Sunday, September 04, 2005

Sun, Sept 4, 2005 - Ezekiel's Hope

Ezekiel 33:7-11
Romans 13:8-14
Matthew 18:15-20


So, Ezekiel, huh? What do you know about Ezekiel? Most of us don’t know anything about this prophet of 2600 years ago - I know I pretty much knew nothing until I started working on the sermon for today. I knew he was a prophet, and I knew he was the guy connected with the Valley of the Dry Bones, but that was pretty much it.

But Ezekiel, as it turns out, was a prophet who lived through a terribly traumatic time in the history of Israel, and he has a lot to say to us as we try and understand the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and the devastation of New Orleans.

So, in 609 BC, Israel was a wonderful country. Their beloved King Josiah was on the throne, a king who had brought them back to the ways of the Lord after years of idol-worshipping, squabbling kings who descended from Solomon. According to tradition, King Josiah had discovered the Book of Deuteronomy, giving the Israelites insight into what God wanted for them, and he had made the Temple in Jerusalem the holy site of Israel. People flocked from all over the country to worship the Lord in the Temple, and it was the spiritual heart of the people.

Things were going well, the people were prosperous, and then the unthinkable happened. The beloved, God-bless Josiah was suddenly killed in a battle against Egypt, and from that point on, things just went downhill. A couple of years later, Babylon invaded and took over the territory of Judah, the southern part of Israel. Then, in 597 BC, they attacked Jerusalem, the Holy City, the city where David had established the monarchy and where his son Solomon had built the Temple for God, and they exiled many of the inhabitants to Babylon. Ezekiel and many others who had been born and grew up in Jerusalem were forcibly removed and sent to live in another country. They were separated from their families; Ezekiel lost his wife.

And if that wasn’t enough, in 586 BC, 11 years later, when the Israelite leaders decided they had had enough and tried to revolt, the Bablyonians destroyed the city of Jerusalem, tore down the Temple, the home of God on earth, and exiled the people who remained.

To say that this was a national disaster is liking saying what happened in New Orleans was a flood. It goes beyond just a label. We can only imagine the devastation of Jerusalem, although some of you, I know, have had first-hand experience with war - the homes lost, the people killed, the lawlessness and panic that sweeps away all rational thinking. We can actually see for ourselves the devastation of New Orleans - again, the homes lost, the people killed, the lawlessness and panic that is sweeping the city. Even if we’ve never lived through it, each one of us knows human suffering.

Now one way of understanding disasters when it comes to God is to believe that the disaster is God’s punishment for one sin or another. That way of understanding calamity goes right back to Noah’s Ark, when God wiped out the world because people were too sinful. And the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple were considered, by Ezekiel, to be God’s punishment for the increasing idolatry of the Israelite people. Ezekiel believed that the people had broken the covenant with God, that they had gone to worship other gods, and that God was now punishing them by letting the Babylonians invade and take over. Ezekiel had warned the people, but they did not turn from their ways, and so now they were being punished.

But this way of looking at disaster is not just limited to the Bible. Even today, on the CNN website, and in the papers, you can read people writing that they believe that the flooding of New Orleans was God’s punishment for the moral recklessness of both New Orleans and the US at large. You can also read people’s opinions that the hurricane and flooding is punishment for humankind’s sinfulness in general, abusing the environment and not caring for God’s creation. Even if there are some of us here who have never lived through a national disaster, we all have those moments of personal crisis when we wonder if this is God’s punishment for something.

The thing is, this way of understanding disaster - that it is God’s punishment for sin - doesn’t hold up for very long. Ezekiel himself quotes God as saying, "As I live, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live." And Jesus, in the Gospel of Luke, when confronted with the situation of Gentiles murdered as sacrifices and eighteen people killed when a tower fell on them, emphatically responded that No, disaster did not fall on these people because they were worse sinners than anyone else. [Luke 13:1-5]

You see, we know through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ that the God we worship is the God of life, not death, of mercy, not punishment. People in antiquity had no other way to explain disasters that happened to them than to say that God did it. They lived in a world of demons and angels, good spirits and bad spirits. But we, we live in a world of plate tectonics and shifting ocean currents cause tsunamis, where thunderstorms are caused by the rapid rising of moist warm air, which can then cause hurricanes. We live in a world where we understand that God is present in the midst of suffering, not the cause of it. Where Jesus has died in order to defeat death, where God weeps with the world and then moves to heal it.

Even Ezekiel knew that, to an extent. After all, we can’t forget that it was Ezekiel who gave us the beautiful vision of the valley of the dry bones. After all these terrible things had happened, Ezekiel wrote this story - I’ll read it to you.

The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I answered, ‘O Lord GOD, you know.’ Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD.’

So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there as a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and here were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath:* Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath,* and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’ I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.


Then he said to me, ‘Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, "Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely." Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act, says the LORD.’

In the midst of his despair, having lost the only country he knew, seeing his beloved wife die before him, watching the destruction of the Holy City and the devastation of God’s Temple, Ezekiel still believed that God was the God of life, that the people would be brought back to Israel, that the City and the Temple would be rebuilt.

And that is our belief and our hope as well. Despite the disasters that continue to devastate the world, despite the crises that we encounter in our own lives, we know that we have a God who is determined to bring us new life and who has the power to make it so. We know that our God is a God, not of death and destruction, but of life and healing, and we know that God is bringing these things to the whole world.

I want to end by having us a sing a hymn together. It is one that most of you will know, and it is a beautiful proclamation of our hope in God despite the tragedies of the world that we face everyday. So please turn to hymn 320 in the LBW and join me in singing, "O God, Our Help in Ages Past."

O God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home,
Under the shadow of your throne Your saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is your arm alone, And our defense is sure.
Before the hills in order stood Or earth received its frame,
From everlasting you are God, To endless years the same.
A thousand ages in your sight Are like an evening gone,
Short as the watch that ends the night Before the rising sun.
Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Soon bears us all away;
We fly forgotten, as a dream Dies at the op’ning day.
O God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come,
Still be our guard while troubles last And our eternal home!
Watts/Croft

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