The Watchman

The beginning of Ezekiel 33 reiterates an idea found earlier in the book in chapter 3; that Ezekiel is a watchman for Israel.  The watchmen was like a military scout, the ancient version of an early warning device.  It was the watchman's job to be on the lookout for an approaching enemy.  If an army was approaching, the watchman was to sound the alarm so that the people would have enough time to get inside the city walls before the enemy was at hand.  Obviously, many lives depended on the attentiveness of the watchman.  If he failed to carry out his duties responsibly, it could cost a lot of people their lives.  On the other hand, if for some strange reason the inhabitants of the city were to ignore the warning of the watchman and then died as a result, this would not be the watchman's fault since everyone had the choice whether or not they would heed the watchman's call.

The watchman is indeed an apt metaphor for Ezekiel's role within his community and the role of any prophet in any community really.  In Ezekiel's context, the very real, literal army of the Babylonians has already come and carried Ezekiel and many of his fellow Israelites into exile.  Nevertheless, Ezekiel's role as watchman continues even within the exiled community, warning those around him of the consequences of unfaithfulness to God.  But like the watchman, it is only Ezekiel's job to warn.  He has no power to enforce the warning. As long as Ezekiel issues his prophetic warning then he has done his job and it is up to those who hear the warning to respond accordingly.

As a pastor, this is one of the responsibilities I hold within this community of faith and it is one of the most difficult of those responsibilities.  Especially in a culture where someone can easily find another church to attend if they don't like what you have to say, it seems almost impossible to speak words of warning like these in a way that is edifying and beneficial when someone is on the wrong path.  Perhaps what is worse though is the powerlessness I have felt when I have uttered those words of warning.  Such words are difficult enough when they actually lead to repentance but so often they actually lead to rejection and strife.  While I continue to pray that God will give me wisdom and humility in these matters, I have also began to learn the truth that not everyone heeds the watchman's warning.  Often we must simply speak the truth in love and leave the rest up to God.

Of course, it is not only my responsibility.  The entirety of the Church has a prophetic role to play and therefore it is a task left to all of us to speak words of truthfulness and warning to our brothers and sisters in Christ.  We are called to be watchmen to each other, reproving each other when we are not living up to the holy life to which we have been called.  It is my prayer that God will give us the courage to speak what needs to be spoken and the wisdom and humility to speak it well.

Obsessive Reading Disorder

My name is Dave.  I'm a readaholic.

I recently entered a 12 step program to help me address this issue.

Step 1:  Finish school and thereby finish all required reading.
Step 2:  Become pastor of your first church.
Steps 3-12: Have children.  Its not that these last ten steps mean you have to have 10 children.  Its more metaphorical than that.  Instead, these ten steps can represents the ten months you will go without sleep.  Or they can represent the ten times you will be woken up every night.  Take your pick.

Of course, its not like I hadn't dabbled a bit here and there over the last several months.  There was the reading for sermons and Bible studies.  But that's stuff that anyone could justify.

But then God decided to test me by allowing my children to actually sleep occasionally.  The more my children slept the more rested I was and the more free time I had.  It wasn't long before I started to slip back into my old habits.

I started seeing a counselor.  No, its not what you think.  I don't actually know of any counselors trained to treat obsessive reading disorder.  I was seeing this counselor to help me be a better counselor in my role as a pastor.  Little did I know the path this would lead me down.  He actually assigned reading for me as a part of my training.

So I started reading again.  It was slow at first.  But then something here or there would catch my interest.  The book I was reading on counseling was a kind of gateway reading.  It led me to reading a book on family systems therapy which led to reading a book on grief which led to reading C.S. Lewis.

But even at this point I think there still would have been hope for a quick recovery if it hadn't been for my wife.  She too had abstained for a long time because of our life circumstances which was part of what helped me to stay off the sauce.  But now someone had loaned her the Harry Potter series.  (I always knew those books were evil.)  She got a taste and it was all downhill from there.  She always had a book in her hand,  reading everywhere; on the couch in front of the TV, in bed, in the middle of the day!  It was awful.  The housework was neglected.  Children were left in my care for long periods of time.  It wasn't pretty.

