Sermon: Ezekiel 2:1-5 (Year B, Proper 9) "Prophesy and Anamnesis"
Ezekiel 2:1-5
God said to me: O
mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak with you. And
when he spoke to me, a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet; and I
heard him speaking to me. He said to me, Mortal, I am sending
you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against
me; they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day. The
descendants are impudent and stubborn. I am sending you to them, and you shall
say to them, “Thus says the Lord God.”
Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious
house), they shall know that there has been a prophet among them.
I don’t
know what you think about for fun, but have you ever sat around and thought
about what it means to be a prophet? I’m
going to pretend that you have—it’ll make me feel better if I’m not the only
one. You know, you’re doing chores
around the house or driving to and from work and your mind wanders. Anyway, in my thinking I’ve come to the
conclusion that a lot of being a prophet is about being willing to say things
you know people won’t like, things that might get you into trouble. I’m not talking about rude, contentious
things. I’m talking about considered
dissent. We often think of the prophets
as firebrands—we sort of picture this wild man with unbound hair and wide eyes
wearing sackcloth and madly roaming the streets. But if you read the prophetic literature
carefully, most of these prophets spoke out of pastoral concern for the people
in their midst. And I think it takes a
special kind of person to be able to tell truths no one else can. It takes a special kind of person to say the
truth in love, and to be willing to take the backlash for the good of
everyone. It takes a special kind of
patience to be a prophet, knowing people likely won’t recognize the divine truth
in your message. This is the work of
prophets and in this passage we encounter Ezekiel’s call into this work.
But, as with so many of the prophets, that was not
Ezekiel’s first choice. As a little boy,
Ezekiel did not say, “Gee Mom, I want to be a prophet.” No one says that. The work of a prophet is hard. First of all you often have visions, so
people automatically think you’re either a little nutty and dangerous, or
excessively pompous. You remember
Joseph’s brothers tried to kill him for having uppity visions. Then you have to do weird stuff. Jeremiah is told to do all kinds of strange
things, including wear a loin cloth that’s been buried in the banks of the Euphrates river…? What is that about? And then, let’s not forget that Hosea marries
a prostitute. Explain that one at the
family Christmas table. Then you are
uprooted from your home and sent to a place where people are usually being
naughty, and you have to tell them that God told you to tell them to knock it
off. It’s sort of the adult, ancient
Near East version of “I’m telling Mom!”
You know, “If you don’t stop doing that thing Mom told you not to do I’m
going to tell Mom and you’re going to be in soooooo much trouble.” Except that instead of getting grounded or
having your mouth washed out with soap, cities get destroyed and people get
carried off into captivity.
In fact, the Israelites were in captivity when Ezekiel
was called to be a prophet. He had been
a priest in the temple during the first Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem.
When the temple was destroyed in 587 BCE a significant portion of the
Israelites were carried off, and Ezekiel went with them. This captivity was a major psychological blow
for the Israelites. They were Yahweh’s
chosen people. How could this
happen? The social structure of their
community and their identity was tied to agriculture and the temple. When they were forced to leave their
homeland, the place promised to them by God, they began to be filled with
doubts. Who were they? Where they not God’s chosen? And if they weren’t chosen, if they weren’t
the people of the Promised Land, then was Yahweh who they thought? Was Yahweh as powerful as they thought? Could they depend on God? Without the temple, God’s dwelling place on
earth, would God even be able to find them?
Would the gods of Babylon treat them any better?
These
are the things they are struggling with when we open to chapter 1 of
Ezekiel. Though the content of Ezekiel’s
prophesy is pretty harsh (there’s a LOT of destruction), in many ways it is still good news: God
comes to Ezekiel in Babylon—God’s holy GPS finds them even in captivity! And God doesn’t only find them, God sends
some pretty scary messengers to…let’s say “reassure” them. The four (FOUR!) angels, each with four faces
(human, lion, ox, eagle), multiple wings, and cow’s feet, pull a gleaming
chariot that sounded like a thunderous army.
And if that isn’t enough, above the chariot is the flaming form of God
seated in a sapphire throne.
When God
shows up, God really shows up! Without
uttering a word God says, “In case you’d forgotten, I’m still the all-powerful
God you’ve always known.” And in the
face of this splendor, Ezekiel throws himself to the ground. This is where we find Ezekiel at the
beginning of chapter two—face down in the dirt.
A sensible place to be, if you ask me.
Now in
my initial reading of today’s passage, there were three things that stuck out
to me, and I think these things offer some insight into how we might begin to
think about what this passage means for us.
