Oct 25 2019 Ezra 3: 1-13

But many of the priests and Levites and heads of families, old people who had seen the first house on its foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this house

The first temple had been destroyed in Jerusalem. The temple, which the faithful believed was where God was present and worshipped. This story from Ezra describes the people back in Israel, gathered in Jerusalem, building altars to worship God. But they were sad, because the ‘foundation of the temple of the Lord was not yet laid’.

So they go about building a second temple in Jerusalem. They worked and worked, and finally laid the foundation. But alas, the religious leaders of the time and elders wept, when they saw it.

Were they sad at the second temple foundation? Sad because it wasn’t the first? Grieving because the first was destroyed? Maybe all of the above. But we do the same thing. Something bad happens, we pine for things to be better. But when they are made better, we aren’t as happy as we’d thought should have been.

Maybe the second foundation, or for us, the restored bits of our lives perpetually remind us of what was taken, or broken or destroyed. In high school, I had a bike stolen, and although I got a new one, I was perpetually ticked that I needed to get a new one at all. Instead of reveling in my new bike, I was mad that I didn’t have my old one, mad at the meanness of someone who stole my bike. But wouldn’t it be better if we could just be grateful, unlike the chief priests, that a second foundation has been built?

Or maybe we become unrealistically nostalgic for the first temple, measuring every subsequent thing by an exaggerated image of the first. I don’t genuinely remember what the bike was like that was stolen, but if you were to ask me about it, I think it is a combination of every good bike I’d had up to that point. First loves can be like this, or first jobs, first years in love. Ah, the good old days. 

 This morning, I’m thinking about how easy it is to cry over the laying of the second foundation, as opposed to being ecstatic because it’s being laid at all. I’m hopeful that today, I let the idealized and romantic notions of the first temple go. I hope I can let the grief go over the destruction of first things. And instead, offer shouts of joy for the second.