Of course, what they say is true.  Its always the kids who suffer most.  I can already see how my wife's reading habits are impacting our children.  Hannah plays with letters as if they were toys and she is constantly asking me to read to her.  Malachi is not even a year old yet and he stares longingly at books as you turn the pages for him as if he can't wait for the day when he will be able to drink in their magic.  Poor kid.

But even with all the destructive effects of reading laid before me, I still couldn't help myself.  And so, after nearly a year without any binge readings, I picked up The Works of John Wesley, Vol.1.

And now its seems that things are worse than they were before.  That was less than a month ago and somehow I find myself already half way through volume 4.  I've even experimented with a few other books between volumes.  The worst part is that I can't stop thinking about when my next reading will be or what I'll read next.  Just the other day we were all in the van on the way to church and I pondered out loud to myself "I wonder if I should starting reading Luther in between volumes of Wesley so that I can compare them or if I should wait until I've finished all 14 volumes of Wesley so that I don't get them confused."  Jess was quick to point out to me that she didn't think this was a question that very many people asked themselves which I am pretty sure is just her way of telling me how special I am.  But just in case I was wrong, I decided not to tell her that I was already calculating in mind how long it would take me to get to Calvin and Barth too.

My addiction has become so severe that, as of late, I've actually tried to step back and reflect on where this compulsion for reading comes from.  For a long time, I could justify my addiction easily enough.  I was in college.  I was in seminary.  Everyone else was doing it.  I was just working hard to prepare for being a pastor and I could quit whenever I wanted.  I've even considered the very real possibility that my compulsion to read stems from having too much of my self-worth wrapped up in intellectual achievement. (I probably have the psychology reading I did to thank for that one.)  But the truth is, while all of those statements have some truth to them, none of them completely exhausts the compulsion I feel for reading.

The irony is (cue the serious part of the post) that as obsessive as my reading habits are I really do believe that this is one of the primary ways that God has chosen to work in me.  Perhaps that sounds like the ultimate crutch; like the alcoholic or drug addict saying "I can't help it.  This is just the way that God made me."  but it is, in fact, what I believe about myself.  That's not to say that I don't have to be careful about how much time I spend reading, especially in a profession where my use of time is largely self-directed and there are many important things to do in addition to studying.  I readily confess that it will always be a temptation for me to study to the extent that I neglect other important aspects of my role as a pastor (and as a husband and father).  I also recognize that when I find what I think is a good balance between reading and other aspects of life there may be others who do not agree with that assessment.

In spite of all that, I still believe that reading and study are and will likely always be one of the primary means of grace in my life.  This is about more than having answers or being prepared.  This is about how God is shaping me as His servant.  I believe this because I know how God used my time at ENC and NTS to transform me as a person.  I believe this because I know that now, as I've dedicated larger amounts of my time to studying once again, I feel God working in me in new ways again.   These last few weeks that I've spent reading Wesley have been some of the most intense time of spiritual formation I've experience in the last couple of years.  God has spoken to me about weaknesses and blind spots in my life and ministry while also helping me let go of some burdens that I've been holding onto for quite some time.  I'm looking forward to finding out what else the Word can work in me through the written words of others in the months and years to come.

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.

God Chooses Exile

The Temple represented God's presence with Israel.  It was God's house.  It was the place where Yahweh's glory dwelt.  And yet, from before the Temple's existence, God had promised/warned David that he would not be bound to a building.  In Ezekiel 10, God makes good on that promise.  

Ezekiel 10 is just part of a whole vision that is recorded in chapters 8-11.  That vision begins with the tour of Israel's idolatry which we saw in last week's sermon text.  It is those idolatries and abominations which drive Yahweh out of the Temple.  Ezekiel essentially paints a picture for us of God stepping out of his house and into his chariot.  It is the same chariot which Ezekiel saw in the opening vision of his book on the Chebar canal in Babylon.  In this vision, God is communicating to Ezekiel that he is leaving Jerusalem in order to be with the captives in Babylon.  

