Sent to a Nation of Rebels
 |
| "The Call of Ezekiel" by Marc Chagall |
Grace to you and peace
from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!
Ezekiel, the son of Buzi, a priest of Jerusalem,
belonged to the company of Jews who had been carried into captivity from
Jerusalem to Babylon about 597 B.C. In the fifth year of his captivity, he was
called by God to be His prophet. In this capacity Ezekiel labored for at least
twenty-two years among the captive Jews. He lived in the northern part of
Mesopotamia, at Tel-a-bib, by the river Chebar. He owned a house there and was
married. He apparently enjoyed the confidence of his fellow-exiles, for their
elders frequently sought his advice; yet he shared the lot of other true
prophets in that most of his hearers did not listen to him.
The task that the Lord gave Ezekiel was to testify
to the Babylonian Jews, who were, for the most part, comfortable and prosperous
in their new home but were still hard-hearted and idolatrous. He was to show
them that the destruction of Jerusalem was not only inevitable, but also well-deserved
under the circumstances, lest they harden their hearts by a false comfort and
refuse to be brought to repentance. It was necessary, moreover, to dispel the
false and foolish hopes which had been raised in the hearts of the exiled Jews
by the alleged visions of false prophets and prophetesses.
Ezekiel was eminently fitted for this task, for
God had given him an unusual measure of mental and spiritual gifts; he had a
good education; he had a pastoral attitude and viewpoint; he was endowed with a
wonderful imagination and a powerful gift of oratory; and he had received the
firmness and courage necessary for his difficult calling. His activity,
therefore, had a decisive influence on the development of the Jewish people
during the Exile and brought comfort to the remnant who longed for the
salvation which was to come out of Zion.
As is proper, the Lord
initiated the call. “Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak with you.”
Throughout the Book of Ezekiel, God never addresses Ezekiel by name, but calls
him “son of man” 93 times. Perhaps this form of address was meant to teach him
something. Although the Lord was granting him special visions and the privilege
of transmitting God’s truth to His people, Ezekiel was still a son of man. He
was just a human being, a sinful son of Adam. It was not because of any strength
in him that Ezekiel was called to be the Lord’s spokesman, but as a frail
mortal who brought nothing but weakness to the task.
People in leadership
positions, including leadership positions among God’s people, are in
circumstances perfect for fostering pride. Despite its heavy promotion over the
last month, Scripture tells us that pride is not something to be celebrated,
but a deadly sin. Pride not only is a direct violation of God’s command to
love, but it gets in the way when people attempt to carry out service for God. Pride
builds barriers and makes God-pleasing interpersonal relationships difficult.
Since Ezekiel was a
sinful son of man, he couldn’t on his own stand in the presence of God, nor
could he properly receive orders from the Lord. But the Lord made up for Ezekiel’s
spiritual insufficiencies. The Spirit stood him on his feet and made him ready
to listen to the Lord. God is always the one who is responsible for making
sinful humans into people who can stand in His presence. He makes them into
people who have the courage to receive and carry out orders from Him.
Ezekiel was to take his
message to the people of Israel. Because of God’s choice of their nation to
produce the Savior, these people had a special national relationship with God.
Most of them, nevertheless, had rebelled against the Lord. They had insisted on
following other gods. They had insisted on disobeying God’s will, therefore
they were in exile. But even their years of exile had not led most of them to
repent of their rebellious ways. Despite their lack of repentance and what
appeared to be a lost cause, God still sent His prophet to these people.
Ezekiel was not called
to preach to any ordinary community or to be a missionary to some new pagan culture,
but to a covenant community that had rebellion in its genes. The fathers and
their sons had rebelled and had been unfaithful time and again and continued to
behave that way down “to this very day.” That emphasizes both original sin
inherited from Adam and all subsequent fathers, and the actual sin committed by
the fathers and sons alike. Like us, Israel was a people that cannot not sin,
that had rebelled against the Lord, personally rejecting the personal God and
Father who had created and redeemed them.
Throughout the call
account, God emphasizes one central theological issue: the prophet is called to
proclaim faithfully a message that Israel will not hear. The prophet is
responsible for faithfully speaking God’s Word; he is not responsible for how
the people receive that Word. The prophet is prepared for “failure,” measured
in human terms, by the repeated emphasis on the rebelliousness of Israel, past
and present. The central issue, from God’s perspective, is that by the faithful
preaching of God’s Word, “whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a
rebellious house) they will know that a prophet has been among them” (2:5).
