city lies in ruins.  Life becomes a desperate post-war struggle against poverty and fatigue.  Attempts at reconstruction bring crushing debts and the bondage of high interest rates.  After twenty years of hardship, the survivors finally build some sort of a sanctuary.  It is dedicated in the year 516 BC.  But it is a pretty humble building, a far cry from the fabled magnificence of Solomon’s temple.

Nehemiah is still in Babylon.  He serves as cupbearer to Artaxerxes, King of Persia, at his winter palace in Shushan.  Messengers tell Nehemiah of the misery that is modern Jerusalem.  The Jews worship in a third rate temple, and the city walls are a heap of rubble.  The gates are burned, and the citizens lie at the mercy of marauding brigands.  Nehemiah seems quite a smooth talker.  He puts on a very long face, and tells the king “Why should not my countenance be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ sepulchres lieth waste, and the gates thereof are consumed with fire.”  (Nehemiah 2 ³).   So, Artaxerxes is persuaded that the Jews need someone to lead them in building a city of which they can be proud. Nehemiah is not only dispatched to Jerusalem, but finds himself appointed as governor of the city.  He is a shrewd and effective administrator.  And despite the naysaying of friends and foes alike, the city walls are rebuilt in a mere 52 days.

As the builders push ahead with their excavations, a sharp eye spots an ancient scroll (Nehemiah 7 ⁵).  The document is taken to Ezra, one of the scribes who had led the second wave of prisoners out of Babylon.  He quickly recognizes it as a segment of the long-lost Torah, a part of the first five books of Jewish scriptures.  And as he reads this precious document, he realizes just how far the spiritual life of his people has slipped during the years of internment.  Nehemiah, the administrative dynamo, had restored the buildings of the city core, but there remained a need for spiritual reconstruction.  So, Ezra persuaded the carpenters to take some surplus timber and build a great tower of a pulpit just outside the Water Gate.  He sat his audience down, climbed up into this vantage spot, and began to read from the scroll.  And as sometimes happens when I conduct a morning service, it became a three-hour marathon.  There was no Donna at the console of a wonderful sound system.  So, he had a team of assistants pass through the crowd, helping people to hear the words and understand the reading (Nehemiah 8 ⁸).  Everyone remained closely attentive throughout the three hours.  They saw just how far short of the Deuteronomic Law they had fallen (Nehemiah 89).  Important rituals had been ignored and many of the Jews had inter-married with pagans. They began to weep.  In this month’s “Observer”, Janet Silman links their repentance to the Jewish festival of Rosh Hashanah.  But Ezra told them rather to rejoice at the new insights they had received.  “For this day is holy unto the Lord; neither be ye sorry, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.  (Nehemiah 8 ¹⁰).

In our day, many of us have some difficulty with this passage, particularly the call to divorce pagan partners.  It seems pretty unpleasant, racist reading, raising spectres of eugenics and a master race.  But Professor Northrop Frye has argued that we can still learn from this episode.  Any revolutionary change in society needs a purge and a faithful, saving remnant.  The Bible reiterates this theme. A purified, homogenous group is a socially effective instrument, and in a time of crisis it becomes the one to keep for seed until a new age dawns (“The Great Code”, p. 119).

Luke’s gospel also paints a vivid picture of a congregation that is offered the gifts of new spiritual truths.  Jesus enters his home-town synagogue, and the rulers of the congregation hand him a scroll from the prophesy of Isaiah.  People quickly notice that he speaks not as the scribes, but as one having authority (Matthew 7 ²⁹).  He urges a preaching of good news to the poor, of healing of the broken-hearted, of deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind (Luke 4 ^18-20).  The eyes of the entire congregation fasten on Him.  People wonder at the gracious words which proceed out of his mouth.  But as the service wears on, there are also angry mutterings.  Look at him!  Who does he think he is?  He’s just the local carpenter.  What does he know about anything?  Instead of accepting the gifts of Christ’s wisdom, an ugly mob scene develops. They “rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.  But he, passing through the midst of them went on his way (Luke 4 ²⁹).

I was reminded of the new insights that Scripture can bring to us as I read "God's Secretaries- the making of the King James Bible”.  You can find Adam Nicolson’s book in the Squamish Public Library, and I commend it to you.  It offers a fascinating and well-written account of the universe of James I. The rich enjoy their “silks, lace, Venetian glass, tin-glazed ceramics, fine thick Italian paper, German swords and armour, Turkish carpets and Venetian instruments” (p. 140).  And in stark contrast, the cities are packed with a “surcharge of people, specially of the worse sort, as can hardly be either fed and sustained, or preserved in health, or governed from the dearth of victuals, infection and plague and manifold disorders.” (p. 27).  The Bubonic plague is seen as a visitation upon the godless poor, or as Thomas Pullein put it “the will of God rightfullie punishing wicked men” (p.25).

