Daily Bible Reading: Ezekiel 6-9 and John 10:19-42

Ezekiel 6 – The Word of God comes to Ezekiel, and addresses him as “Son of Man.” He is told he should prophesy against the “mountains” of Israel. They are the “high places” where idols like “sun images” are worshipped and human sacrifices (I think) are practiced by an unfaithful people.

God will punish the people for this but some will be spared and they will be scattered. Then after this time and this devastation, the people will “remember” Yahweh and will understand that He is “Lord.”

Ezekiel 7 – People will be judged in the “end” by their “ways” – their practices. They will have to suffer the “retribution” of the Lord for their rebellion and will need to realize that “Yahweh is Lord” of all that is.

Their wealth shall be discarded as unimportant and “worthless.” They will see that these outward things are simply a source of vanity and pride. They are ultimately unimportant.

Ezekiel 8 – In 592 BC, Ezekiel again feels the “hand of the Lord Yahweh” on him. He sees what seems to be “a man,” but below his loins he is “fire” and upward of his loins he shines “like polished bronze” (8:2).

He takes Ezekiel (it seems) by the hair and lifts him into the air. In visions he takes him to Jerusalem, to the north gate, where an idol (Jealousy) has been erected. God says they are driving him out of His sanctuary.

Then God takes him to the entrance to the court and has him break through the wall where he sees all kinds of images on the walls. The elders of the House of Israel are offering incense. Women are “weeping for Tammuz (Adonis), and men are bowing to the Sun. The Lord is furious and ready to punish them all.

Ezekiel 9 – Getting ready to bring His wrath down on the city, he assembles “six men” – agents of his wrath: the man in the middle is “in white, with a scribe’s ink horn in his belt” (9:2). He is to go through the city and “mark a cross on the foreheads of all who deplore and disapprove of all the filth” in the city (9:4); they are to be saved.

Everyone else is to be killed – men, women, children (??). When they go, Ezekiel stays behind, falls down and questions the Lord. The unfaithful say that they think Yahweh cannot see or does not care what they are doing, but the prophet is told that his vengeance will show them otherwise.

John 10:19-42 - At the festival of the Dedication [Hanukkah], Jesus goes to the temple. The Jews gather around him and ask him how much longer Jesus is going to keep them in suspense about whether or not he is the Messiah (10:24). He tells them that “the works I do in my Father’s name are my witness; but you do not believe, because you are no sheep of mine” (10:26). And he again repeats that his sheep know his voice.

When Jesus says, “the Father and I are one” (10:30), the Jews get ready to stone him.  He argues again to them about how his “works” show who he is, but they are offended by his “words” – words that seem blasphemous to them.

Jesus makes a rabbinical argument in his defense. He says, “Is it not written in you Law: I said, you are gods? So the Law uses the word gods of those to whom the world of God was addressed, and scripture cannot be rejected. Yet you say to someone the Father has consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming’, because he says, ‘I am the Son of God’” (10:34-36).   His argument is that the magistrates of the Law are referred to as “gods” in the Scriptures because they applied the Law of God to everyday situations. So if they could be called “gods” [God’s agents] then certainly it is not blasphemous for one sent by God to be his Son in the world to make this claim. But the crowd is incensed when he says “that the Father is in me and I in him” (10:31-42). Still, he eludes them.

Daily Bible Reading: Ezekiel 2-3 and John 9:24-41

Ezekiel 2 – Ezekiel hears a voice calling him “son of man” (2:1). The term is used in Ezekiel and later Daniel to emphasize the distance between the God behind the vision and voice and the mere man who is receiving them. The first use of the term “Son of Man” [ben-Adam] is in Numbers 23:19, but Ezekiel uses the term over 90 times in his writings.

The voice tells Ezekiel to “deliver my words” to the rebellious people that were his.

“Open your mouth and eat what I am about to give you” (2:8). Yahweh gives him a scroll to eat, full of “lamentations, wailings [and] moanings” (2:10).

Ezekiel 3 –Ezekiel eats the scroll God has given him and finds it “tastes as sweet as honey” (3:3). God tells him he’s not being sent to a foreign nation where people speak a different language; he is being sent to his own people. But then he adds, if he sent him to a people whose language he did not speak, they would listen; but his own people are obstinate. Still, he is to go and speaks God’s word, even if no one listens.

He is lifted up by the spirit, and he hears “a tumultuous shouting” (3:12) - wings beating against each other and wheels turning beside them.  

He is transported to Tel Abib, by the river Chebar, where the exiles are living, and his heart is heavy with bitterness and anger. He is with them for seven days. Then God comes to him again and tells him he has been appointed “sentry to the House of Israel” (3:16). When he tells him to warn the rebellious that they will die, he must do it or else he too will share responsibility for their death. If he does warn as instructed, however, then he will not die with the wicked.

           

Ezekiel tells us that while he was with his people, “the hand of Yahweh came on me” and he was told to go out into the valley, where “the glory of Yahweh was resting” (3:23) and Yahweh’s spirit enters him. It is clear that there will be times when Yahweh will keep Ezekiel from warning others and times when He will “open [his] mouth” (3:27). “Whoever will listen, let him listen; whoever will not, let him not; for they are a set of rebels” (3:27). 

John 9:24-41 - The Pharisees call the man again – the man born blind whom Jesus has restored to sight -  and ask him to declare Jesus a sinner for having broken the Sabbath. He answers, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see” (8:25). The Jews are reluctant to believe: “We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from” (8:29). For the man it is simple. God does not listen to sinners, God does not do miracles for sinners, and he has experienced a miracle. They drive the man away.

Jesus finds him and asks him if he believes in “the Son of Man.” Who is that, the man asks? Jesus says, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he” (9:37). “Lord, I believe. And he worshiped him” (9:38). Jesus says, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind” (9:39). The Pharisees don’t get it.  It is their insistence that they do see—that they know the truth and can lead others in truth—that makes them sinners, not necessarily their confusion or doubts about Jesus.

Why are we born blind? I think the scripture narrative assumes that blindness is a central problem, maybe even THE central problem at the core of our disrupted relationship with God and with our fellow man.  We walk according to how we see, so this mis-seeing is perhaps what we mean by original sin, the innate condition, which it is the work of redemption to overcome.  Jesus says the problem is there “so that the works of God might be made visible” through us and in us in the work of redemption that brings us to see differently.  This and Jesus’ statement that he “came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind,” are the most interesting things about this reading to me (now).  Again, we don’t always like to think of Jesus in these terms, but his coming into the world, and our personal world, brings both a judgment and a light by which the things of God may be separated from the things of the world.  And it is the process of redemption in us that brings us to see God and Christ and the light of his judgment.  We can’t give glory to that which we cannot “see.”