The World As a Growing Cedar Ezekiel 17:22-24 June 13, 2021

The World as a Growing Cedar Ezekiel 17:22-24 June 13, 2021 The Prophet Ezekiel wrote during a time of disaster for the people of Israel and for himself personally. Ezekiel wrote as Jerusalem was conquered by the Babylonians amid death and destruction, the Holy Temple was destroyed, and many of the people, including Ezekiel himself, were captured and taken into exile. There seemed little hope for the reestablishment of the kingdom and a return of the exiles to Jerusalem. And during this period as well, Ezekiel’s wife died, an event that sent him deeply into grief. His life was dark. The Book of Ezekiel, as a whole, follows a pattern that’s not unusual among the Hebrew Prophets. On one hand, Ezekiel impresses on the people the seriousness of the disaster they are facing; he also blames their predicament on the peoples’ history of sinfulness, including both adultery and the worship of false Gods. Ezekiel warns that it will be a long time before God redeems the people from their exile, from their suffering, But this warning of hardship and suffering is not the only message of Ezekiel’s prophecy. As we see in today’s reading, despite the depths into which the Israelites have fallen, there is some hope. Ezekiel says that amid the destruction of Jerusalem, God is planting a tiny sprig from a cedar tree on the “Mountain Height of Israel” -- Mount Zion, in Jerusalem. Eventually, this sprig will become “a noble cedar,” bearing leaves and fruit and sheltering every kind of bird. And God says people will witness the full-grown tree 2 and understand God’s restorative power: “All the trees of the field shall know that I am God. I bring low the high tree, I make high the low tree; I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.” So Ezekiel promises that even in the depths of the greatest failure of human nature, there is hope for the people of Israel. It does not appear to be hope of immediate deliverance. It takes many years for a tender sprig to grow into a noble tree. The exile in Babylon, according to the Bible, lasted seventy years, so that few if any who were brought into exile were permitted personally to return; deliverance had to be left to their children and grandchildren. But nevertheless the exile did end; the great cedar tree did grow to maturity; the people returned to Jerusalem; they even rebuilt the Holy Temple. And the promise of a future redemption, even from the worst disaster, has remained deeply enshrined in the Bible. In the books of the prophets like Ezekiel, the promise is often expressed using the image of the Messiah, the restoration of the Kingdom of David and of the Holy Temple, the start of a transformed age of peace and harmony. And in Christian Scripture the image of the Messiah is of course continued; we’re taught that Jesus’s death was not final, but that Jesus will return to earth again, bringing with him a new age of perfection. So the Judeo-Christian tradition carries firmly within it the promise of an eventual redemption of the human condition, of an end to evil and to human suffering, at some time in the future. What are we to make of this promised Messianic redemption, how are we to understand it? Is it realistic for us to look 3 forward to a transformed world, in which human suffering is ended and all the world lives in peace? Let’s start by considering one aspect of the transformed world that the prophets seem to envision, the ending of suffering caused by human sin, by human imperfection. used by human sin. Certainly, some of the greatest calamities of history have been caused – and are caused today -- by human sin and sinfulness. One thinks, for example, of the crimes against humanity of slavery and of Jim Crow, and of their remaining effects today; and one thinks also, for example, of the Nazi Holocaust; one thinks of all the instances of oppression and organized hatred around the world today. Ezekiel, as I mentioned before, blamed the Babylonian conquest on the peoples’ sins of adultery and of worshipping other Gods. I’m not sure I fully buy into that, but the conquest of Jerusalem was caused by the criminal aggression of those who invaded neighboring lands in order to expand the Babylonian Empire. The conquest of Jerusalem therefore was attributable to human sin, and the same can be said of all wars: wars are started by human aggression, which is a sin. To the extent that suffering in human life, like suffering from war and racism, is in fact caused by human sin, then the idea of redemption over time through human learning, through greater understanding and acceptance of the laws of God, seems like a reasonable hope. One can worry about how much progress has been made so far: can we really say that humanity is less sinful today than it was at the dawn of recorded history, about six 4 thousand years ago? Has our reading and study of the Bible over the past 3,000 years or so clearly changed humanity for the better? I’m not sure any of us can answer those questions conclusively; it’s not at all clear how much progress we’ve made toward global peace and justice, even over thousands of years. But those of us who seek peace and justice really have no alternative but to continue trying to learn, to follow, and also to teach God’s ways. We can do this in two ways. First, in our own lives, in our family lives, in our lives with close friends, in the ways we treat people in the marketplace and on the streets, we can do our best to live visibly according to the precepts of love and respect for neighbors, which are at the heart of God’s commands. And we also should, visibly, follow these principles in the institutions with which we associate, like our church or other house of worship, and in other organizations in which we may choose to get involved. By observing God’s law and following God’s ways, we won’t change humanity overnight, and maybe we’ll never succeed in doing so fully, but we can, at least, make our own lives more satisfying, and we can by example show others the benefits of trying sincerely to follow God’s ways. One simply must have faith that this process will succeed over time. In the words of Dr. King, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Dr. King’s words are very much a statement of the prophetic vision of the Hebrew Bible. 5 And now, what about redemption from human suffering that is not caused by human sinfulness, but instead just happens as a result of acts of nature, like the current pandemic, or like, say, Hurricane Katrina a number of years ago? Should we read the Bible as promising to us a messianic age in which even suffering from natural causes – and even death -- will be eliminated? I leave the answer to this question to the individual reader of the Bible. I personally, though, find it difficult to visualize a world in which even the rules of nature have been changed so as to eliminate all human suffering. The rules of physics, chemistry and biology, the way atoms and molecules vibrate and mutate continuously, seem to ensure that imperfections – including illnesses, and the effects on our bodies of aging, as well as such events as violent storms and droughts and earthquakes -- will occur in our lives. We don’t know why God has ordered the world this way; it just seems that God’s plan of creation involves both death and birth, loss and renewal, and we need to accept this as part of God’s wisdom. How are we to reconcile the apparent inevitability of continued human suffering, indeed of continued human mortality, with the messianic expectations of the Prophets? One thing we can do is recognize that although we can’t eliminate illness or natural disaster in the world, humanity can and does do a great deal to limit it, to reduce the suffering it causes. The recent development of the Covid vaccines is, of course, an outstanding example of how human science can reduce suffering from the uncertainties that seem to be built into the physical world. Science of this kind is a gift from God. 6 Science may well never eliminate human suffering from natural causes; but over the centuries it has improved the quality of human life; it certainly should be seen as part of God’s plan of Creation. It’s also important to recognize that by reducing oppression and inequality in the world, as discussed a few moments ago, we are also reducing suffering from illness and other natural causes. Both the Katrina disaster of sixteen years ago, and the current pandemic, have shown plainly that the burden of disease and other natural disasters falls most heavily on the poor. By working against social injustice, we also are working to reduce suffering from disease, natural disasters, and other consequences of nature’s built- in uncertainty. So there is a great deal that humanity can do, even with respect to natural phenomena like illness, to bring the world closer to the messianic state that Ezekiel and the other Hebrew prophets seem to promise. Humanity should, and must, continue, and intensify, this work.

Load more