December 16
Nehemiah 8:9-10
9 Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and teacher of the Law, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, “This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law.
10 Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
Preparing for Joy
by Elisabeth Kincaid, J.D., Ph.D.
In this passage from Nehemiah, God’s people have returned to the ruins of Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon. However, rather than a triumphant homecoming, they find that their city and God’s temple are in ruins. More discouraging still, the discovery of God’s law in the temple ruins and its public reading demonstrates to the people that they, too, are in spiritual ruins – having fallen out of the habit of obeying God’s law and recognizing how far they are from his presence. Given the gravity of this realization, the reaction of Nehemiah and Ezra is surprising. In many places in scripture, we see God calling for repentance accompanied by sackcloth and ashes. Here, however, Ezra and Nehemiah urge the people not to mourn when they hear how far short they have fallen from God’s law, but rather to rejoice. Why this dramatic shift? Perhaps the clue lies in Nehemiah’s often quoted declaration “the joy of the Lord is your strength.” The life of faith always involves repentance and amendment of life. After Nehemiah and Ezra urge the people to rejoice and celebrate God’s redemptive action in their lives, the following passage describes how they do turn to putting God’s law into application in their own lives (in this specific instance the re-institution of the feast of Tabernacles). However, the root of this repentance and amendment is not sorrow and struggle, but rather an ultimately joyful response to the great things which God has done for them. God not only calls people to obedience, but he makes that obedience possible and even joyful.
In Advent, a penitential season, we are called to take time to reflect, return to God’s law, and to measure how far we have wandered from relationship with Him. However, Advent itself is not the goal. Rather, in Advent, the hearing of God’s law is preparing us for a holy day of rejoicing. We are preparing ourselves to encounter the joy of the Lord – not in a law but in a Person. And the arrival of this Person is something we should take time to rejoice and celebrate. Through the encounter at Christmas with the incarnate God, we too enter into God’s city and to a joy which neither time, nor empire, or even our own failures, can ever destroy or diminish.
About the Author
Elisabeth Kincaid, J.D., Ph.D.
Elisabeth Rain Kincaid, J.D., Ph.D., joined Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary faculty in August 2024 as director of the Institute for Faith and Learning (IFL). She also serves as Associate Professor of Ethics, Faith and Culture at Truett and affiliate faculty member in the Department of Management in the Hankamer School of Business. A native Texan, Kincaid is a theologian, lawyer and business ethics scholar, with experience in finance and campus ministry. Prior to Baylor, she held the Legendre-Soule Chair in Ethics at the College of Business in Loyola University New Orleans, where she also served as the inaugural director of the Center for Ethics and Economic Justice.
Kincaid has held faculty positions in Christian ethics at the Aquinas Institute of Theology and Nashotah House Theological Seminary, where she also served as acting Academic Dean. She has published a monograph exploring questions of Christian engagement with law, “Law from Below,” as well as in numerous scholarly journals and popular publications. She is currently at work on a book exploring Christian engagement with work and business ethics in order to live a flourishing life. She also writes on virtue ethics, legal philosophy and contemporary and early modern political theology. She is married to the Rev. S. Thomas Kincaid III. They have two children.