St. Mary's Episcopal Church

The Reverend James Derkits
July 9, 2006
Proper 9: The Prophetic Life of Christians (Ezekiel 2:1-7)

St Gregory the Great, said the book of Ezekiel is ‘veiled in deep obscurity and bound by certain knots of mysteries.’ I have found it to be the same, but an exciting read, full of rich imagery that must take years to fully understand. The portion we heard today comes just after Ezekiel’s first vision. In his vision he sees the glory of God. He describes a vision that seems impossible to envision, it is so amazing it is even beyond our imagination. A chariot with four wheels, and a wheel inside each wheel. Four human like creatures, with soles of their feet being like a calf’s foot. Each creature has four faces, an ox, a human, a lion, and an eagle. The glorious image moved about everywhere the Spirit went, without turning. This vision is so great, Ezekiel cannot stand it, he cannot stand up, so he falls to the ground.

Ezekiel has been in exile, cast out from his homeland, for five years. He has been thrown out of the land he has always understood God to dwell in. The very place where he knows and understands God resides, has been is destroyed, and is now occupied territory, and suddenly Ezekiel has this wild vision of God’s glory moving all over the place, and never turning aside from its way. The repetition of the number four in the vision suggests the four corners of the earth, or the four winds, so in his vision Ezekiel has an amazing revelation that God, the God of the Israelites is not bound up by geography, but inhabits the whole earth, is everywhere, and never turns from God’s own way. God is everywhere, but always in motion, God is a God of action, and never stagnant. It is an astounding realization, both magnificently frightening and eloquently wonderful the same instant, it brings Ezekiel to his knees, and to place his face to the earth.

But this realization of God’s greatness, of God’s vastness is only the beginning. Ezekiel has seen God’s glory for a reason, and soon he learns what that reason is. God calls Ezekiel to get up, but before he is even able to get up, God’s spirit comes upon him. Ezekiel is God’s prophet, and his every word and action is inspired by God’s spirit. God calls Ezekiel by the endearing term Mortal, as in, not-immortal, as in not-God. So the power dynamic in our reading from the Old Testament is very clear: God is God, and Ezekiel is human, not only created by God, but here, called by God to prophesy. In today’s reading, Ezekiel is warned that his task will not be easy. God says it will be as if he were dwelling in a thicket of thorns, or living with scorpions. This will not be a comfortable way of being in the world, the people he is to deliver the message to will not take it well, and some of them won’t even hear it! But some will. God loves these people, living in exile, even though they have strayed away from the covenant, God has not given up on them. Some of the people will return, will hear Ezekiel speaking God’s own message, will see the way Ezekiel acts out God’s judgment, and know that God is calling them to return to the covenant, to return to trusting in God to protect them, return to living in the way God has called them to live.

From time to time in history there is a need for a single prophet such as Ezekiel to rise up in a community, to call the community back to its covenant, to remind the community of its relationship with God. We in the church know Jesus to be the ultimate prophet, and more than a prophet; we know Jesus to be God among us, the one who not only calls us back into our relationship with God, but leads the way though death, and binds us to himself as we are baptized, making us one with him. So in a way, we who are in the church, we who are the body of Christ are all called together to be, as one Body, God’s prophet in our own context. As a community, we have a prophetic ministry in our own neighborhood. We come week-by-week to be shaped as Christians in the hearing of the word and the breaking of bread. But before that, we find the roots of our being, where we begin our Christian journey, in our baptism. And the way we are to live as baptized Christians we find in our baptismal covenant. It is here we find the prophetic message we are to live out in the world. When we are washed with the waters of baptism, when we are buried with Christ, and raised to new life, we become one with Christ, and one with each-other, and the way this new body behaves is different from the ways of the world. We gather here weekly, for starters. We participate in the breaking of bread and in the apostles teaching. We persevere in resisting evil, we practice repentance when we do fall into sin, and we do, we proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, we seek and serve Christ in all persons, and we love others as we do our own selves. And we are called to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being!

Just as Ezekiel is called to live out God’s prophetic ministry, we too are called to live out our lives in prophetic ministry to the world. Today’s passage focuses on how difficult this can be: no one enjoys being stuck by thorns, no one enjoys being ignored. Yet, we are warned that as we do our work of being God’s prophet in the world, it will indeed be uncomfortable. Even Jesus, in our Gospel is rejected by some in his hometown, and still some are healed by him.

It is difficult to continually seek Christ in all persons, especially when that person cuts us off in traffic, or worse, when that person robs or murders someone in our neighborhood.

When we find ourselves falling into sin, when hurting those we love, or even when we benefit from oppression of others, it is difficult to repent and return to God and God’s way. This covenant of baptism gives us our vision of a way-of-being that is different from most of our world. We have a picture of the community of Christ, a picture of God’s Kingdom in our baptismal covenant. Fortunately, it is not solely up to us as individuals make ourselves behave in this way. The baptismal covenant is a gift to us, it maps out how we are now free to be, since God calls us into this Christian community. And we are a community, not alone in this world, trying to simply do-good, but we are of one Body with Christ, in the church, inspired by the Holy Spirit, just as Ezekiel was inspired to stand to hear God’s voice. It is God’s action thru us that enables us to live our baptismal covenant. It is God’s Spirit that lifts us up to live out the calling of our baptismal covenant, just as Ezekiel was lifted up from the ground after seeing the amazing vision of God’s glory...
Following this passage from Ezekiel, after it is made clear that Ezekiel’s words and actions are from God, just as our baptism and our new life in Christ is from God, after that is made clear, only then does God go on to give Ezekiel a scroll. Not just to read, but to devour, to eat, to digest, to take into his body, to swallow, so that God’s message becomes a part of Ezekiel’s very being and nourishment. So that the message of God comes from the mouth of Ezekiel, only because he first took it in from God. We as Christians gather here to hear the word of God in community, and to take the body of Christ into us. We who are baptized into one Body, share in the breaking of one bread, that we might also go into the world, and live prophetic lives, so that those who have wandered away from God might once again be called back into relationship with God. We, this one community, this one Body of Christ, are shown a glimpse of the glory of God here in the liturgy, but we are not shown God’s glory only for our own satisfaction, but because we are a prophetic community, called by God to live out, out there, our baptismal covenant, and bring those in our own neighborhoods into loving relationship with God.