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Ezekiel
No Date
Andrea Abbott

I thought I was done with taking dares by the time I was about twelve, after a series of unfortunate incidents. However, when Judy Lidner said to me a few weeks ago that she had read Ezekiel and didn’t get it at all or, as I believe she may have said, thought it sounded like someone who was crazy or on drugs, is that right, Judy?, I decided that this was enough of a dare for me and I told her I’d write a sermon about Ezekiel. Now, I feel like I’m twelve again and a little too high up a tree.

Ezekiel turns out to be one of those books that it would have been better if I’d said I’ll do a sermon about its first six verses or so. There’s enough history, culture and religion in this to keep us all rooted to the pews for hours on end. Instead, I’ll try to give you a whirlwind tour.

What most people remember about Ezekiel is the first few verses and its tremendous visual imagery as Ezekiel, the son of a priest in exile in Babylon, receives the call to prophecy to his people, fellow exiles from the tribes of Israel. I’d like to read these to you.

Though this image is unusual, even by ancient prophecy standards, the idea behind it is one we are still familiar with—the need to establish the authenticity of the prophecy and the prophet. After all, it would have been hard for Ezekiel to walk up to the other exiles and say, hey, fellas, I’ve been thinking. We’re in this mess because we’ve been defying God. We’ve got to straighten up and fly right. Good old Ezekiel, always on about something, his audience might say. Who’s he to tell us what to do? What makes him so special. It’s the same thing we want to know about the author of a book, the director of a documentary. Now as then we want to know why we should listen to this character.

The tradition of prophecy was old in Israel and common for many of its neighbors as well, but you needed certain credentials before you could be heard as a prophet. More importantly, I would think, you must have needed some assurance from somewhere before you would feel that you could put on the robes and start telling everyone about your vision. The crucial element was to feel that you were in receipt of the truth of God. Truth is the operative word here. This was not your opinion. It was the revealed truth. You were passing it on. We have different requirements now, but the goal is the same. What is the truth? How is it established? How do we get people to hear it?

The difference between Ezekiel and other prophets, such as Moses, is the elaborate nature of the vision that he has. No simple burning bush here, but a vision of God’s glory that incorporates imagery from both Jewish and other Middle Eastern cultures. The image of a traveling throne, the God with many faces, arranged such that one face is always forward and in view, the richness of the jeweled colors of the wheels, the fire that burns but does not consume the vehicle, the angel or djin like creatures who are part of the vehicle, bound by a mysterious force, all would have been part of Ezekiel’s frame of reference marking the vision out as that of the glory or majesty of God translated so that a mere mortal could see it. Part of the strangeness of the account of this vision comes from trying to interpret the vision in words, reproducing the visual and the auditory experience as well as the deep fear and awe that this experience produced in Ezekiel.

What makes this vision different from the simpler calls to other prophets is that it uses images both from the culture of home, or Jerusalem, and from the culture of Mesopotamia, a much richer and more powerful area. The use of these images may be important in two ways. It was used by people introduced to a new culture with its cultural references. It is a sort of multi-cultural visual feast. It is “over the top”. It certainly gets attention and has been getting attention ever since. Perhaps it was necessarily overdone. We, too, have become accustomed to a rich visual culture, one in which special effects in films have had to become more elaborate, more striking, to compel our attention. We, too, are a bit jaded, as perhaps these exiles were by the pomp of their new homes. They are certainly pictured as a tough audience. It will take something special to reach them.

Before a prophet can begin his or her work, they, too, have to be persuaded that this is what they are supposed to do. Time and again, prophets turn and run from the task. Jonah even becomes whale bait. Prophets also are reluctant because they have a sense that they are not special. They have no gifts; they are not wealthy; they are not geniuses; they are not powerful; they are just your average citizen. It is this very humility, this sense of their own limits which make them more trustworthy than the self-anointed leaders of their times. A good prophet needs convincing. Ezekiel receives a pretty convincing vision.

