I have been talking about Nehemiah lately and the rebuilding of the walls in Jerusalem.  You need to check out this 60 minutes piece that is about the Harlem Children’s Zone.  You have a modern day Nehemiah type leader that has said that his city will no longer be in ruins.  Check it out here.

Let’s continue to dream as a church (as we are with our community leaders) as to what tangible things we can do to rebuild our South Everett community.

Joseph Fehlen- Holy Spirit Part 2 – Acts 2 – December 6th, 2009

From the multi-part series “The Book of Acts”

We last left off with the city wall in ruins and everyone must get involved in the restoration. Nehemiah awoken the leaders to remind them that it wasn’t someone else’s city that they looked at every day, but theirs. It was that wake up call that help them realize that they needed to be apart of the solution. Chapter four of this great book illuminated to me that if you call a place home you must be involved in the restoration. No excuses.

My other thought (see previous entry for previous thought) I got from this list of names and obscure places was that every place alone the wall mattered (even the Dung Gate). Could you imagine being Malkijah son of Recab? He was leader of the Beth-hakkerem district, a little area south between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Of the eleven possible gates a person could work on (Valley gate, Fountain Gate, etc) Malkijah gets the one to the valley where rubbish and refuse were dumped on a daily basis.

That is because in Jerusalem every gate, every wall, every tower matter.

There is an apartment on Casino Road called Shiloh. It is the last complex on the left right before you get to the Boeing hanger. This area is the pictorial of the haves and have not. Just a stones throw away from Shiloh are the brand new airplanes (I would not suggest you actually throw a stone at one) worth millions of dollars. At the apartment complex are hundreds of family that couldn’t afford to even fly in a plane.

Shiloh is an ancient word that means a place of rest and this place no such place. No offense to those that lives there (I don’t know anyone), but I would consider this place (not the people) to be our local Dung Gate. Shutters falling, doors not painted, cars that don’t run, the grass brown, and just a generally not appealing place.

But it, like the Dung Gate of old, need not be neglected. For the city to be rebuilt the whole wall needs to be fixed. If you have a whole in your roof and you just fix 90% of the hole, well you still have a hole. When it comes to rebuilding a city, neighborhood or a business everything must be worked over. This can only happen if everyone gets involved. No matter what your status or background you are needed.

The cool thing about the end of this story is that you would think the Valley Gate or the wall around the Temple would be where the people celebrated the most. But when the day of celebration came the choir was instructed to head on down to, you guessed it, the Dung Gate. Because just like today is it not fun to celebrate when something that you thought was beyond saving is repaired, renewed, and then restored back to the community.

This is why everyone is needed and why every part of the city matters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The third chapter then begins with a Tolkien like list of the worker names (Meremoth, Joiada, Hananiah, etc) and obscure locations on the wall that needed rebuilding (Tower of Hananel, The Dung Gate, Wall of Ophel, etc). I must admit I have skipped this list many times and moved on to chapter four. But this last time I read it and some thoughts rang out from the names and places.

My first thought was that if you called Jerusalem home you got involved in the repair.

A couple weeks ago, I was walking down the vacant school hallway with my eight grade buddy. We were on our way to the library to work on some math and the first thing I noticed about the student free floor was the trash. You notice such things when the mob is not racing to their next class. On our walk my friend passed over a big wad of paper.

“Are you going to pick up that piece of paper?” I asked.
“No” came his response clearly.
“You need to be proud of your school and take care of it” I came back quickly.
“My school wouldn’t have a broken locker” came his retort as he pointed towards a locker without a door.

I immediately realized that he had an ownership issue. That school was not his so therefore he would not endeavor to take care of it. We are all the same. A pop can in our lawn is picked up, but the same can on the ground at your local grocery store is left “for someone else”. We have enough trouble taking care of what is ours to worry about what is someone else’s.

The problem comes when everything is always someone else’s problem.

That is the way it was in Jerusalem. All these people were walking over rubble every day and just said “it is not my wall”. It was not until this guy from out of town and saw things with fresh eyes that they began to realize that this wall was theirs and it was not the way that it was suppose to be. They had been like students in between class periods; they didn’t see the trash. If they did see the mess they decided to just say “that isn’t my part of the wall”.

We need to start taking ownership for our wall that is broken down. Our locality (as yours is probable also) is not what it should be and we all need to help in the rebuilding the hood. We need some new names written down in the next chapter of the revitalization of city! These names do matter because they show ownership in the destruction and ownership in the rebuilding.

My second thought on chapter three coming soon.