Here is a God who would rather dwell in exile than be surrounded by sin, a God who would rather be homeless than have his house filled with idols.  Of course, this should come as no surprise for us who believe that this God is revealed in Jesus Christ; the one who said "foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."  In Jesus is the God who chooses the exile of crucifixion over the comforts of earthly power and bondage to sin.  

Are we a church that chooses exile over sin, homelessness over idolatry?  Of course, we would like to succumb to the happy delusion that we don't have to make this choice, that we can have the kingdom without the cross.  But for us to identify sin in all of its ugliness and refuse to participate in it will almost certainly mark us out as an odd sort of people, a people whom the dominant culture will quickly disown just as our savior was despised and rejected.  To choose the way of Jesus in this world is almost certainly to choose an exilic existence...but one which leads to true freedom for it is an exile in which God dwells.  

Happy is a Yuppy Word

Ezekiel 8 is a kind of tour of Israel's idolatry and syncretism.

While sitting with the elders of Judah in his house in Babylon, Ezekiel is shown a vision of those who are still in Jerusalem.  The first is some vague vision of an "image of jealousy" outside the north gate of the Temple complex.  It's not clear what this image is exactly but we are told it is an abomination which threatens to drive God away from his sanctuary.

The next stop on the tour is a hole in the wall which Ezekiel is commanded to dig through.  When he does, he sees images of "creeping things" and "loathsome beasts" having been engraved on the Temple wall, precisely the kind of images that God had forbid Israel to worship.  Meanwhile, seventy of the elders of Israel are offering incense before these images.  This could well have been an imitation of some kind of Egyptian religious ritual in hopes that the gods of Egypt (who at times had been a political ally of Israel's against Babylon) might save Israel from destruction by Babylon.  Whether this is specifically Egyptian in nature or not, it is made very clear that these rituals exhibit a lack of trust in Yahweh since the elders say "The Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land."

But Egyptians gods are not enough of an idolatry for Israel.  In the next few verses, Ezekiel sees a vision of women "weeping for Tammuz".  Tammuz was an Assyrian God of vegetation who was thought to have died every dry season and only to be resurrected every year when the vegetation returned and begin to blossom and bud with new life.  It was a rite of Tammuz worship to weep for him every dry season when he died.  Add Assyrian religion to Israel's eclectic worship.

Finally, Ezekiel is brought into the inner court of the Temple between the porch and the altar.  There are a group of twenty-five men gathered there worshiping.  Surely in this mostly holy of places at least these men will be worshiping Yahweh?  No, they have literally turned their backs on God, facing away from the Temple to worship the rising sun in the east.

As a result, God promises to act in his wrath and to not have pity.  In the past God has heard the cries of Israel when they have cried out to God for mercy but this time he promises that he will not.  Chapter nine begins by saying that God cried into Ezekiel's ears "Bring near the executioners of the city...".  God is about to put a stop to this.

As I read Ezekiel 8, I pondered what our idols, our acts of syncretism might be.  Of course, the obvious things came to mind: money, status, power, politics, nationalism, etc.  These are all things that too often we give more importance, more glory, more worship to than we give to God.  But then I ran across this blog post which perhaps states it best.

We may be in little danger of bowing down to Egyptian or Assyrian gods in our churches but there can be little doubt that most of us have mixed our faith in God with a gospel of self-fulfillment and self-centeredness which is really no gospel at all.  For the most part, those other idols of money, politics, etc are probably just extensions of of our belief that we have an "inalienable right" to the "pursuit of happiness".  But what course does that pursuit take when it meets the shadow of the cross?  We should make no mistake: God wants to slay any part of us that still submits to our own happiness as if it were a god.  Images of slaughter like those contained in Ezekiel 9 are surely disturbing... perhaps they will disturb us enough to wake us up from our own happy, idolatrous sleep.

More Than Words

In Ezekiel 4, God commands Ezekiel to prophesy without saying a word.  Instead of speaking, Ezekiel is to carry out a series of symbolic acts that represent the siege which God through Babylon is about to bring upon Jerusalem.  He is commanded to take a brick and draw the city of Jerusalem on it and then build a miniature battlefield around it.  Then he is commanded to lay on his left side for 390 days to represent the 390 years of Israel's exile and then on his right side for another 40 days to represent the exile of Judah.  But in all these instructions there are no instructions to speak.

