There’s been much talk of rebuilding of late – building back better, to coin a phrase. 

Whether it’s the need to rebuild our whole global economy along greener lines, off the back of the COP-26 resolutions passed yesterday; or the need to rebuild our public finances with a levelling-up agenda in mind, following the dual challenges of Covid and Brexit; or the need to rebuild confidence and mental wellbeing in the lives of so many, as we emerge from the worst of the pandemic; or the need to rebuild our church communities after the toughest twenty months of ministry that many of us have ever experienced; rebuilding is the name of the game.

Of course there’s another strand of Biblical imagery which speaks of tearing down the walls that divide us – and that could form the basis of a rather different sermon. But for nowlet’s stick with Nehemiah and the imagery of walls as shielding and protective. ‘Come, let us rebuild the wall’.

Rebuilding requires both realism and hope: the realism to recognise that something is broken and needs fixing; the hope to believe that fixing it is possible. Rebuilding calls on both the heart and the head: the deep passion which releases fresh energy and enthusiasm for the task; the clear thinking which turns that passion into positive strategies, so getting the job done. Naming the elephants in the room is key to any rebuilding process, because until the elephants are named, complacency will always win out. But simply naming the elephants without offering any solutions or fresh perspectives will equally fail to inspire, leading to the kind of fatalism which – like complacency – results in inaction. Complacency says, ‘Why change? Things are fine as they are’. Fatalism says: ‘Why change? It won’t make any difference’. Common to both is the question, ‘Why change?’

So back to our text: ‘Come, let us rebuild the wall’.

Nehemiah, the wine-taster to the mighty Artaxerxes, King of Persia, recognised the need for change. He had heard about the terrible state of his Jewish compatriots who had been allowed to return to Jerusalem but found it unprotected and a heap of ruins. The news had shattered him: ‘When I heard these words’, he wrote, ‘I sat down and wept, and mourned for days, fasting and praying before the God of Heaven’. There’s no question that from that moment, his heart was fully engaged. But during that vital period of mourning, fasting and praying – a part of the vision process which we omit at our peril – Nehemiah began to recognise the part he could play in answering his own prayers, given his close proximity to the king. For those of us who remember the story of Esther, as I’m quite sure the vicar of this parish does extremely well (!)this was Nehemiah’s Esther moment. His unique position at the king’s side had been granted to him ‘for such a time as this’.

Having got the permission of the king to visit Jerusalem, then, we read of his night-time investigation of the state of the wall around it. What was the extent of the brokenness? What needed fixing? How could Nehemiah shake the residents of Jerusalem out of their complacency or fatalism – probably more fatalism than complacency – so that they might build back, even build back better?

Later in the book we learn that that was a spiritual question as much as anything: but at this point, Nehemiah needed a direct, practical approach to his fellow Jews. First, he named the elephant in the room: ‘You see the trouble we’re in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burnt’. And then he offered a solution: ‘Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we may no longer suffer disgrace’.

It was a straight-forward challenge, and it worked: what had seemed a completely impossible task to a whole lot of disparate individuals became a very possible task as they came together under Nehemiah’s inspiring leadership and started working, as our reading puts it, for the ‘common good’. The same would be true of the 11 disciples gathered around Jesus to hear the words of his so-called Great Commission in our gospel reading: a more impossible taskstill, to make disciples of all nations – and yet made possible as they worked together, with the presence and power of the supremely authoritative Jesus inspiring them along the way.

I love that ‘us’ in Nehemiah’s words – ‘Come, let us rebuild the wall’. No words of blame there, no questioning of why the inhabitants of Jerusalem hadn’t got off their backsides earlier, no ‘them and us’. Just ‘us and us’ and a cheerful invitation: ‘Come, let’s get going together on the rebuilding work, on this exciting new venture of faith’.

And as we begin this new triennium of Diocesan Synod, at a time when rebuilding is the name of the game, there’s much here to challenge and inspire us. For one thing, there’s the challenge of naming the elephants in the room – that in amidst many wonderful examples of church life at its best across the diocese, our congregations as a whole are still shrinking just a little and ageing just a little year by year, and Covid has probably accelerated that process a little further. Meanwhile the morale of many has taken something of a battering, andleadership isn’t easy when some whom we lead remain deeply cautious and others are living as though the threat of Covid is firmly behind them.

Next there’s the encouragement here to pray (with mourning and fasting as appropriate!) in the recognition that unless the Lord builds the house, we labour in vain who build it; butequally that with God all things are possible. Prayer helps to engage the heart – but also opens up the head-space to think more clearly and move forward with strategic intent. And here’s where Nehemiah’s night-time expedition (or a daytime equivalent) naturally follows: carefully investigating the state of the wall, so as to see just where it’s broken and what might be needed to fix it.

Working independently at the next stage is unlikely to achieve very much. A strong ‘them and us’ narrative – whether ‘them’ is the rival parish next door or that strange, amorphous bureaucracy called ‘The Diocese’ – is only going to hamper our efforts. Instead, the message is ‘Come, let us rebuild the wall’: us and us, not them and us; and it’s that message, in a sense, that encapsulates the vision for all that we’re seeking to do through the work of the Diocesan Synod over the next three years.

And so members of this Synod will be feeding our thoughts and prayers into rebuilding strategies like the renewal of Transforming Church, Transforming Lives, our Health and Viability programme and the Parish Needs Process. We’ll be looking at how we invest in those strategies, though the annual budget cycle and some longer-term financial thinking. We’ll be seeking a way forward in areas of church life where relationships are strained, especially in the area of human sexuality; and we’ll even be seeking to play our tiny part in restoring our broken eco-system through a radical reduction of our carbon footprint.

These are real grounds for hope here, even as we seek to grow the church against the odds. As recently as 2019, we saw an increasing numbers of weekly worshippers across the diocese, and a rather marked increase in the number of children and young people engaged in our church communities. And yes, a lot has happened since then, with both the challenges and the opportunities that Covid has thrown up for us. But now’s emphatically the time to step up, not give up.

It’s all put rather beautifully in the verse of hymn that many of us will have sung two weeks ago:

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,

Steals on the ear the distant triumph-song,

And hearts are brave again and arms are strong.

Alleluia.

Or, as Nehemiah put it once more, ‘Come, let us rebuild the wall’.