It
is not for you sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the
sake of my holy name. God says this
in Ezekiel (36:22). God proceeds to
promise a return from exile to the land originally promised to Abraham. Throughout his work on Old Testament
theology, Elmer Martens asserts that land is a key component of God’s
intentions for God’s people.[i] Even when land does not literally mean Jews
living in Palestine, Martens sees land as the word that points to gift, promise,
and blessing. Whether an Israelite ever
again lives in Jerusalem does not matter.
God’s promise of land means God will always be with all Jews, all the
people of God, giving blessing. So, when
God, in Ezekiel 36, promises to ‘gather’ his people (36:24), this amounts to a
promise of presence and blessing, and it is a promise God keeps.
This is who God. God keeps promises. God gives blessings. God does it all for the sake of God’s
name. God’s holiness makes it impossible
for God to do otherwise.
Ezekiel 36:25-27 sounds
baptismal. “I will sprinkle clean water
upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your
idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I
will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; … I will put my spirit within
you and make you follow my statutes.” If
exile was a death, it was a death followed by a new day, one created by
God. Israel’s guilt along with the guilt
of the nations led to this state of dispossession. Our sins are not inconsequential. When humanity rebels against God over
generations at a societal level, pain and suffering follow. But, God does not leave it there.
“I will save you from all your
uncleanness” God promises (36:29). God does this because it is in God’s nature
to save and renew. This is who God
is. God punishes with (sometimes with
exile, sometimes with war, sometimes in other way). But then God moves beyond punishment to a new
day. Without God, no new day comes, no
new life is possible. But there is no
such thing as “without God.” There is no
time or place where God is not.
Atheists would have us think there
is no God. Agnostics would say we cannot
make any definitive statements about God: it’s just an unreachable
mystery. Deists would say there is God
but one who is mostly uninvolved in the state of things. Fundamentalists would say God is concerned
about the future and afterlife of individuals but has nothing to say to humanity
as a whole. Ezekiel rejects each of
these stances.
God is in everything, in control of
everything, and the events of our lives fall within the purview of God’s
plans. Remember, this is a big picture
perspective. God is in this, whatever “this”
is. God may be in it condemning ungodly
behavior. God may be the cause of the
pain, using that pain to draw us back to himself, but God is omnipresent –
everywhere. And God is omnipotent – all
powerful.
The good news (Gospel!) is God will
end each story in which we find ourselves with a new day, new life, and
blessing. God does this for God’s own
sake. It is God’s nature to bless us
humans. That’s what God does. Walter Brueggemann says, “Yahweh [God] is a
Character and Agent who is evidenced in the life of Israel as an Actor marked
by unlimited sovereignty and risky solidarity.”[ii] The all-powerful God joins with humans in relationship
for God’s sake, and the result is we have life with God which means blessing,
love, and joy.
I have tried to at least declare if
not show God’s unlimited sovereignty.
The “risky solidarity,” to use Brueggemann’s term, comes in joining with
humans, Israel in the Old Testament, and the church added in the New. Israelites are not better than other
humans. Christians are not more holy
than non-Christians. We make mistakes
and bow to idols and behave in a way that we deserve exile as much as those who
lived in Jerusalem in 586 BC. But when
it comes, whatever the exile looks like, God does not bail out. God stays with us.
God does not impose unending
wrath. Even as we suffer, God is working
on a new story. “I will cause towns to
be inhabited, and the waste places shall be rebuilt” says the Lord (Ezekiel
36:33). God’s siding with us when we are
at our lowest gives the skeptic ammunition.
What kind of God do you worship
that He would let you wallow in such misery?
God’s reputation is at stake, but He risks it because God is unmoved
by the skeptic’s taunts. God is not
bothered in the least by the jawing scoffers.
God’s concern is God doing things God’s way. As Ezekiel (and the rest of Bible, Old and
New Testaments) shows, God’s way is to risk solidarity with people He knows
will sin. Because of who God is, God
will love us when we are at our worst.
In what “waste place” do you find
yourself right now? God is going to
rebuild it and you along with it. We
experience joy when we willingly yield ourselves and live in God’s ways by
choice instead of by divine force. Every
knee will bow in obeisance (Isaiah 45:23; Philippians 2:10). Those who resist the rule of God are “kicking
against the goads” (Acts 26:14). Those
go God’s way, even while in suffering, find that as He rebuilds the waste
places he works through them and they are renewed and invited to enter the “joy
of the master” (Matthew 25:21, 23).
As God, for his own sake re-creates
the world humans who live by faith are remade.
With our new hearts, we live in joyful relationship with God.
No comments:
Post a Comment