Date:
September 21, 2008, St. Matthew, Apostle
Author: The Rev. Dr. James D. Kegel
GLORY TO THE FATHER AND TO THE SON AND TO THE HOLY SPIRIT, AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING IS NOW AND WILL BE FOREVER, AMEN.
My week began with an e-mail from Petri, a young man from Finland who had been our exchange student many years ago. I don't quite know what prompted him to tell me he no longer believed in God. I guess in my last e-mail to him I had commented how the oldest Lutheran Church in the west was a Finnish congregation in Sitka , Alaska . I knew that because a guest speaker, Dr Phil Nordquist of Pacific Lutheran University came to Central during our centennial year and quizzed us. He asked what the oldest Lutheran Church in the West was. I knew the answer or thought I did—St. Mark's in San Francisco which dated back to the gold rush and was proud of being the oldest. What I didn't think of was Russian Alaska. Nordquist told us how a Finnish governor built a Lutheran Church as well as an orthodox church in New Archangel, Sitka , in the 1790s. Or maybe it was September 11 th and the remembrance of events in 2001 which had affected Petri very much, as he wrote, “I looked at what I believed from top to bottom.” The terrorist bombers claimed that what they were doing was for their religion and he decided he no longer he believed. Petri is a Lutheran pastor's son and through the years we shared our faith. When our son Andrew was dying of cancer, he prayed for him and for us. Petri wondered if his admission to me would mean the end of our twenty-odd year friendship and I assured him that of course it would not. I told him I appreciated his honesty and openness with me. And I asked him of I could pray for him and asked him to send warm thoughts my way. I think he was relieved and said of course, I could pray for him.
But at the end of the week I had coffee with one of you who told me how you have grown closer to God and know that God is with you, directing you. It was a week where I talked with one of you about severe financial losses, heard that another of you was having a hard time one the anniversary date when a loved one died, another of you was with a family member wondering if he would make it, another good friend came into my office and told me she was facing the prospect of colon cancer. Kristi is mourning the loss of her father and taking care of her mother. We had Pastor Barth over for dinner and he told us how much he missed Mavis. He asked me a deep question, whether I knew of any place in Scripture where we are promised that we would see our loved ones again. The texts I was ready to quote were the ones he had ready at hand. All I could say is that heaven wouldn't be heaven if we didn't join our loved ones there and know them.
It is not easy being a pastor sharing joys but also many sorrows. It is not easy being a believer. It has never been easy. The text I am using this morning is from Ezekiel. The prophet is called by God to speak God's word to the people of Israel . The setting is the exile in Babylon where the young priest Ezekiel had gone with King Jehoiakim and the leaders of Judah . The events in our text date from the time of the deportation but before the final destruction of Jerusalem and the burning of the Temple , somewhere between 598 and 587 BC. It is about ten years after Jeremiah's exile to Egypt and the scroll mentioned in our text could be the scroll of the prophet Jeremiah. At least the themes of judgment and lamentation and woe of Jeremiah are echoed in the message of Ezekiel.
It was not easy for Ezekiel being a believer and a spokesperson for God. The voice of God commissioned him to speak to a rebellious people, impudent and stubborn. He would find his hearers obstinate. Yes, they were God's own people but they would reject God's prophet for they were a people of hard hearts and harder foreheads. The image is briers and thorns, stinging nettles, surrounding him and living among scorpions. The prophet would not find success. God said he would do better preaching to the foreign-speaking Assyrians and Babylonians than to the people of his own tribe and nation. But speak he must.
“Son of Adam,” speak. This phrase is common to Ezekiel ; it appears over and over. A few weeks ago, I mentioned that we could translate it as “sons of Adam and daughters of Eve;” our translation reads, “Mortal one.” But best should be plain, “Man.” The Hebrew really does mean male and in this case the individual priest named Ezekiel. When God speaks it isn't a generic, “Hey, you” or “To whom it may concern.” God calls us by name. But here God uses ben-adam , son of Adam. Ezekiel is an earthling, a son of the man made from the mud. Ezekiel is part of a fallen humanity; there is nothing so special about this young man except for his task. He is to listen and learn and tell. He is to make God's text a part of his own body and mind. He is not to expect results but rather just do what God commands him to do, speak words he is asked to eat.
