The Whore

Ezekiel 16 is the "R" rated version of Israel's story.  It speaks of the city of Jerusalem as a baby girl who had been left for dead, unwanted and abandoned to the elements.  But God sees this poor child, cleans it up and cares for it.  Then when the child has grown into a sexually mature woman, God enters into covenant relationship with her, binding himself to her as a husband to a wife.  This woman is given everything; fine clothes, jewelry, fine food.  God says through Ezekiel that her beauty was made perfect and she rose to be a queen.

But then, instead of being gracious to God, her husband, for all he had done for her, saving her very life and give her everything she had, she began to trust in her own beauty.  She thought that somehow she had been deserving of all this instead of recognizing it for what it was; pure gift.  So she begins to attract other men by her beauty.  The very gifts that had been given to her, the fine clothes and jewelry, are now used as tools of her prostitution.  She spread her legs open to anyone who passed by her.  Her whoring became so shameless that even the women of godless, pagan nations were shocked and embarrassed by it.  In fact, God says that she was worse than a prostitute because at least a prostitute receives payment for her act but her lust was so insatiable that she began paying others to be their prostitute!

This is the story of God's chosen people from God's perspective.  Israel had been nothing.  God called Abraham to be the father of this nation before there was any nation of which to speak.  And even once there was a group of people known as the Hebrews, they were poor, powerless slaves in Egypt; a child wallowing in its own blood abandoned to die at the hands of the world's cruelty.  It is that helpless, meaningless people with whom God chose to work.  God entered into covenant relationship with those slaves, binding himself to them at Mt. Sinai.  He made them into a mighty kingdom adorned with all the finest clothes, jewels, and foods the world had to offer.   And then somewhere along the way, Israel forgot what it had been.  Amidst all the gold and jewels, the wealth and power, it was easy to forget about the nothingness Israel had once been.  It was easy to forget that all of these things were sheer grace.  And so Israel began to depend on its own might and strength; its military and political alliances, rather than trusting in God.  Israel not only began to worship the gods of other nations.  It became so desperate for allies that it began to pay other nations for the privilege of being their servants.  The little baby which God had rescued had become the whore who embraced anyone but her rescuer.

Of course, Israel's story is our story...and that's a particularly difficult pill to swallow because it is to say that we are a collective whore or at the very least that there are whorish elements to our story.  We, too, were once a people who had nothing to offer to God.  We were wallowing in our own sin, left to succumb to its evil power.  But God rescued us, cleaned us up, cared for us, entered into covenant relationship with us and as if that weren't enough he lavishly blesses us on top of all that.  But somehow all that blessing seems to go to our heads.  Somehow we begin to think that we are deserving of it, that we have done something to earn it.  We forget what we were before God found us.  We forget that this is all sheer grace.  And so we begin to take the very gifts that God has given us and we use them to satisfy our own lusts, whatever those might be.  We begin whoring ourselves out to the latest church growth method or the current political sensibility or the newest self-help book or whatever it is that will take our money, our time, and our attention.  We will embrace everyone and everything except for the one whose embrace we truly need, the one who rescued us from our filth and made us his own.

And we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that God will simply ignore or tolerate our whorish ways.  God says that Jerusalem will be stripped naked before her lovers (Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon) and that they will take her fine clothes and jewels and tear down her houses of prostitution and then hack her into pieces with a sword.  God uses Babylon to destroy Jerusalem and carry its inhabitants into captivity.

As serious as this punishment is, we also know that it is not the end of the story.  Despite all of Israel's unfaithfulness, God restores this broken child once again.  Despite all of our unfaithfulness, God can restore us as well.  It will mean that we have to humble ourselves and openly bare all of our sin and shame.  But if we will confess and cease our whorish ways, then there is forgiveness, cleansing, and transformation even for us.