This leads us to
messianic trajectory of the passage. The mission of the prophet foreshadows the
mission of Jesus. For Jesus also, success is not measured in human terms. Like
Ezekiel, Jesus was rejected by the people of His own day, even by the people of
His hometown (the Gospel), even though He received the Spirit at His Baptism
and was the very Word of God Incarnate. Indeed, our salvation was accomplished
by an act that appears, in human terms, to be a failure: the death of Jesus on
the cross as a condemned and dishonored prisoner.
For God’s messengers,
the standards of success are not the standards of the world: acceptance by community,
honor among peers, praise of the masses, and (especially here in America)
accumulation of wealth. If we are to carry out faithfully our vocation as the
Church of Christ in the world, we must understand that God sends us to “go… and
speak with My words to them” (3:4) and learn with Paul (the Epistle) that,
resting in the grace of God, we may rejoice our weakness, through which the
power of God is revealed (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). This makes the cross the perfect
symbol of our faith, both because it was the means by which God accomplished
our salvation and because it reminds us to rest in God’s grace and trust in God’s
power alone as we speak His words to the world.
Unlike the people of
Israel (or you and I!) Jesus came and kept the Law perfectly. He and His Father
were always in harmony. He never rebelled, never hard-headedly ignored, never
placed His strong will about His Father’s desire (Hebrews 3:2). His perfect
obedience pays for mankind’s continual rebellion. His death is our life. He can
and does take away all our sins.
Christ, the eternal Son
of God, spoke first through prophets such as Ezekiel; later He came and spoke
for Himself and for the Father who sent Him (Hebrews 1:1-2). Like Ezekiel, Jesus
too, is called the Son of man.” In fact, that was one of Jesus’ favorite names
for Himself.
Throughout His ministry,
many recognized that, in Jesus, there had indeed been a prophet among them.
When Jesus revealed to the woman at the well His knowledge of her sordid past,
she replied, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet” (John 4:19). The reaction
of the crowds to Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the five thousand was “This is
indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!” (John 6:14). There was a
similar reaction to Jesus’ speech “on the last day of the feast, the great day:
“This really is the Prophet” (John 7:40). The blind man whose sight Jesus
restored at the pool of Siloam, when interrogated by cynics, boldly confessed,
“He is a prophet” (John 9:17). Witnesses of Jesus’ restoration of life to the
widow of Nain’s son said, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” (Luke 7:16).
After Jesus’ Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem, the verdict was “This is the
prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee” (Matthew 21:11). Even the dejected
disciples on their way to Emmaus, not yet aware that the stranger who had
joined their company was the risen Jesus, expressed their conviction that Jesus
had been “a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all
the people” (Luke 24:19).
Though these New
Testament accounts reflect varying degrees of knowledge about and faith in
Jesus, the fact remains that all these people, plus many others, indeed knew
that there had been a prophet among them. And to the modern Christian the
statement about Ezekiel in our text “they will know that a prophet has been
among them” can serve as a reminder of Jesus’ prophetic role, for this is the
prophet who fulfilled His own prophecy—that He would be rejected, crucified,
and risen again—thereby winning forgiveness of the sins of all people.
Risen and ascended, Jesus
has the authority to speak forgiveness and to delegate the message and means to
others (Matthew 28:18). Today, He sends the Holy Spirit, the gift of comfort to
His Church, entrusting pastors with the Word and Sacrament. Jesus gives those
He calls His Spirit so they can forgive sins (John 20:22-23). When God’s called
and ordained servant speaks, you are washed clean and made a child of God in
Baptism. When he speaks, your sins are forgiven in Holy Absolution and the
preaching of the Gospel. When he speaks, you are indeed given the very body and
blood of the Lord given “for you.”
From Invocation to Benediction, your pastor
speaks God’s Word. You “know that a prophet” (or a called and ordained servant
of the Word) “was among you” because you hear the Word. You know that all was
done “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” You
know that the human hand extending you what appeared to be only bread and wine is
veiled in the divine hand of Christ, who gave you His very body and blood. You
know that it matters not who baptized you for truly you were baptized in and by
Christ. You know that your pastor speaks God’s Word because that Word is now
written in your heart, and you know that when he says, “I forgive you,” it is
only because this is God speaking through your pastor’s mouth.
And you know at the end
of the service or when he speaks to you in private, visits your hospital room
or stands beside your deathbed, that he is not engaging in wishful thinking
when he speaks a Benediction. There’s no guessing or hoping, no “may this
happen.” Instead, your pastor speaks God’s Word and lets you know that all is
right between you and your Father. Your pastor gives you what God gave him to
give—the Lord’s blessing, His good favor, and His peace. Your pastor speaks
that you might have the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and
the communion of the Holy Spirit both now and forever. Amen.
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Comments