Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32
The word of the Lord came to me: What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge”? As I live, says the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Know that all lives are mine; the life of the parent as well as the life of the child is mine: it is only the person who sins who shall die.
Yet you say, “The way of the Lord is unfair.” Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way unfair? Is it not your ways that are unfair? When the righteous turn away from their righteousness and commit iniquity, they shall die for it; for the iniquity that they have committed, they shall die. Again, when the wicked turn away from the wickedness they have committed and do what is lawful and right, they shall save their life. Because they considered and turned away from all the transgressions that they had committed, they shall surely live; they shall not die. Yet the house of Israel says, “The way of the Lord is unfair.” O house of Israel, are my ways unfair? Is it not your ways that are unfair?
Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, all of you according to your ways, says the Lord God. Repent and turn from all your transgressions; otherwise iniquity will be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.
Sermon Text
Who is at fault when we do something we should not? I hope the answer is obvious. The only person we can blame for our bad conduct is ourselves. Yet, it has always been popular for our faults and our mistakes to get shifted away from us and placed onto external causes. Worse still, we have the habit of assuming that everyone else in the world does this, except for us. We are rational, we are wise, and we know when we have screwed up… So we say…
The first thing that any person in scripture actively does, immediately after creation, is mess up and blame someone else. Adam blames Eve for his eating the forbidden fruit – though she never forced it into his mouth. Eve blamed the Serpent – though it, likewise, convinced her with very little pushback. The Serpent… Well, it seems like it is the only character that doesn’t point fingers, mostly because it loses them immediately after the whole debacle.
Shifting blame is nothing new, so much so that a proverb existed among the people of Israel. “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and their children’s teeth are set on edge.” In other words, the things a parent does, good or bad, bleed down to their children. Certainly, the things a parent does impacts their children. Certainly, it is true that trauma and habits both good and bad are passed on as much as eye color or hair texture. Yet, culpability for actions is not hereditary. Though that distinction seems small, I promise you it makes all the difference in the world.
The people in exile, the target audience of this scripture, were living out their term in Babylon. These were, with very little exception, the second and third generation of people who had been forced from their land. In other words, though they were born in Babylon, they were still Judean in identity in culture. They were the first generation to be called “Jews,” and not “Judahites.” A new culture was growing in exile.
These children and grandchildren said, “Why are we being punished for the sins of our parents? That’s hardly fair!” They thought that, after that first generation had died out, that they would be allowed into the Holy Land. Afterall, that was what God did during the Exodus. The people who did those bad things were all dead, the punishment had been served, why then were they still in exile? The answer, unshockingly, was that the people in exile may be removed from the circumstances of their parents’ sin, but they were still culpable for their own.
The prophet goes on, past where our reading ends, to discuss the ways that the exiles repeated the mistakes of their parents. They have come to a new land, with new gods, and have begun to worship them. This is not a new problem – in the wilderness the Israelites worshipped a golden calf and in Israel they worshipped Ba’al and Asherah. The Judahites, before the exile had added a multitude of gods to their pantheon, and because of this they had cut themselves off from their true God.
Worse still, their idolatry was joined with a singular unwillingness to live as God called them to live. They were not holy, they were not good, they were not kind or generous. They chased after what they wanted and nothing else. God looked at the exilic community, acknowledged their pain and God’s willingness to save them, but did not back away for a second in naming the fact that they had done wrong and needed to repent of their wrongdoing. If they kept on as they were now, they would never leave exile.
Outside of the words of a prophet, I do not like to tie human suffering to divine punishment. Usually, one exists completely independent of the other. Still, I think we can address a more general question with this scripture. Sometimes people say that it is not fair that the world is the way that it is, “Just because Adam and Eve sinned a long time ago.” To that I say, “Who said the world is the way it is because of Adam and Eve?”
Yes, scripture tells us this story of humanity’s first rebellion – but I am here to tell you that if those two had not screwed up we would have still done it eventually. The issue is not that our sin is original to us in the sense of biological descent, but it is original to our nature in that we humans will always choose to sin if given the chance. We love to do it, we love the things we should not love, and do the things we should not do. We chase after them, we hide them carefully so that none can see them, those we cannot hide, we excuse.
“I wouldn’t have said that if she hadn’t…” “I am usually better than this but I was too…” “I can’t help it if they’re going to…” and so on, and so on. We have an excuse, an externalization, for anything we do. In our minds only other people sin intentionally, we always have a convenient reason as to why our sin is someone else’s problem. We choose to sin, and when we do we blame other people for it. Then, when we have the opportunity, we will look to God and say, “Lord, I just don’t get why everyone but me is so messed up.”
We are damnable, not because of something a long time ago, but because of our own sin. We choose to do wrong, we choose to hide ourselves away, we choose to be people who err again and again and again. We are not saved because grandma or mama had faith, we are saved by our faith alone. No one can believe in Jesus for you, you have to trust him yourself. Trusting him means, not just giving up what you’re willing to do away with, but some of the closest and most treasured sins you have in your heart. Lust that just stays in your head. Jealousy that only ever leaks out in the occasional venomous word. Judgment that keeps a wall between you and “those people.” Idolatry that says anything but Christ can save you… We’ve all got something stuck in there we don’t want to pony up.
Sin is not just cosmic, it’s the stuff in our own hearts. We gotta do better. Whatever it is you have, that you know you hate but do anyway, now is a good time to give it up. – Amen.
