Ezekiel 2:1-5
He said to me: “O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak with you.” And when he spoke to me, a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet, and I heard him speaking to me. He said to me, “Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day. The descendants are impudent and stubborn. I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God.’ Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall know that there has been a prophet among them.
Sermon Text
When I first took a Church, I was planning out the year ahead of me and saw that I would have the opportunity to preach on this passage one July 4th weekend. Being a new minister, I decided better of it. Now, with some years behind me and a lot more grace in my heart, I think it is time for the serendipity of secular holidays and ecclesial text lists lining up just so, and see in it an opportunity for us to learn a bit about what we as Christians owe to our nation. How do we balance our identity as people born into the world, and therefore as residents of a singular location, and out identity as people born into Christ’s new world, into the Kingdom of Heaven which transcends any regional boundaries.
Many of us grew up, I think, in churches that did not really make a distinction between Christian identity and American identity. “Aren’t they the same thing?” We seem to have asked ourselves. Yet, I think we cannot deny that there is a difference between being a Christian – someone washed in the blood and born by the Spirit – and being a member of any one people group. To be in Christ is not to erase who we are, but it is to find ourselves defined by new terms. We are Americans, yes, but we are Christians first, and as Christians we have a calling far higher than what our zip codes dictate.
The first people to be called to follow God, scripture tells us, were native to a specific land. What land was that? Unless you answer “Chaldea,” or “Babylon,” you have the cart ahead of the horse. Abraham, the recipient of God’s covenant, was a Babylonian from the ancient city of Ur. He and his family left Ur, settled in Charan, and then eventually he and his descendants came to Canaan. Canaan was their home until they came to Egypt, then out of Egypt they returned to their ancestral home and established a Kingdom – Israel.
From the beginning the identity of the people of God was not based in who they were or where they were nearly so much as what they did. Abraham was promised his lineage would succeed, but his following that call to Canaan secured it for him. God’s call to Israel that he would continue that lineage was solidified only after he fought tooth and nail with God, learning his place in the process. Again and again, the promise of God was met with the faithfulness of God’s people and something came out of it that never was there before. A kind of righteousness born only out of knowing God, truly and personally.
Fast forward in the story and we eventually see Christ open the door of God’s family and covenant to all people who believe – not just those of any one family. Though Jeremiah had shown this was God’s intent centuries before, only after Christ entered the world did this movement really take off.[1] Christ’s mission from beginning to end was an expansion of God’s kingdom to all who believed, to all who earnestly repented of their sin, who sought to live together in a kingdom without end.
The scripture we read today is a lesson for this new kingdom, born out of an older one. Ezekiel, having just seen an incredible vision of all God’s glory, is told he must prophecy to his people in exile – and that the people he is speaking too are stubborn and cruel and intentionally ignorant. Yet, they are his people and he must preach to them – because then no one can deny the word of God is among them, whether they agree with it or not.
The presence of a prophet in the world… Don’t we need that? Someone to interpret the world in the words of God? Not to cast a vision of doom based on their own politics like so many supposed prophets are now. No, a prophet who looks out at the world and says, “People of God! Turn now and see yourselves thrive!” A prophet that cares more about what God seeks in the world than what is convenient or politically expedient. Lord, do we need such a presence.
[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.][2]
If we wish to truly celebrate the nation we are a part of, I pray that we will be willing to speak up about the need for us to live a life different from the world around us. Do you love the Lord? Then love your neighbor! Do you seek to live at peace with one another? Then you better advocate for you neighbor in the face of those who would disenfranchise them! Do you earnestly repent of your sins? Then stop doing the same tired things we’ve been doing for decades!
We have an opportunity to be a prophetic voice in this world, to proclaim that there is a prophet in this world, and it is Christ speaking through his Church. America must repent, and rather than basing our criteria of repentance on whether someone is a Democrat or a Republican, I invite us all to reflect on our contribution to this world’s problems. Let us not be the sort of nation God can call, “impudent and stubborn,” but one that embodies all God has called us to be. Blessed as we are to be in this nation, let us make it better tomorrow than it is today, tear down the walls of oppression and injustice we have let rise up between us. Let us see God’s kingdom made real today! Let us do the work! Let us preach the word! Let us walk the life! Glory to God! Amen!
[1] Jeremiah 29: 5-7
[2] This portion is actually from an earlier sermon I wrote but did not preach. Frequent readers may notice this. Sometimes the words we write are not meant for the Sunday we wrote them for, their true time is only revealed later.
Teach us to Number our Days 