James himself faces major challenges.  On the temporal plane, he must unite the very different kingdoms of England and Scotland.  And in the spiritual realm, he must bring a measure of peace, reconciliation and tolerance to bitterly warring factions - the Catholics, the Anglicans, the Presbyterians, the Anabaptists and the Dissenters.  On the one hand are those who believe in the wisdom and authority of church tradition.  On the other hand are those who see the only path to truth in their interpretation of Scripture.  I caught many glimpses of my maternal grandfather in the latter group.  They worshipped a harsh God, one who would replace the gay clothing of the cavaliers and prelates with simple black gowns, who thought a beautiful stained glass window or a well-tuned organ an abomination, and who even spurned the gift of a wedding ring to a loving spouse.

James believed that a new translation of the Bible could reconcile these widely divergent views of God, the church, and the nation.  So, he commissioned six broadly based teams of 8 translators.  These learned divines escaped the ravages of the plague.  But we should not accept the mediaeval inference that this reflected their saintlinesss.  Take Lancelot Andrews, who chaired the first Westminster company of translators. Among other well-endowed livings, he was supposed to serve as pastor of the Cripplegate church in East London.  The epidemic devastated the area; 2878 of 4000 parishioners died in a single year.  But Andrewes left his ungodly flock to the hand of the avenging angel.  He decamped westward along the Thames to the “pleasant retreat of Chiswick, where the elms afforded grateful shade in summer, and a “retiring place” from infection” (p. 29).

Nicolson’s book offers detailed biographies of the translators.  A few were indeed saints.  But many were corrupt, self-indulgent clergy, with their eye on the main chance.  They bought and sold profitable livings like so many shares on the stock exchange.  And some were blatantly sinful.  It is one of the wonders of grace that God could work through such a band of rogues, cheats and charlatans, and that the majesty, power and wisdom of our Authorized Bible could be dug from such an earthy setting.

James created an accurate text with a stately cadence, worthy of the Word of God.  He also looked for an ambiguity of phrase, a gift that would unite all seekers after truth, answering the prayer of Jesus “that they may be one as we are one.” (John 17 ¹¹).  We are reminded of this quest today, as we begin the week of prayer for Christian unity. Christ’s prayer still remains unanswered. Fundamentalists condemn liberal thinkers, while liberals ridicule fundamentalist beliefs.  Christians refuse to gather with fellow-believers around a common communion table.  And we reject those who seek other pathways to an understanding of God as abject heathens.

Paul faced something of this situation in Corinth.  The city was cosmopolitan.  The congregation was cosmopolitan.  And perhaps for this reason there were many warring factions.  Roman freedmen claimed to Paul’s philosophy. Jews founded their beliefs on the words of Peter and the Old Testament.  Greeks enjoyed the eloquence and intense intellectual speculation of young Apollos; this last group rejected all Jewish dogma and moral laws.  And Paul spoke to this divided congregation of the diversity of spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12 ^8-11).  Every member could learn something.  Every member had something that they could contribute.  “To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; To another, faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same spirit; to another, divers kinds of tongues; to another, the interpretation of tongues; But in all of these worketh that one and selfsame Spirit.”

The week of prayer for Christian Unity calls us to move beyond the narrow sectarianism of Ezra and the Corinthian christians.  No one has a corner on truth.  Beneath the rubble of our self-importance and fixed dogma, we can all accept gifts from fellow seekers.  And we can all unearth importnat gifts that we can offer to the larger spiritual community, whether we are members of this congregation, members of other factions within the United Church, adherents to other churches within Squamish, or members of the Muslim, Sikh or Bahai faiths.  “There are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.  And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh in us all”. (I Corinthians 12 ^5-6).  Any gifts we may have are nothing without charity (I Corinthians 13 ¹).  If we offer our particular gifts humbly to fellow-seekers, then the grace of God can use our offering in the shaping of His Kingdom. For we know: “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.  The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; and the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. (Psalm 19 ^7-8).

Let us today discern the gifts that we can share.  And give us the grace to accept the spiritual insights that others offer to us.