First of all, God doesn’t
call Ezekiel by name, but instead calls him the generic “mortal”. This is not the loving God who knows the
number of hairs on our head or leads us through green pastures beside still
waters. This is the cosmic God of
power. This designation calls attention
to Ezekiel’s frailty—the gleaming being in the most terrifying mode of
transportation ever wants us to be aware of the difference in divine and human
station. God is God and we are not.
Secondly, God tells Ezekiel to get up, but
doesn’t wait for him to do it. We don’t
know whether or not Ezekiel’s legs work after his big scare, but God doesn’t
wait around to find out. Rather God
sends the Spirit to pick Ezekiel up and set him on his feet. Lastly,
Ezekiel is told not to be concerned with the success rate of his message. In fact, he’s told that it’s basically going
to fail. God says, “I’m sending you to
do this thing and they’re probably not going to listen to you,” which has to be
a tough thing to hear. It has to feel
like a set up for failure. But it
matters not that the message likely won’t be received, because for Ezekiel, the
faithful response is to live out his calling no matter what. The people might be in denial about how they
ought to respond, but if Ezekiel does his job, there will be no question about
whether or not God has spoken. The focus
is to be on the will and work of God, not the response of humanity. These are some pretty astounding things to
all be crammed in five verses.
So what
are we to take from this? The first thing, I think, is comfort. God knows we are mortal. God does not expect perfection to come from
frail, flawed beings. God deals with us—even
calls us to do holy work—as we are. You
know, I don’t even deal with myself this graciously. Are there any other perfectionists in the
house? For those of you who are
perfectionists, self-identifying or identified by friends, have you ever noticed
how difficult it is to work with others?
Nobody’s work is ever as good as mine.
And it’s a funny thing, but I never get around to finishing projects
that are always in the process of being perfected. I never get around to completing the task set
before me because I can’t see how it can possibly be successful if my work
isn’t perfect. God is not concerned with
this. God wants our best, but knows
perfection is beyond us.
And, secondly, this means that God knows
when a task is maybe more than we can handle.
God knows when we are in need of divine intervention. When this happens, God sends the Spirit to
pick us up, to help us do what needs doing.
I’ve never been a parent, but I’m an aunt, which I like to think of as
destination parenting. By that I mean I
go to a destination, parent for a few hours, and then go home, have a glass of
wine, and enjoy a sense of accomplishment.
My sister, on the other hand, is raising a three year old boy. He is hilarious and rotten to the core. He stays cleaner if he runs around
naked. He is no longer phased by
consequences because it’s more important to him that he get to test out his own
ideas about how the world ought to be.
Frequently those ideas put him in physical danger, or in direct
contradiction to what his parents know need to happen. And my sister is in charge of rearing that
ball of chaos, ensuring he makes it satisfactorily into adulthood. I asked her, “Aren’t you ever exhausted from
being somebody’s boss all the time?” I
know she is, and though she’s never said it to me in this way, I know that when
she’s at her wits end she finds strength from somewhere beyond her to do what
needs to be done for herself and her family.
God does this all the time—calls us to do something and then breathes
into us the ability to do it.
This
brings me to the third point,
reception. We are not responsible for
the reception of God’s message. We are
responsible to deliver the message in ways it can be understood, but ultimately
the choice to act, what verse five refers to as “hearing”, can only be made by
the ones to whom we are sent. If you
happen to follow the lectionary, you know that today’s gospel reading is from
Mark chapter six. It’s the story of the
apostles being sent to proclaim the good news of repentance and healing. Jesus tells them essentially the same thing
God tells Ezekiel: you are going to face mixed reception, and if people won’t
listen, shake the dust off your feet and move on to somewhere else. Don’t be discouraged, but keep looking for
the places where you can do good in the name of God. Depend on God for the strength to complete
the task at hand, and depend on God to work out the reception of the message.
Now, up
to this point we’ve been talking as though we were in the place of
Ezekiel. But let’s face it, sometimes
we’re the Israelites. The NRSV
translation we read today calls them rebellious and “impudent and stubborn.” The Hebrew translation, a bit more
descriptive, reads, “these children have hard faces and hard hearts.” Ouch!
What happens when our faces and hearts can no longer bend and beat with
the love of God? What happens when we
are the ones in need of a gentle prophetic reminder?
In those
times God will send a prophet to us, but will we recognize the prophet? I think just as we are to speak into the
world, the world speaks to us. Maybe it
isn’t exactly prophesy but I think we still need to pay attention, because it
points us to the places where we should be speaking. It doesn’t take much time listening to the
news to know that there are things in the world not only worth speaking
against, but in dire need of our voices.