Most of us have heard our whole lives that "actions speak louder than words" but I think that in reality that slogan takes much more patience, trust, and perseverance than most of us are willing to commit.  At some point in those 430 days, as Ezekiel lay there watching the same people pass by as he had for so many days before, people who had now seen him lay there for so many days that they didn't even bother to mock him any more, he must have wondered what the point of all this was.  No one was repenting of their sin.  No one was consulting Ezekiel about what words had come from God.  Wasn't this a waste of God's time as well as Ezekiel's?  Wouldn't another sermon about the wrath and judgment to come be just as effectual as laying here doing nothing?  Nevertheless, God commands and Ezekiel obeys.

It's not that words aren't important.  Ezekiel will do a whole lot of speaking before the book that bares his name comes to an end.  But Jesus washing the disciples' feet, healing the sick, turning over the tables of the money changers, sharing the passover meal with the disciples, all say something that mere words can not.

This is a prophetic tradition in which we, the Church, find our feet firmly planted.  We too are called not only to prophetic speech but also to prophetic acts, not least of which are things like baptism and communion.  At times, the water, wafer, and wine may seem plain, ordinary, and ineffectual things.  They may seem powerless to affect any real change in our world.  They may seem about as meaningful as laying on our side for 430 days.  And yet, our constant gathering around a broken and bloodied Lord says something that no sermon can speak.

A Prophet Among Them

We are a results obsessed culture.  How much money will it make?  How fast will it go?  How much change will it affect?  These are the questions we ask.  They're not bad questions.  They drive us toward success as it is typically defined.

The Church has taken much of this cultural obsession upon itself.  How many people can we get into church?  How efficient is this program?  How much of a difference are we making in our community?  Even in the Church these are not entirely bad questions.  There must be a place for evaluating our methods.  The problem comes when we equate success with the production of certain results instead of equating it with faithfulness.

Ezekiel 2 tells us of Ezekiel's prophetic call, his ordination to be the mouthpiece of God.  We might think that with a specific call from the mighty God of the universe there might come some guarantee of results; something along the lines of "as long as you proclaim the message I have given you everyone will listen to you."  Instead, v.4-5 read

"I am sending you to them who are stubborn and obstinate children and you shall say to them, 'Thus says the Lord God.'  As for them, whether they listen or not - for they are a rebellious people - they will know that a prophet has been among them."

God gives Ezekiel no guarantees.  The people might listen or they might not.  Making them listen is not up to Ezekiel.  Ezekiel's mission is not to manufacture results.  It is only to proclaim the message that he has been given regardless of what happens.  And God says that if Ezekiel will do that then regardless of whether or not the people respond they will at least know that God's prophet has been among them.

This is the mission of the Church - to be God's prophet among the peoples of the world.  We must live and speak in a way that proclaims the good news of Christ's victory regardless of whether or not there is anyone willing to listen.  This doesn't mean that the guy on the corner with a bull-horn is justified in his evangelistic approach.  After all, he may be speaking the right words but his method of proclamation is not a faithful representation of Christ.  It does mean that we continue (or begin) to do the right things, to live the life we are called to as a church even when  it doesn't cause our church to grow.  Ezekiel is told that even as he is surrounded by thistles and thorns and sits on scorpions he is to have no fear but is to continue to proclaim the message he has been given.

Of course, proclaiming the message faithfully presumes that we know the message.  As a part of Ezekiel's call, he is commanded to eat a scroll given to him by God (which we can safely assume contains the message which God is calling Ezekiel to proclaim).  Ezekiel must do more than simply read the scroll.  He must devour it, ingest it, internalize it.  God's message has to become a part of Ezekiel himself.

So how much time have you spent devouring the good news over the last week or so?  How much have you studied Scripture?  How much time have you spent listening to God?  Whether you do the traditional "read your Bible and pray every day" or you get more creative with spiritual disciplines doesn't really matter.  Are you devouring the word?  Are you so hungry for God that his message is inside you, that it has become a part of who you are?  Only when we commit ourselves to eating the book that God has given us will the people of the world know that there is a prophet among them.