What God tells him is strange— Ezekiel is a rather difficult book for us to digest. God said, “Man, take what is offered to you; eat this scroll and go, speak to the house of Israel .” The scroll had writing on both sides and the prophet was worried how he would consume a whole papyrus. God said, “Man, eat this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.” Ezekiel did and it turned out sweet as honey.
It is not easy being a believer but it never was. Ezekiel was given a difficult task and he did it. He was given a scroll to eat—a message to take inside. We are too. We aren't given sixty-six scrolls to eat—the books of the Bible--but we are called to read and hear God's Word, take it into our own heart and mind and soul. Like Ezekiel you are commissioned to make those ancient words your own.
When Petri wrote of losing his faith, I wondered if he ever went to church. I think not. I never heard that his family attended except maybe on Christmas Eve or Easter or that his children went to Sunday School or Vacation Bible School or whatever they have in Finland . He said his father's parish was attended only by the elderly. He said our American church was so different, that it was filled with people of all ages. That is also what Jan our German student said again to me this summer, I think rather amazed that all the people he remembered from ten years ago went to church and really believed. The Church is not so much an institution as a community. The Church is not a building but a people. We come together and hear God's Word, sing God's praises, pray and care for each other. We need to be together to lift one another up. If we set our religion aside, put our faith away for years and years, then it should not surprise us that it is hard to believe. The way to find assurance and support in our faith-life is putting ourselves in the presence of God. Where is God present? In our brothers and sisters, in God's Word written and proclaimed, in bread and wine and water with God's Word. I can't believe all by myself. My faith is too weak for that. As Pastor Barth said, now he is trying to live by what he told others through the years. It is important to reach out to the man who is mourning, to the woman who is sitting by a dying parent, to those worried about finances, to pray for those entering college, going away for work, joining the Navy. Even those who don't believe, we can pray for, ask God's blessings on them. God did not give up on those of hard heads and hearts. He told Ezekiel to go to them.
The prophet's message is much like that of Jeremiah or Isaiah—woe to those who are hard of head and heart. Judgment will come on the evildoers and those who turn away from God. But the message is also sweet as honey. It is hard to be a believer now and then—the Jewish people were a tiny tribe in the great Babylonian Empire. The Mesopotamian civilization was one of the oldest in the world. It stretched from the beginnings of time even into the Christian Era. I have a book on my shelf named, History Begins at Sumer about the first Mesopotamian civilization of 3000 BC, more than two millennia before Ezekiel. Babylon was a great and powerful civilization whose ideas and values overwhelmed the Hebrew people. Why do we think it was easier for the people of Israel to turn away from the ways of Babylon than it is for us to turn away from secular and non-believing values today? Ezekiel was mocked and condemned; it is no different today. He spoke to a hard people but he was made even stronger by God's word—he is made a diamond harder than flint. God is more powerful than scoffers.
Ezekiel ate the scroll and it was sweet. As hard as it is to be a believer, it is also a joy. We do not need to wonder about our place in the universe or whether there is anything beyond ourselves. Ezekiel did not have to figure out the world for himself. He had God's Word written down to eat. We are given all we need to know in the Scriptures. The Bible tells us all we need to know. We do not need to be seekers forever but can be finders too. God has found us in Jesus Christ. God is with us with God's divine presence and the comfort and consolation of sisters and brothers. We are not alone. We are not ignorant. We are given not only a message of mourning and lament and judgment upon sin but forgiveness and consolation and joy in the Lord. “Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice…the Lord is near”. That is Paul's message and our message too. We have a promise that though thorns and briers surround us and we live among scorpions, we need not be dismayed for God is with us. Though others do not receive our message, it is enough for us to witness to God's word. Even though others do not believe, we can still pray for them. We can ask God to care for them, for each daughter of Eve and son of Adam is precious, each woman is created in God's image and each man is one for whom the Savior died. Take and eat your scroll. Its taste is sweet as honey. Listen, learn, tell. Amen.
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