Ezekiel 33:7-11
7 So you, mortal, I have made a sentinel for the house
of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning
from me. 8 If I say to the wicked, "O wicked ones, you shall surely
die," and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from their ways, the
wicked shall die in their iniquity, but their blood I will require at your
hand. 9 But if you warn the wicked to turn from their ways, and they do not
turn from their ways, the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but you will have
saved your life. 10 Now you, mortal, say to the house of Israel, Thus you have
said: "Our transgressions and our sins weigh upon us, and we waste away
because of them; how then can we live?" 11 Say to them, As I live, says
the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the
wicked turn from their ways and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways;
for why will you die, O house of Israel?
What can the preacher preach to a
gathered congregation during those times when the world seems so dark? What can
the proclaimer proclaim when it seems like the battle is lost and the enemy has
one? What can the politician pronounce to his supporters when it’s time to
concede without dissolving all hope for the future? What can a prophet prophesy to a people in
the midst of exile? What words could such a prophet say to an entire nation (or
at least the captive upper-class) that has been carted off from their homeland
and relocated within the borders of a heathen kingdom? Surely such a task would
seem great, nearly impossible. To keep the people’s eyes fixed on hope without
ignoring the current situation, without lying about the reality of the future,
surely it would feel like an enormous burden. This is just the predicament in
which we find the prophet Ezekiel in the book that bears his name.
Ezekiel is what we call an “exilic” prophet,
which means his time spent as a prophet was during the Babylonian Exile of the
kingdom of Judah which began in 597 B.C.E. with the deportation of Judah’s
upper-class elites and reached its climax with the destruction of Jerusalem and
the temple in 586 B.C.E. after a failed uprising from the people of Judah. The
exile would end only with the fall of the Babylonian Empire to the Persians in
538 B.C.E. Ezekiel was likely a part of the first wave of deportations that
began in 597 B.C.E. Therefore, Ezekiel’s prophetic career takes place among the
elite exiles in Babylon. The prophet is charged by God with the task of
preaching, prophesying to those whose homeland had been lost, destroyed, those
whose hope may have been destroyed with it. Ezekiel is charged by God to
prophesy to these people (which it may be pertinent to mention here that the
biblical understanding of “prophesy” is not “to tell the future,” but to speak
on behalf of God to the people of God); he is called to prophesy to them in the
midst of their despair. That is a heavy burden to bear indeed—and for more
reasons than we may realize.
I suppose if Ezekiel was most concerned about the emotional well-being of
the people, he might have made grand speeches riddled with apocalyptic
references of a coming day when the heathen Babylonians would be crushed and
all of the good people of Judah would not only be saved from such wrath, but
given back everything they once possessed, ten times over. I suppose Ezekiel
could have stood among the grieving people and proclaimed to them that everything
was going to be alright, that everything that happens to them is a “part of
God’s plan,” and that God’s plan surely included the proliferation of (the then
divided and depraved) nation of Israel. Ezekiel could have stood among the
people there in Babylon and preached to them that God was totally, completely
on their side, that they had in fact done nothing wrong and God was going to
put everything back the way it used to be because that’s the way it ought to
be. I suppose the prophet could have said that to the people.
Prophets and preachers do that sometimes you know? When it seems like
reality is too harsh, or it seems like “the way things are” are worse than “the
way things used to be,” they wrap the hard truth of the present in a lighter,
easier-to-swallow, pseudo-theology, even throwing in a proof-text or two just
to make it all seem legitimate. They tend to ignore the present with all of its
difficulties, and perhaps more importantly, they conveniently forget the evil
of the so-called “good ole days” and how such actions brought them to their current
place. They point instead to rose-colored future that promises that everything
is going to be alright, and there’ll be cake and ice cream, dancing, no taxes,
and all the comfort one can stand. If Ezekiel was looking to settle the people
down, have them eating out of his hand, and dumping piles of money in the plate
when it passed by, then I suppose he could’ve prophesied about the coming
calamity to Babylon and the coming comfort to the people of Judah. But that’s
not what Ezekiel prophesied.
I suppose he could have played it another way: he could have pointed to
the destruction caused by the Babylonians, to the power exhibited by the great
empire as it so easily expel the elite of Judah. Ezekiel could have proclaimed
to the people there in Babylon of a coming great day of fire; he could pounded
the pulpit and spit into the third row as he shouted, red-faced, about the
hellfire and brimstone that boiled in the bowls of the Babylonian hell for
those towards whom God’s wrath was so obviously stirred! He could have fanned
his arms out, symbolically encircling the masses, and preached of the coming
day when all of those who stand against the God of Judah will be thrown into an
eternal pit of black fire, and how such destruction caused by the Babylonians would
seem like joy and relief in such a day. I suppose the prophet could have
shouted that at the people.
Prophets and preachers do that sometimes you know? When it seems the call
to love God and our neighbors as ourselves isn’t filling the pews, when it seems
that the reality of God’s love is no longer keeping the church coffers full,
and fewer folks are showing up to Sunday School because it seems that the truth
of Christ’s call to self-sacrifice just isn’t compelling folks to show up,
well, that’s when the tone changes to talk of hellfire and demonic torture.