In fact, I read several things this week that really disturb me, but
I’ll only name two.
First, it seems like more than coincidence
that eight black churches have mysteriously burned in South Carolina in the last two weeks. We don’t like to think that this could be
intentional, and I know that our country’s discussion on race is very tense
right now, but I’m not sure how we can in good conscience call this coincidence. Second,
the Pelham, North Carolina branch of the Ku Klux Klan has
reserved the lawn of the South Carolina state house for a rally on July 18th
to protest the state’s removal of the confederate flag. This is their constitutional right, and they ought
to have it. However when asked about the
charges facing Dylann Roof, the chapter’s leader said, “I feel sorry for the
boy because of his age and I think he picked the wrong target. A better target
for him would have been these gang-bangers, running around rapping, raping and
stealing.”[1] This turns my stomach. A better target? A BETTER TARGET?! Now, this man has every right to his beliefs,
and I am not suggesting he be censored, nonetheless it makes me sick. Please tell me it bothers you too. This is the world speaking to us, and as far
as I’m concerned, this death-dealing voice is a reminder to the church that our
work is not done.
Brothers
and sisters, not only do we serve the Prince of Peace, but we know that no
matter how far we are from God, even if we’re rapists or gang bangers, or any
other racist stereo type, we are loved and can be forgiven. Period.
We might deserve death, but God, whose wisdom is beyond our own, has
chosen to offer us life. And let’s not
forget that Jesus’s last act on Earth was to forgive the criminal hanging
beside him. To forgive the one the world
had condemned. Do we remember this? Are we willing to be the ones who speak words
of life?
We don’t want to hear that we haven’t always done a good job
of using our voices for God’s kingdom.
Not only racism, but greed, hatred, classism, environmental degradation,
consumerism, unnatural busyness, fanatic nationalism, and so many other things
are waiting for us to stand up and say, “God is not honored by this. God condemns this. World, you have lost your focus and God
desires better for you, and for us all.”
We as Christians are to proclaim this in word and deed. This is not a message that the world wants to
hear, but that doesn’t get us off the hook.
That is our calling and God still wants our best.
When we
fail to allow God to set us on our feet and send us into the depths of our
calling we have essentially done what the Israelites did—they forgot who God
is. They thought that they had been set
up, allowed to fail, and been left to stand on their own. And sometimes the pain we see in the world,
the hunger and the hatred, can make us wonder the same thing. Is God who we think? Have we been set up to fail? Are we on our own? And when we forget who God is, both the
cosmic God of power and the tender shepherd, we run the risk of hardening
ourselves against the will of God for our lives and our world.
How do
we keep from becoming hard? An easy ways
is to stay connected to God. To do
things that remind us of who God is. To
give thanks for the vast and unimaginably deep love that God has for us. To recount the myriad ways God has been
faithful when we have turned away. One of
the ways we do this is through the sacrament of Holy Communion. Communion re-presents the mighty and gracious
acts of God on our behalf. It reminds us
of the work of the Spirit, and prompts us toward thanksgiving. It points us to a time when God’s will will be fully done on earth and our
words and deeds will be brought to fruition.
In it we are strengthened for the work set before us, because in it God
is mysteriously and fully present in ways we cannot understand.
This
brings me to the funny word you see in your bulletin, anamnesis. And it’s a word I
love. Anamnesis
is remembering something from the past in such a way as to make it alive in the
present. I’m sure you’ve all experienced this at some point, remembering friends
or family or past vacations and mission trips.
I’ve seen it in the light of your faces as you’ve told me stories about
Bill and Kurt--people I don’t know, but
because of you I feel their presence.
For a moment those past people and places are very real and present, and
the love and gratitude we have because of their presence in our lives overflows
from us into the world.
Communion
does this for us. And in it, as we
recount the mighty acts of God on our behalf, as we taste and see the goodness
of the Lord, we don’t simply remember the Good News, we become the Good News
here and now. We are changed. We are sanctified, becoming more like Christ,
and in this Christ is present. This is anamnesis.
Being a
living memory is not easy, and so we must be constantly reconnected. We return to this table
again and again for nourishment, for strength, for encounter with the One who,
knowing our mortality, stands us on our feet and sends us out as bearers of
Good News. We return so that we can
continually reaffirm that we are for the world the body of Christ redeemed by
his blood, called to be one with each other in ministry to all the world.
May it be so.