Even if prophets are convinced that they have been commissioned by God, they still do not rush to their mission. Accepting the task of prophecy means alienating one’s friends and relatives. It means isolation, loneliness, a break with one’s past life. No wonder Ezekiel’s response is to return to the group and remain silent, mute. God has called him to speak; he has even literally fed him his words, by having him eat scrolls on which the words he is to speak are written, and Ezekiel’s response is silence. Because he knows, and God has warned him, of the magnitude of the task before him and the resistance of his own people to God’s word. God even says that it would be easier for him to preach to any nation except the Jews. Indeed, their resistance to prophecy has resulted in their captivity; they are close to annihilation and still they will not obey God nor honor their covenant with him. Ezekiel has his work cut out for him.

Ezekiel’s prophecy comes at the time all good prophecies occur—when they are most needed. Now, it seems to me that this means prophecy would have to occur all the time, since this could describe all times, but in this case Ezekiel is a prophet of a people who have expectations that there will be prophets and that prophecy is an important part of their life as a people. Prophecy is not, as we commonly think of it, prediction. Prophecy is descriptive. Some of Ezekiel’s prophecies come true; others do not. The real point is that he comes with language his people would understand, to his own group, to give them hard news about both what they are doing and what they need to change. What makes him pivotal is that he is neither all lamenting, like Jeremiah (Jeremiads, anyone?). Nor all consoling, like Isaiah. He begins in condemnation, and ends in consolation. Despite everything, God is still interested in their affairs. He is still watching over them. Indeed he will make the dry bones of Israel rise again.

So how do we approach this story? Is it an interesting cultural artifact that gives us insight into ancient Middle Eastern ways of life? Is it the literal word of God? Is there some way we can use this story as creatively as Ezekiel used the imagery of his time to speak to ours? Are we simply concerned about a wider arena than that of a small tribe of people?

What’s with these Israelites, anyway? It seems almost incomprehensible that the Israelites continue to defy God through prophet after prophet in the Bible. Bad things happen to them repeatedly after they defy their covenant with God. Why don’t they learn? Why don’t they just heed the words of their prophets and get right with God? Why don’t they give up their idolatries? If we heard clearly someone telling us what we should do to avoid disaster, we’d do it wouldn’t we? Wouldn’t we?

The problem Ezekiel encounters in telling hard news to the Israelites is compounded by the fact that prophecy was a more common occupation than one would expect. Rather like pundits and journalists and other public thinkers of today, there were many prophets telling the people of Israel what they should do now that they were in exile. Most of them foretold a rather sunny future. They would all return to Israel after a short period of time and life would go on as it had before. Now this is exactly the kind of prophecy most of us like. Take your pick. Eat all the chocolate cake you want and don’t gain a pound. Easy credit, no monthly payments for a year. A painless switch from gas to ethanol will stop global warming. There’s always some part of our mind saying, this seems too good to be true, but our hands seem to always be busy paying for the magazine or book which tells us what we want to hear. I can’t be the only weak willed one here. We can fill in a million different scenarios where distinguishing false prophets from the real goods is tough.

Al Gore’s modest title for his film An Inconvenient Truth seems to sum up the situation pretty well. Truth usually is inconvenient. It was for the ancient Israelites and it is for us. We may not have wheeled thrones of sapphire running on angel power telling us what to do, but, as you can see, that itself was not enough to convince people to take a look at how they were living.

There are usually two ways of looking at these sorts of situations. One is that God is the one doing the telling. The other is that we are the ones figuring out, or not figuring out what to do. In either case, we are left to work out how to change things. In the first case, revealed wisdom, we are still left to work out God’s intentions. In the second case, we are left to figure out how to do the right thing. However whether we believe the voice which guides us comes from an agent outside us or from the still, small voice we find within, we are all able to listen hard for the truth, inconvenient though it may be. We all have the potential power of Ezekiel.

The Baptists (of many stripes) call their congregations the priesthood of all believers. We, following the radical reformation tradition, have called our congregations the prophethood of all believers. And we also are a covenantal people, promising, every Sunday, that we will covenant with each other and with God, however we understand that. This promise calls for discernment, judgment and action. All of this is hard work, first to find what is to be the work, secondly how it is to be done, and lastly the capacity to see it through. Within each of us is a core of prophetic vision. It is up to each of us to find where that vision is, and how it will lead us. It will not be easy. It may set us off from others, from our pasts, from the easy camaraderie of others. But it is this vision, and the courage to pursue it, that makes each of our lives worth living.

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