Wednesday 11 August 2010

Background

This is the kind of passage that gives God a bad name! How coulda sovereign Lord order such wholesale and pitiless slaughter? Onthe other hand, how could a responsible ruler allow vice to persistin the realm?

Ezekiel pleads that not all the people will be destroyed and indeedthat is the case. Those who acknowledge the error of their ways aremarked out for saving from death. This is a message to those whoremained in Jerusalem after the first deportation to Babylon in 597BC. They were under a puppet king - Zedekiah - who the peopleregarded to be illegitimate, and they were rebellious. They hadgiven up on the Lord God. Something had to be done and drasticmeasures were called for. And in Ezekiel's vision, this wascertainly the case.

The slaughter started with the priests, who should have knownbetter than to give up on God. They lost their lives, theirlivelihood, and the Temple, which was desecrated by their owncorpses. Not even the young or old were spared from the wrath ofGod if they did not lament for what they had done.

We need to look at this phrase - the wrath of God - and think aboutwhat it could possibly mean. There is quite a debate going on atthe moment about a new song that is going into the new MethodistHymn Collection that includes this exact phrase. For some itconjures up a picture of an angry God dishing out cruel punishmentto misbehaving subjects and sacrificing God's own son to deal withtheir behaviour.

That picture needs to be jettisoned. The word 'wrath' does not haveto mean the anger of some distant god. The 'wrath of God' belongsto a god who is with us and in us. It is the other side of the coinof the 'love of God'. The Lord wants us to live that love but whenwe don't, when we go our selfish ways, spurn the love of God, wefind ourselves out of relationship with others and with theLord. Then we feel the full force of thewrath of God. That is just what the people of Israel who disobeyedthe Lord felt, and Ezekiel reminds them of it.

To Ponder

'The priests should have known better.' How manyresponsibilities do we load onto our Church leaders (ordained,commissioned or voluntary) today? To what extent do we overloadthem?

Think about the understanding of the 'wrath ofGod' described here. Does it make any sense to you?

Is it at all possible today to ascribe death anddestruction resulting from political decisions as an 'act of God'?How?