Ezekiel 17:22-24

Thus says the Lord God:

I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar; I will set it out. I will break off a tender shoot from the topmost of its young twigs; I myself will transplant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain height of Israel I will transplant it, and it will produce boughs and bear fruit and become a noble cedar.

Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. All the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord. I bring low the high tree; I make high the low tree; I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken; I will accomplish it.

Sermon Text

Prophet’s have the impossible job of relating the reality of God to the reality of humanity. God is significantly more substantive than we are. There is more of God than there is of anything in existence and, since God is the source of all things, God exists in a deeper way than we as humans are capable of. If that sounds confusing, then I have done my job in making clear just what the prophet has to do. Besides speaking to the future of God’s people, the alternative to what their own thoughts and desires would produce, they are also speaking the greater reality of God into our lesser one.

Ezekiel is a prophet who has some of the most grandiose visions of God in scripture. When God appears in Ezekiel, the prophet struggles to describe any part of the scene. In the opening of the book, Ezekiel is walking by the rivers of Babylon and suddenly sees heavenly beings that his mind can barely comprehend. He describes them as best he can – creatures with faces in each direction, their skin seemingly made of brass, and their wings motionless even as they fly around. These move in tandem with wheels set within wheels covered in eyes. Both creatures herald the arrival of God’s throne and of the “Son of Man,” another miraculous figure Ezekiel can barely begin to describe.

God seems to be aware of the limited vocabulary that we human beings have, because each encounter is given a healthy dose of explanation or analogy to help make the divine message a bit more mundane. Our scripture today is in the midst of a lengthy prophecy which uses the image of eagles, pines, vines, and rivers to get across a much wider narrative. In essence, what we are told before the scripture we read is that one king – Jehoichim – did what God wanted and the other – Zedekiah – did not. As a result one will be blessed and the other will be destroyed. A classic narrative of how following God’s will benefits the one who obeys and a practical warning not to rebel against an empire that is much bigger than you or your kingdom.

You and I, however, are not sixth century kings, so what do we do with this text? This is where we as interpreters have to ask ourselves a question. Is this a message for a time or for all time? Not all messages in scripture are for everyone, some are very specific. With rare exception, however, there is some element of the teaching that is relevant to us. This promise to God’s people in exile that they have a future and that this future will benefit others, that seems to sound familiar to me as a Christian. I remember that Abraham was promised he would bless all nations and I remember that Christ came to save the whole world. If this is true, maybe this vision of a tree connects to something tangible in our lives.

            Scripture usually uses the image of a cedar and other large trees in reference to powerful empires. The formal term for this motif is a “cosmic tree,” and it was used in Assyrian and Babylonian imagery to describe their place as the pillar that held up the world.[1] Scripture usually twists this image, however, and shows that it is God – not any worldly power – that holds creation together. In Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar builds a great empire, but the “tree,” of that empire is torn down by God, its stump locked up so it may never grow again.[2] In Ezekiel, the tree is specifically tied to the two Judean kings that are placed in Babylon and in Judea. Out of the exiles in Babylon, we are told, God will make a mighty people that will shelter all nations.

            As Christians, we profess that Christ established a kingdom for all people from all places on earth. There is no one who does not have a place in God’s kingdom and no people who cannot find a home within that kingdom. This is not a kingdom like other worldly kingdoms – dependent on successions of kings and military might. It is a kingdom with one eternal ruler, a nation who takes up tools to help rather than tools of war. It is an empire of spirit rather than matter.

            We are coming closer and closer to a general election in this country, and I do not anticipate that it will be a smooth election year. The lead up to our primary was nasty enough, I can only imagine how things will heat up as we approach the general. The political stakes are high in this election as in any. We all face a dichotomy between the reality that our vote matters – our view on what comes next in the country and in democracy – matters… and the reality that, regardless of what happens we will all have to wake up the next day and keep living life. There is always work to be done, there is always life to live, and in the face of any potential future – we must figure out how we as the people of God are going to live out our calling.

