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Sunday September 18, 2011 "The Prophet's Call" Ezekiel 2: 1-5 |
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Location: Blogs Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons |
 | | Posted by: Brad Miller | 9/19/2011 1:07 PM | Wouldn’t it be nice to have God speak to us directly and tell us what to do? Well, before you answer that question, think about the example of Ezekiel.
We don’t know a lot about Ezekiel: we know his father’s name was Buzi; we know that the name Ezekiel means “God strengthens”; we know that he was a priest, or at the very least, a priest in training. We know that he was deported to Babylonia as part of Nebuchednezzar’s “brain drain” of Judah, where the best and brightest were removed, thus making the region much too weak to be a force in political matters. We know that he was married, although we do not know his wife’s name.
We know nothing of any other family and we have no clue as to how he supported himself.
We also know that, to put it in strictly technical theological terms, he was one weird dude.
He is known for the series of oracles that he presented to the Judeans who were exiled in Babylonia. The oracles of doom take up about 2/3 of the book that bears his name, with the first group of these oracles detailing what will happen to Israel and Judah because of their lack of faith and trust in God and the second group outlining the same gloomy scenario for foreign nations and their rulers. These oracles of doom get most of the attention in our churches, but we cannot forget that that the last 15 chapter are oracles of restoration, detailing how Israel can be saved in the future.
But back to Ezekiel, the man. Throughout his life, he exhibited some rather bizarre behavior. He laid around bound and naked to make a point. He didn’t talk for long stretches at a time. He claimed to take out of body “spiritual journeys” (which is at least part of the impetus for Erik von Daniken’s “Chariots of the Gods”, an exploration into the possibility of extraterrestrial life and travel). Ezekiel also endured visions of strange 4 eyed, four headed creatures, unseen by others. He heard voices; his wild literary imagination created a history of Israel that was, well, different than any other available to us.
But he had a way with words, and he made his points to a population that may not have wanted to hear his points. Most particularly, that they would all be destroyed because of their lack of faith and trust in Yahweh, their sovereign creator.
So, to understand why Ezekiel did these things, we need to go back to my initial question: Wouldn’t it be nice to have God call on us directly and tell us what to do? Well, that’s exactly what happened to Ezekiel.
For the next three Sundays, we will be exploring different aspects of the Hebrew Bible prophets: the call, the goal and the message of the prophets. And while not all are exactly the same, they have a lot to tell us about our life today, and hopefully, get us to thinking about who today’s prophets are, and what we are to do with their message.
Ezekiel is a good place to start because over and over again scholars tell us that he was much like us. He was no one special. He was not like Isaiah or Jeremiah who had the ear of kings. He was not even like Moses who was adopted into the family of royalty. He was more or less an ordinary guy, a guy who collapsed at the sound of God’s voice, until God commanded him to stand and tell the people, “This is the word of the Lord.” And the word of the Lord was not one of sunshine and daffodils…it was a word of warning and danger. Israel has forsaken me, God told Ezekiel, and you are going to let them know of my displeasure. “If,” God said to Ezekiel, “I tell you to tell them, ‘you will surely die’ and you do not tell them, they will die and so will you. If I tell you to tell them ‘you will surely die’ and you do tell them, and they do nothing to change their ways, they will die, but you will be saved. But if I tell you to tell them to change their ways, and they do, they will live, and so will you.”
So, do you still want to have God speak to you in your ear and tell you what to do? Because when that happens, God will indeed tell you what to do!
There are two important issues here: the idea of being called by God to a prophetic ministry, and the idea of having a prophet tell us what God wants us to do.
Think about the times that Ezekiel lived in: grim and painful times of exile for his people. Times of political domination by foreign governments. The question must surely have been asked, how did we get here? How did the mighty kingdom of David get driven to it’s knees?
Think about the times we live in: economic uncertainty, rising violence and increasing scarcity of resources. Surely we have asked the question, how did we get here? How have we come to this point in time where our economic engine is sputtering; where seemingly every week someone walks into a business or an office or a factory and randomly takes lives in a violent outburst; where we hear a report that rate of poverty has risen dramatically in the last generation on Tuesday and it is out of our consciousness on Wednesday.
But here’s my question: how would we react if we suddenly heard a voice that boomed in our ear, “I am calling on you to take my message to your people…tell them everything I tell you and precede all of it with “This is the word of the Lord.”
What would you do?
What would you do if someone started saying to you, “This is God’s word, given to me so that I can give it to you…”?
Oh, we say, that sort of stuff doesn’t happen today. That was the God of the Old Testament trying to get the attention of those stiff necked Hebrew people. They were God’s chosen people, but instead of following God’s path, they chose to go off on their own, doing what they wanted rather than what God wanted. That’s history, we say, that’s not relevant to our situation today.
Really? Did God stop talking when the prophets stopped talking? Is there no prophetic voice to remind us that God is owed our loyalty and worship?
And just what is the role of the prophet anyway? Is it to predict the future? Is it to gaze into a crystal ball and see what will happen down the road? The short answer is that the prophets among us see the way things are, see the way we are behaving and are able to see where that will lead, if things do not change.
And that is something we need today, every bit as much as the people in Babylonian exile needed it all those years ago.
But the question remains: how is God called heard in the 21st century? And how are we to respond?
The United Church of Christ had a campaign a few years ago entitled “God is still speaking…” That campaign got to the heart of the prophetic call that is available to us today. We have 5000 years worth of experience with God speaking to us. Our holy scriptures detail the stories of prophets and folks just like us that heard God’s call on their lives and responded.
For whatever reason, things don’t work quite the same way today that they worked in Ezekiel’s time. If we heard disembodied voices, we probably wouldn’t say a word to anyone. If we decided to bind ourselves up and lay naked in the street, we probably wouldn’t have to worry about where our next meal was coming from, because we would be institutionalized in a heart beat. If we told people that they needed to change the way they live or else God would strike them down, we would be looked upon skeptically, to say the least. God seems to understand all that and speaks in different ways today. Make no mistake, God is still speaking…but maybe it’s in a slightly different way.
Could God be speaking through our health care professionals who are noting a rise in debilitating health issues like diabetes, asthma and certain cancers due to lifestyle and environmental factors, and warning us that if things do not change, even more dire health issues will plague coming generations? After all, aren’t we supposed to be stewards of our creation and our own health?
Could God be speaking in the midst of our economic troubles by saying, if we don’t deal with our issues honestly and directly, we are doomed to see catastrophic results? After all, aren’t we supposed to be upright in all our dealings before God?
Could God be speaking to those who seek to bring people of different religions together to search for solutions to problems that, left unattended, could, quite simply lead to our destruction? After all, aren’t we all children of God?
We live in a time every bit as perilous as the Babylonian exiles. And like the Babylonians, the signs are all around. The prophetic voices warn us of where we are headed. God is still speaking, and it is up to us to decide how to respond. The prophetic voice is not simply telling us the future. The prophetic voice does not say that God will rain fire down on us in order to punish us. What the prophetic voice does say is that WE will face serious problems unless WE do something about it. Prophecy then, is simply pointing out the reality of where we are headed, unless we change.
The comedian Gracie Allen was once quoted as saying, “Never put a period where God has put a comma…” Because the comma means that God is still speaking, and we will be wise to listen for God’s call.
Let us pray: Gracious God, strengthen us that we might hear your call on our lives and respond. That we might stand up boldly and declare what is right, that we might resist the pull of a culture that contradicts what you have shown us to be right. Help us to stand firm in following your will in speaking truth to power, yet always speaking in love. And focus our attention that we might hear your call, and spread your word to all we meet. Amen. | | | Permalink | Trackback |
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