Wendy and I are in the home stretch. Moving day is this Saturday, February 28th, and the next three days are packed (pun absolutely intended) with scheduled details. There's the wrapping up the finish work on the new house while trying to figure out how to get everything ready for the load out. Appliances we're keeping have already been moved and we're living out of boxes and suitcases for the next few days.
The process has been more challenging than we would have wished. Wendy has been suffering from a nasty virus/cold/flu that struck her a week and a half ago. I've never seen her so sick and she spent most of last week on her back. She's still far from 100% but is back on her feet and gutting it out.
We're excited, but the excitement is tempered by the sheer number of details that must come together while keeping one eye on the weather forecast (WHY, exactly, are we moving in February in Iowa?).
I do not believe that we who live in a post-enlightenment age can possibly fathom the religious climate of Ezekiel's day. A person living in Jerusalem in that day would be familiar with various temples and religious centers catering to a giant web of Canaanite deities. A person living in the time of Ezekiel would be very familiar with mediums, prophets, fortune tellers, and soothsayers. It was a central part of daily life and the economy in the ancient world.
As I read of the prophetic performances God asked Ezekiel and his contemporaries to produce, it is easy to think that they stood out like sore thumbs. However, when I stop to consider the loud cacophony of prophets who catered to popular gods like Baal, Asherah, Dagon, Molech, Lotan, and Chemosh on the streets of Jerusalem, I wonder if Ezekiel's prophetic performance art caused any more of a stir than a man dressed like Barney the dinosaur would cause in Times Square today.
In today's chapter God tells Ezekiel to prophesy against false prophets and those sons and daughters of Israel who were profiting from telling people what they wanted to hear and who appear to have mixed themselves and their faith with the practice of other religions. The question I ask myself is whether Ezekiel's voice could even be heard above the din of the idolatrous crowd.
Today, I find myself mulling over how our culture (even in out post-enlightenment age) both parallels and contrasts the religious atmosphere of Ezekiel's day. The internet has raised, to unprecedented levels, the cacophony of voices saying anything and everything to anyone and everyone. I am very aware that the voice of my squeaky little posts are lost in the din of information, advertisement, entertainment, opinion, and conjecture. Did Ezekiel feel the same way?
This morning I'm reminded of Van Gogh's many drawings and paintings of the sower. The sower does not always know where his seed may fall, nor how they might take root, grow, or bear fruit. The sowers job is to cast his seed into the field. The prophets job is to sow his message into the din of contemporary voices.
Source: Amelie via Flickr who states: "Sauron's eye: my church is turning evil!" Great shot.
Looking back across my life journey, one of the books I've realized has had a profound affect on me through the years is M. Scott Peck's exploration of evil, The People of the Lie. We don't talk much about evil anymore, or at best it is relegated to descriptive quips about people we don't like (e.g. "She's an evil woman!") or discussions of the heinous extremes of history (e.g. Hitler, Serial Killers, Cult leaders, and etc.). Peck's book raises a thought provoking conversation about the nature of evil as it exists in ordinary human beings who live ordinary lives in ordinary communities like ours.
I thought about The People of the Lie this morning as I read about Ezekiel's vision. Most of the Old Testament prophecies are directed at nations and peoples, but in today's chapter God's judgement is proclaimed on specific individuals: Jaazaniah son of Azzur and Pelatiah son of Benaiah. These leaders in Jerusalem appear to have been self-centric power brokers, the ancient Jerusalem version of mafia dons. They wielded power, influence, and financial gain through violence, and the text hints that they smugly thought that they had avoided the exile because they were favored by the gods. Their description aligns with some of the symptoms of evil Peck outlines.
Addressing them, God tells Ezekiel to proclaim to these men: "You fear the sword, and the sword is what I will bring against you." One of the things Peck observed in his work on evil is that evil only responds to one thing: force. You can't persuade evil people to reform or make deals with them as their nature will lead them to, again and again, deceive you for their own advantage. They fear only force, just as God describes Jaazaniah and Assur.
It's Not an LSD Hallucination…Really!
Now the cherubim were standing on the south side of the temple when the man went in, and a cloud filled the inner court. Then the glory of the Lord rose from above the cherubim and moved to the threshold of the temple. The cloud filled the temple, and the court was full of the radiance of the glory of the Lord.
For those reading the prophetic visions of the ancient prophets for the first time, they must seem like nothing more than the recollection of an LSD induced hallucination at a Grateful Dead concert. It is difficult, if not impossible, to make sense of these visions in the vacuum of the chapter itself. There is a broader context that has to be considered in order for things to start making sense. Think about it, if someone simply read the "prophecy" about Harry Potter and Voldemort revealed at the end of The Order of the Phoenix and didn't know anything about the rest of the story, would it make any sense by itself?
Moses experience on the mountain of God. Way back in the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments, Moses goes up the mountain to receive the tablets with the commandments on them. He sees God "face to face" and when he returns from the mountain his face is "radiant," so bright that he had to cover it (Exodus 34). It wasn't sunburn, it was God's "glory" or radiance. In fact, at the end of the Great Story when eternity is described, there is no Sun or Moon (or day and night) because God's glory provides all the light needed. God's glory throughout the entirety of God's Message is a sign of God's presence.
The context of the last few chapters. Today's vision is part of a broader vision Ezekiel is recounting from chapters eight through 11. It began with God revealing to Ezekiel the idolatry (the same idolatry He warned Solomon about) in and around the Temple and it continued with God's judgement on the idolators. Today, what Ezekiel is seeing from the spiritual realm is a further consequence of the idolatry and further fulfillment of God's warning to Solomon. God's glory and presence is being taken out of the temple in preparation for its destruction.
Today, I am mulling over the events Ezekiel describes in this broader context of the entirety of the Great Story being told throughout God's Message. When God warned Solomon about idolatry, He knew very well what would eventually happen. It's a grand word picture of my own personal experience. Despite my best intentions, I fall short of spiritual perfection. Look close enough (actually, you probably don't even have to look that close) and you'll find plenty of ammunition to accuse me of hypocrisy. Guilty as charged.
Wendy and I were driving in the car the other night. As usual, we were having a great conversation about…something…I can't remember exactly what. Wendy made the observation that one of the reasons she really never dated anyone seriously (until I came along when she was 33) is that no one else she met would have the kinds of conversations we seem to have on a regular basis.
There does seem to be a curious, exploratory conversational nature that the two of us enjoy together. We read the paper each morning and talk about what we're seeing in the current events of our day. We watch television and talk about what we're seeing in the stories and themes being presented. We got to church and talk about what we heard in the message, but also what we saw happening in the room around us and how it fits in the context of what we've seen happening over time. We go to a movie and talk about what we saw in the writing, the cinematography, the direction, the action, the acting and the characters. We watch sports and talk about what we're seeing happening with the players, the teamwork, and the momentum shifts of the game.
I know. It sounds draining to most people. For us, it's life.
Which brings me back to Wendy and me and the fact that even our friends laugh at us always tearing things apart and dissecting them in conversation. "Can't you just sit and enjoy the movie?" But the enjoyment for me comes, in part, by truly seeing the movie. As with people, there's always a lot more going on than you see on the surface and I never want to be caught blind (although I'm pretty sure we can't help but have our own blind spots, but that's a another conversation).
Today, I'm continuing my quest to hear, to see, and to perceive.