06/14/2026 - "Joyful, Joyful" (Nehemiah 12:27-30, 40, 43)

Last week we looked at the story of Ruth and Naomi, and how they loved each other, even when it was complicated and even when it would’ve been easier to push each other away. This week we’re looking at the next fruit of the spirit, joy, and how a group of people paused to revel in it at the end of a long-awaited rebuilding of their city’s walls.

Scripture: Nehemiah 12:27-30, 40, 43

When it was time for the dedication of Jerusalem’s wall, the leaders sought out the Levites in all the places where they lived in order to bring them to Jerusalem to celebrate the dedication with joy, with thanks and singing, and with cymbals, harps, and lyres. The singers also gathered together both from the region around Jerusalem and from the villages of the Netophathites, also from Beth-hagilgal and from the region of Geba and Azmaveth, because the singers had built themselves villages around Jerusalem.

After the priests and the Levites purified themselves, they purified the people, the gates, and the wall. Then both groups of those who gave thanks stood in God’s house. I, Nehemiah, was there too along with the half of the officials who were with me. They offered great sacrifices on that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy. The women and children also rejoiced, and the sound of the joy in Jerusalem could be heard from far away.

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We come to the story of Nehemiah at the very end of the tale, in the midst of a joyful celebration.

The book of Nehemiah is a memoir, which is pretty rare in the Bible. And in it, he details the story of how he went from being cupbearer to the king of Persia to being the governor of Judah and rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls.

Now being cupbearer to the king, Nehemiah would’ve lived in the palace with access to all of the luxuries life could offer. He also held a place of immense trust, and would most likely have been the king’s confidant and an unofficial advisor as well, not just the person that tasted the king’s wine to make sure it wasn’t poisoned. So imminent threat of death aside, being the cupbearer was a nice life. A lot better than most of the Hebrew people living in the Persian empire would’ve had.

Decades prior to the book of Nehemiah, Judah had been conquered by Babylon. And many people, especially from the upper classes, had been taken into captivity in Babylon, often referred to as the “exile in Babylon.” While it often seems like this exile involved everyone living in Judah, or at least in Jerusalem, that’s not the case. Many ordinary people who were farmers or day laborers stayed where they were, but were also considered to be in an exile as well because of the destruction of the Temple and the overthrow of their government.

This exile ends when Babylon is conquered by Persia. And unlike Babylon, the Persian empire didn’t necessarily want to keep hostages. So they’d begun to allow the children and grandchildren of the people taken hostage to return back to Judah if they so wished. But, not all of them wanted to. Many of them had never known a home other than Babylon or Persia, and so they stayed in the lands and with the friends and family they knew and were comfortable with.

Nehemiah seems to have been one of these people. He would’ve been born and raised in the Persian empire, most likely in the capitol of Susa, maybe to parents who’d also held honored positions in the service of the king. He has a cushy job in the palace, why would he want to give that up?

But one day, his brother Hanani came to visit him in the palace. His brother had been one of the people who’d decided to return to Jerusalem, the home of his ancestors. He’s who tells Nehemiah that the walls have broken down and the gates burned to the ground.

And Nehemiah mourns, for a city he’s never been to. And he’s driven by that grief and by God’s calling to ask the king that he be sent to Jerusalem to rebuild its walls and ultimately, become one of its governors post-exile. The king grants him his request, greasing the wheels of bureaucracy to get his now-former cupbearer safely to Jerusalem with the tools & supplies he needed to rebuild the walls.

But that’s the easy part. Once Nehemiah reached Jerusalem, he realizes exactly the level of Jerusalem’s devastation. And it’s not just from the wars, or from time and neglect. He also realizes that the nobles and officials that have seized power in the chaos following Babylon’s destruction are horrifically corrupt. During a time of famine and chaos, they continued to tax the people heavily to put the money in their own pockets.

This caused the people who were struggling to survive to have to take out predatory loans that charged massive levels of interest that they could never hope to repay. So as the new governor of Judah, Nehemiah not only has the task of rebuilding the walls, but also of rebuilding Jerusalem’s society and culture of caring for the poor and vulnerable, and not exploiting them.

So he does so. He forces the nobles and the officials to give back the money and the food and the wine they’d taken as interest on heavy loans, and as a tax above what the people should’ve been paying. At the same time he begins work on rebuilding the walls - much to the chagrin of the kingdoms around Jerusalem.

