Nehemiah 8.9–end and John 16.1–11

‘Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared’

May I speak in the name of the living God who is our creator, sustainer and redeemer. Amen.

The people of Israel weep.

Not the polite, restrained weeping we sometimes witness in our pews or on television tributes, but the full-bodied, gut-wrenching tears of those who have seen too much, known too much, lost too much.

In our first reading, they have just heard the law read aloud – Ezra’s voice spreading through the people like rain over cracked soil. And in response, they are utterly undone. For these are not tears of reverence or of devotion. These are the tears of recognition. The law convicts them – not just of individual failings, but of communal amnesia. They weep because they remember what they have forgotten.

And into that shared grief, Nehemiah issues a command they and we do not expect:

“Do not mourn or weep… Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared… for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

It is a surprising command. It is not “repent harder.” It is not “punish yourselves until you feel worthy again.” Rather, it is “celebrate – and make sure everyone has enough to do the same.”

There is something profoundly countercultural about this command. In our own day, we live not in the ruins of Jerusalem but surrounded by the wreckage of our shared discourse. Culture wars rage across our institutions, our churches, our communities. We watch as nuance is exiled, empathy dismissed as weakness, and truth manipulated in the name of tribal loyalty.

The law we have forgotten is not the code of Moses, but the law of love, of neighbourliness, of communal obligation. And when that law is read again – whether by prophets, poets, or protesters – some weep, but others rage. We are a people not at peace with our past, and we are a people who are deeply suspicious of our future.

Into this context, our second reading offers another startling word.

Jesus says to his disciples, “I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. They will put you out of the synagogues… Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.”

We are left in no doubt: the tearing apart of community is nothing new. Religious violence, righteous exclusion, doctrinal purging – these are not modern inventions. And Jesus’ words are not just warnings – they are diagnoses.

They remind us that some of the greatest harms are done by those who believe themselves to be guardians of truth. Those who exile others for the sake of “purity” do so believing they honour God.

In our own fractured landscape, we have seen how people on every side of every issue claim the moral high ground while digging trenches that make communion impossible.

But Jesus does not leave us there.

He goes on to say, “When the Spirit comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.”

The Spirit unmasks the falsity of our certainties. The Spirit shows us that sin is not what we thought it was; that righteousness is not owned by any one tribe; that judgment belongs not to us, but to the crucified and risen Christ.

This is forensic theology. The Spirit does not float above the fray but enters into it. Not to vindicate one faction over another, but to diagnose the deeper illness: the ways in which our violence, our divisions, our exclusions are built on false understandings of holiness and truth.

Our readings this evening call us to something braver than the culture wars permit.

They invite us to imagine a community not built on winning the argument, but on shared joy. Not on expelling the unclean, but on making sure all have enough to celebrate. Not on moral certainty, but on Spirit-led humility.

The people in Nehemiah’s day are told to feast, to eat the fat and drink sweet wine and to send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared. This is not just a command to rejoice – it is a command to remember the poor and the vulnerable in every single act of rejoicing.

Now imagine a church that measures its faith not by doctrinal alignment, but by whether the most vulnerable among them have enough to feast.

Now imagine a community that refuses the binary of winner and loser and instead lives out the messy, costly reality of shared life.

This is not weakness. This is not moral compromise. This, my friends, is resurrection strength.

The culture wars thrive on a scarcity mindset: if your truth is affirmed, mine is erased; if my experience is centred, yours is diminished. But the Spirit reveals the opposite: that when one part of the body is honoured, the whole body is strengthened. That joy, like manna, multiplies when shared.

The church has too often traded the Spirit for strategy, and joy for judgment. But joy is not an optional emotion – it is the theological act of resistance.

To feast in a wounded world is not to deny its pain – it is to insist that pain will not have the final word.

To weep when the law is read is not a failure – it is the first sign of awakening.

To send portions to those with nothing is to declare that no one will be left behind in the kingdom of God.

And so we are faced with a stark choice.

We can participate in the patterns of the world: misinformation, gatekeeping, scapegoating, polarising, proving ourselves right, regardless of the cost to others.

Or we can take the harder path: of Spirit-disruption, of wounded joy, of communities that listen, make space for difference and diversity and dwell together in the tension of not always agreeing – but always, always loving.

Jesus says, “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away.” These are, on the surface, strange words. But the presence of Christ withdraws, so the Spirit of Christ can come. This is theological decentralisation. The Incarnate One who once walked among us in one body now calls us, you and me, to be his body – many members, one wounded-and-risen whole.

This is the antidote to our present culture wars: not the erasure of difference, but the bearing of it together in joy. Not uniformity, but cruciform unity.

So let us read the law again, with tears in our eyes and bread in our hands. Let us welcome the Spirit who will prove the world wrong – and us, too. Let us feast, share, and build a community that is less concerned with being right and utterly focuses on being reconciled. For when we do, we will find that Nehemiah is absolutely right, the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Amen.