            We in the United States are poisoned by a concept of the political. Advocacy, voting, civic participation are all important and we must be active in these things to ensure democracy thrives. However, we taken the worst lessons of politicking and applied that to our faith and to our kingdom work. We campaign for one thing or another in our churches, we try to sway people to vote this way or that way, and we even try and blame leadership for the way things are… Instead of focusing on our own participation in the broken systems we choose again and again to take part in. On one hand, this is endemic to the specific systems we in the Methodist Church have – after all we are a democracy. On the other hand, it is more than Methodists who try to make the Kingdom of God come into being through political rather than spiritual thinking.

            Faith impacts the way we act in the world, and so there are politics that align with and that work against a Christian view of the world. Any policy that advocates for cruelty rather than compassion, that does harm to the least of these, that seeks to criminalize the marginalized, and that generally sets out to hurt others is obviously, should obviously be, anti-Christian in our minds. Yet the methods of this world and its power struggles are a matter separate from these concerns. While we as worldly people tend to group the world into enemies and friends, scripture asks us to blur those categories, and in so doing, create a kingdom where all people can find shelter.

            This does not make us opinionless or uselessly moderate, it simply means that we do not make our decisions based upon categories or assumptions, but upon people and their welfare. People often criticized Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. because he took sides in political struggles. He was called a socialist, a communist plant, a Marxist seeking to destroy democracy. However, his stance was a Christian one – that all people were worthy of human dignity. His methods were likewise Christian – he called people to look upon the suffering of those who were hurt by the Jim Crow South and the ignorant North. He called people to nonviolently face atrocity, so that their cause would be obvious in the eyes of world. You cannot hurt unarmed people and not reveal your own depravity in doing so.

            He called upon the White, Moderate Church to free itself of the idea that it was wrong to be political. He asked them to take on a Kingdom Perspective that would impact their politics rather than the other way around. Silence in the face of oppression is complicity after all. Yet, the kind of reconciliation he was seeking was Biblical and it was powerful. He did not advocate for cheap grace that would pretend injustice never happened, but an honest reckoning to the harm that white folk had caused to black folk since 1619 and beyond. It looked forward to a future where reconciliation was possible, it acknowledged a present where the evils of hatred still reigned, and it did not deny the past where even worse was perpetrated.

            Regardless of what happens in November, we as the Church will be called to a witness that we have always held. We will be called to advocate for those in need, to acknowledge the harm that our current systems cause, and to work for a future where all people can live in abundance, peace, and harmony. We do this by seeking to live with people, not writing off others as our enemies. We do this through serious reflection and repentance on our own part. We do this through engaging with the world around us as members of a political system, but in the manner of people of God. We do so not to win, but to see that God’s will is done. We do so not to triumph over those we disagree with, but to see that all people are given their God given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

            The cedar that our scripture speaks about is the plant that obeyed God, the plant that listened to the call to care for others and consented to be watered by God’s own hand. The world may fall apart in the coming years, but the Church cannot be allowed to do the same. We need to be a place that sets the example for inclusion, for kindness, and for mutuality. That means we all have to humble ourselves. Republicans! Repent of your sins! Democrats! Repent of your sins! Non-Affiliated Voters, we do not get out of this either! We too must repent of our sins! Our nation has done evil in this world, our parties have contributed to it, we as individuals have done the same. We must change if we wish to see the world around us change.             Jesus spoke of a tree, more humble than the cedar, but equally important. A mustard seed, deposited in the ground, grows up to give shade to all the birds of the air. Have we faith sufficient to overcome our sins? Have we a desire to be different from the world around us enough to be genuinely good to one another? Have we the Spirit of God within us, to say that we can live with the people we disagree with? Can we accept that the image of God in them is more important than that thing we dislike about them? This only works if we all are willing to take part, if we are all able to mutually put down our weapons and take up the work of making this world a better place. People of God, I want to see us grow to be a cedar that gives shade to all people, are we willing to follow God and see that growth? May it be so, may it be s

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[1] Margaret S. Odell. Ezekiel (Macon, Georgia: Smyth and Helwys 2005.)

[2] Daniel 4