As rebuilding of the walls began, the threats came from neighboring kingdoms, who wanted Judah to remain a weak territory, easily exploitable and not a military threat. The threats got so bad that we’re told the men working on rebuilding the walls had to work with a sword in one hand and their tools in the other.

But through all of these setbacks and corruption and threats, the walls and gates of Jerusalem are rebuilt. And once they are complete, the entire city stops working to celebrate and thank God for this incredible milestone. With music and dancing and ritual, they let the joy of the moment overtake them as they celebrate and rest in what they’ve accomplished.

But the work is far from over. The walls may be done, but Jerusalem still has not fully recovered from the damage over the past decades.

Nehemiah still has plenty of corruption that he has to dig out and make right.

The people returning from exile in Babylon and Persia are struggling to fit back in with the people who stayed in Jerusalem and Judah.

And it will take generations more for Jerusalem and Judah to return to some semblance of the city and the territory that they once were.

But even with all of the hard work ahead, even knowing that tomorrow they will have to wake up to face all of their problems again, for today they set that aside and find the joy in accomplishing the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls.

Friends, this is what cultivating joy looks like; knowing that there are problems today and problems tomorrow, and never losing sight of those, but still choosing for a moment to celebrate and be grateful for the good that is also in our lives. It’s holding birthday parties and graduations and anniversary celebrations, even when someone has cancer and you don’t know what tomorrow will bring. It’s setting aside time to get lunch or coffee with a friend, even as work deadlines and your to-do list linger over you. And it’s holding onto the little moments where your heart leaps and your soul sings, even if it seems like it shouldn’t be with everything swirling around you. Because no matter what else is going on, in that moment, it is still something to find joy in.

As many of you know, I’ve lost three of my grandparents in the last three months, with my mom’s parents just passing away a month apart from each other. And it’s been a lot of shock and grief for all of us to have to navigate. Although they all had been sick for the past few months, it just seemed like everything crashed down so suddenly. But even as we’ve gone from funeral to graveside to apartments and houses we’re working on cleaning out, there have been moments of laughter and joy.

My dad’s dad, my grandfather, was prone to gifting us practical jokes at Christmas, often involving bugs jumping out of wooden boxes you’d open. Then you’d have to reach past the fake bug to get the money he’d put inside for you. So you can imagine what happened when my dad went to open a box my grandfather had on his book shelf.

Unfortunately there was no money inside to make it worth the shock my dad had.

And then there was the joy of finding dozens of scrapbooks my grandma had made of photos of my brother and I when we were little - photos that we didn’t know she had, and copies of other photos we’d lost over the years.

The joy of these little moments doesn’t mean that tomorrow we won’t have mountains of paperwork and dozens of phone calls to make. It doesn’t mean that they’ll suddenly come back to life and everything will go back to normal. And it also doesn’t mean that I didn’t care about my grandparents, that it suddenly erases all of the grief and sadness.

Because grief and sorrow and sadness can and do exist right alongside joy. Joy can find its way into our lives even when it seems like there is no reason for it to be there.

And sometimes we can feel guilty when it shows up in us in circumstances that seem anything but joyful. We can even think we’re sinning if we aren’t feeling what we think is the right way. With all of the wars and violence and despair in the world, why should we feel happy? And we can even be worried that people will judge us.

But that’s not how joy works. Joy is the permission to stop and recognize moments of grace & glory when they come into our lives, and let them be the reminder that we often need that the world is more than just the death and destruction and pain.

Because if all we let ourselves acknowledge is the pain and sorrow, then that can wear us down over time. Sometimes we can get tricked into thinking that just knowing about the grief and pain of the world is enough, because we’re so exhausted just thinking about it that we feel as if we’ve done something.

Joy is the energy that keeps us on our feet and helps us actually do something to address the deep pain in the world. Because joy reminds us exactly what we’re working towards, a world where joy outweighs grief for everyone, no matter who they are or where they live. So don’t feel guilty for feeling joy when there is so much pain in the world. Let those moments of joy be the fuel you need to help heal that pain, wherever it may show up in your life.

And at the same time, don’t lose sight of the world’s pain in a quest to only feel joy. Because the fruit of joy doesn’t taste as sweet if we’re the only ones eating it. It’s much sweeter if we share it with everyone we meet.

So this week, just like Nehemiah, recognize and celebrate when joy comes into your life, and let it be the fuel you need to heal the world’s pain.