Because nothing fills the pews and gets folks “convicted” like (literally)
scaring the hell out of them! For whatever reason, it always seem more
persuasive to threaten folks with the wrath of hell and damnation than to show
them the love of God and the path of selflessness Christ calls us to follow. If
Ezekiel was looking to stir the people up, “prick their hearts,” and move them
to conviction; if Ezekiel wanted a “full altar” after the first stanza of “Just
As I Am,” then he could have exposed the exiles to the obvious wrath of God,
present in the power of Babylon. But that isn’t exactly what Ezekiel prophesied.
You see, Ezekiel wasn’t concerned about how the people would respond to
his words (a trait I’m afraid is scarce among contemporary “prophets”). Ezekiel
didn’t allow the hypothetical response of the exiles to his message sway what
God had given him to say or how he would say it. No, if we hear anything in
these verses we’ve read today it’s that Ezekiel was charged to proclaim exactly
what God had given him to proclaim—regardless of how the people might respond. After
all, the response of the people to the prophet’s words (God’s words) was the
responsibility of the people, not the prophet. The prophet’s responsibility was
to be sure to proclaim what God had given him to proclaim. This isn’t just a
word of warning and instruction to the prophet Ezekiel in the sixth century
B.C.E., this is a word for prophets, preachers, and believers today.
I’m not sure exactly when it started, perhaps it was in the 1960s with
Donald McGavran and the so-called “Church Growth Movement” out of California, reaching its crescendo in
the 1990s with Bill Hybels and the “seeker-sensitive” movement out of Illinois,
but at some point in recent history, Christianity in this country became
obsessed with numbers. I mean everything was about numbers. It got to the point
where the gospel was watered down to prosperity hocus-pocus or roasted over an
open pit of fire from hell, just to get folks to fill the pews, build colossal
auditoriums, and swell budgets. It’s not just megachurches that were (and still
are) concerned about numbers, but small churches tried every boxed program from
their denomination that guaranteed church growth, and when that didn’t work,
they either fired the pastor or began to claim that the megachurch model was
the worst thing ever (while of course secretly wishing they could be just like
those big churches).
Because of this new, number-driven way of doing ministry, preachers began
pulling back on the reins or they began shaking their congregations favorite
sugar stick in the pulpit, whatever would get them in the pews and keep them
there. Baptisms became competition events in order to see who could have the
most at one time, in one year, and who could come up with the most creative
ways to do them. Education buildings were erected with coffee bars,
rock-climbing walls, and children’s worship areas designed by the “Imagineers”
at Disney (I even heard of a church in Arkansas with a baptistry shaped like a
fire truck, complete with flashing lights and a siren that would go off every
time a child was baptized!). Whatever it took to get the numbers higher so the
church’s or the pastor’s name could be printed in the denominational newspaper.
It didn’t matter if the word from God got smaller, so long as the numbers and
the building got bigger.
You see, the prophet Ezekiel could have had an easy time in Babylon if he
had taken such an approach, if he had only told the people whatever it took to
get them on his side, to get them to pay attention. But Ezekiel was a true
prophet—not one who tells the congregation it’s all about them and not about
God. Ezekiel was told to proclaim the words God gave him and leave the results
up to the people themselves. You see, when we become so focused on the response to the good news of God’s love
and salvation we too often forget to actually show and tell that good news. God
gave Ezekiel a hard word in a difficult time, no different that the word that
Christ gave to his followers when he told them to take up their own crosses if
they want to follow him. That’s the word God still gives us, the word to take
up our cross and follow Jesus. That’s the word he gives us to share and show
the world. We cannot get so tangled up in what we might imagine the response to
such a word would be. We must be faithful in living it out and proclaiming it!
You see, there’s a frightening word that God give Ezekiel in this
passage, a frightening word about the consequences of not proclaiming the whole
of God’s message. In verses 8 and 9
God says to the prophet: “If I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked
ones, you shall surely die,’ and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn
from their ways, the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but their blood I will
require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked to turn from their ways, and
they do not turn from their ways, the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but
you will have saved your life.” That may be a hard word to hear—that if we are silent, if we
do not share the love of Christ with those both in our words and our deeds—we
may be held responsible. That is to say, if we are more concerned with how
others perceive us, if we are concerned with having to give up some of our
comfort, of we are concerned that things might actually have to change because
of the truth of the gospel—then we may be held responsible for the change that DOES NOT happen. However, if we do our
best to live the truth of Christ’s gospel, if we deny ourselves, take up our
crosses, and follow Jesus, if we seek to do as Francis of Assisi so wonderfully
put it, “preach the gospel always, [using] words when necessary”—then we will
have not sacrificed the integrity of the gospel for the popularity of
prosperity. We will have been faithful in what God has called us to be.
May we heed the words God spoke to the prophet Ezekiel all those years
ago. May we never forsake the gospel, the call Christ has given us, for the
sake of comfort. May we never be led to believe that the reason we exist as a
church is to achieve “higher numbers.” May we always understand our calling to
be that of the prophet, one who proclaims and lives the gospel of Christ,
regardless of how the world may respond. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment