Faith

Heart Transplant – Thursday, 20th week in ordinary time – Ezekiel 36:23-28

We are still reflecting on the oracles of restoration that are found in Ezekiel chapters 33-39. This section is dedicated to the oracles that pertain to the land and the people and this chapter in particular focuses on the restoration of the community that live in the land.

We are also looking at the highpoint of Ezekiel’s theology of salvation and justification. This theology is based solely on the fact that it is God’s grace and his grace alone that saves us. The words of Ezekiel are similar to the words of his predecessor, the prophet Jeremiah, who echoes similar words in Jeremiah 31:31-34.

Our focal verses (24-28) are midway through an oracle which begins in 36:16 and ends in 36:38. The opening verses of the oracle provide a history of the house of Israel focused on their misdeeds. They are reminded of their past and their disobedience, but the prophecy does not end there. Despite these actions and precisely because of God’s concern for God’s holy name, God will act now to rescue them.

God begins by reminding the Israelites that He has been perceived as ‘ineffective’ in the eyes of the nations because of the wickedness of his people. It was Israel that provoked God’s hands and forced them into exile. Now, the scattering of the Jews among the nations gave the impression that God could not protect his people. What has been undone by the Israelites by their action can only be restored by God so that seeing the actions of God the nations may recognise and glorify the one true God.

I guess the same can be said of every Christian, who by their behaviour, desecrates the holy name of God. Sanctifying and glorifying the name (person and power) of God is what God’s people are called to do, a fact made evident in the Lord’s Prayer: “hallowed by Thy Name.” Think about it; we are the only Jesus some may ever see; what if our actions bring scandal to the Church and to the name of God?

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Just a razor to the neck – Wednesday, 20th Week in ordinary time – Ezekiel 34:1-11

If ever text of scripture should make the ministers and preachers of God tremble in their boots, it is this one. It spoke directly to civil and religious leader who were to shepherd the people of Israel and it speaks directly to civil leaders, ministers and preachers who shepherd their flocks in the name of God. What it has to say is without lather, just the razor to the neck doing its job!

With the fall of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 33:21), there is a transition from preaching oracles of doom to words of hope. These words of hope were developed in two stages. Chapters 33-39 are a series of oracles directed to the purification of the land and the people for the day of the renewed Israel. Chapters 40-48 will be oracles of hope for the great temple of Jerusalem which now stands destroyed.

But while Ezekiel did preach oracles of hope it did not mean that God’s judgment had faded away; at least not for its rulers and leaders. In this chapter, Ezekiel focuses on the purification of the of the community and the land. He denounces bad rulers who have shepherded Israel (34:1-10). Even though the book of Ezekiel deals with the southern kingdom of Judah, “Israel” is a theological term for God’s people as a whole. God announces his plan to shepherd the sheep himself and to appoint a new David over them. (Ezekiel 34: 11-31).

The notion of shepherds as rulers of the people emerged from the Sumerian kings in the third millennium. These rulers of the ancient near east referred to themselves as ‘shepherds’ of their people. Borrowing from an already acceptable term, Ezekiel directs God’s wrath towards these leaders

Today’s reading takes up the first issue of bad shepherds. Ezekiel is blunt! “Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep” (34:2b-3). The unfaithful leaders of Israel (both civil and spiritual) exploited their flocks without caring for them in return. It wasn’t wrong for the shepherd to make his living from the flock, but it was wrong to do it in a way that neglected love for the flock and the needs of the sheep.

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God was ‘Tyre-d’! Tuesday, 20th Week in ordinary time – Ezekiel 28:1-10

Chapters 1-24 of Ezekiel dealt with oracles against Israel as a nation. Now chapters 25-32 focus on a special collection of judgment oracles against seven foreign nations. Chapters 25 to 32, in which our text is to be found, is sandwiched between the oracles of judgment against Israel (1-23) and the oracles of restoration (33-48). In doing this Ezekiel establishes a sequence of events. After Israel receives her judgment, God will begin a period of restoration. He will do this by first punishing the pagan nations who have profaned the holy people of God and their nation and then restore the land and the people of Israel themselves.

All nations have political enemies and Israel and Judah were no exceptions. The prophets always addressed their oracles against these enemy nations but they never did this by entering the nations in question, they never set foot on enemy soil to proclaim an oracle. Whenever they proclaimed an oracle against an enemy nation they always did so in Israel.

By doing this, Yahweh, Israel’s God, asserted dominance over all other nations and held other nations accountable for their deeds just as he did with Israel. God also demolished the claims by these nations to any divine authority by showing that they acted out of pride and hence they were destroyed; no god could help them nor stand against Yahweh. But by this, Israel was also assured that the attacks from these nations would not go unpunished.

In chapters 25 -32 there is a climactic order in the judgment of the seven nations. It begins with four small neighbouring nations of Ammon, Moab, Edom and Philistia to the more significant opponents like Tyre and Sidon (Chapters 26-28) and finally to the most important foe, Egypt (chapters 29-32).

Our text of today has jumped the judgment on the four minor nations to settle down in particular with the ‘Prince (read King) of Tyre’. Ezekiel vehemently opposes Tyre because it fought against Babylon with the help of Egypt thus attempting the thwart the inevitable judgment of Yahweh.

Tyre was an ancient city of the Phoenicians in what is now Lebanon. It appears for the first time in the Bible in Joshua 19:29. The city was actually composed of two parts, one on the mainland and the other on a rocky island about a half mile from the coast. Tyre developed a powerful shipping trade with the help of the Egyptian navy. Tyre with the help of Egypt held out against Nebuchadnezzar for 13 years after the fall of Jerusalem. Finally, Tyre fell to the Babylonians like a fully laden cargo ship that sinks on the high seas.(chapter 26)

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Shifting the blame –  Saturday, 19th week in ordinary time – Ezekiel 18:1-10,13b,30-32

Shifting the blame to someone one else is an age of trick in the survival guide book of our life. We were taught this by our very parents when we were toddlers. Bang into a table when learning to find your feet and the family rushes into to hit an inanimate object. The better lesson would be to tell the child to learn to be careful while they walked rather than shift the blame to something that has no control of any situation.

“The parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” This was one of those popular saying in Ezekiel’s time that allowed the blame to be shifted. It began to find resonance and acceptance once again in the voices of the exiles in Babylon. We don’t know the exact source of this proverb, although Jeremiah also quotes it (Jeremiah 31:29) but the message was clear; ‘why punish us when our parents have brought us into the mess we find ourselves. If a finger could be pointed, it needed to pointed into the past.

The exiles in Babylonia were convinced that it wasn’t their fault: they were paying the price for the crimes of past generations. In other words, they believed themselves to be innocent and their treatment at Yahweh’s hands to be unjust. This neat saying about sour grapes absolved Ezekiel’s contemporaries from any responsibility for their current situation.

But if you are honest with yourself, this proverb has some truth in it. Children do suffer for the ‘mistakes’ (or call it sins if you wish) of their parents. The children of dysfunctional parents are more likely to suffer dysfunction than their peers from more functional families. However, we also see exceptions to this rule. People from dysfunctional families often rise above their circumstances to lead normal lives. Also, some people from good families rebel against their upbringing and lead dysfunctional lives. The conclusion is rather clear; a great deal depends on the individual’s choices and this is the point that Yahweh makes. So, God cuts them short. “As I live,” says God, you won’t be reciting this proverb anymore (18:3).

Ezekiel refutes the deadly proverb with logic that sounds harsh, but in fact holds out life-giving grace. This text from Ezekiel emphasises a personal choice; accountability for the individual’s sins rather than the sins of the parents. It emphasises Yahweh’s fairness, and says that Yahweh will judge people according to their ways, not their parents’ ways (v. 30a). It promises that repentance can save a person from ruin (v. 30b).

This is an important point. If people believe that they are going to be punished for the sins of their parents, that belief robs them of hope. It tells them that they are doomed, regardless of anything that they might do. It tells them that they have no way of escape. Even more importantly, it tells them that God is unfair and is, in some sense, their enemy.

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Pride has its fall – Friday, 19th week in ordinary time – Ezekiel 16:1-15,60,63

This is the longest chapter in Ezekiel and has two allegories The first allegory speaks of Judah as the ‘adulterous wife’ (verses 1-43) and the second allegory of the ‘three sisters’. (44-58). The story is told in all its sordid detail making even the lector and even the preacher hesitant in wanting to proclaim or explain it because the of the many explicit metaphors.

The word of the Lord spoken through Ezekiel concerns Jerusalem and the depths of her wickedness and infidelity. Throughout this chapter, Jerusalem is used to represent not just the city but the nation of Israel as a whole. In it, Ezekiel spells out the history of God’s faithfulness to a nation that no one cared about.

Israel’s beginnings were humble and poor. There was none to care for her at birth; not a single nation even pitied her. That was not all, for Israel was hated from birth (you yourself were loathed on the day you were born).

The rite of accepting a child included the cutting of the umbilical cord, the washing and cleansing of a new born babe, being rubbed with salt and wrapped in cloths. While some of these rituals sound a bit bizarre to a modern reader, it said a lot about the acceptance of a child at the time of Ezekiel. Cutting the cord, washing, rubbing down with salt, and clothing the new born were customary legal acts of legitimation.

If this child were to be rejected by the parents, then none of these rites would be performed and the child would be left in an ‘open field’. It is here, says Yahweh, that he found Israel; in a field, abandoned, flailing in blood, abandoned by a parent who had legally relinquished all rights to and responsibilities for the child. We are told that barbarous nations who wanted to get rid of a child born with any deformity or one they could not support, would leave the child in a field as prey for the wild beast.

Here lies Israel lost and vulnerable. If not for the care of their covenant God, they would have perished. It is besides a field that God willed that Israel lived and grow up like a plant. Why, one would ask would God care for an abandoned nation? Was it because Israel was amazing or holy? On the contrary they were weak, poor, struggling, and near death. Deuteronomy 7:7-8 has the answer. “The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers.”

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