Siege of Jerusalem

In today’s reading, we encounter one of Ezekiel’s enacted prophecies. To warn the people of the destruction of Jerusalem (which will happen years later), Ezekiel is commanded to make a holy diorama. More startlingly, he is commanded to eat disgusting food – a representation of the desperate situation that siege would bring to the people of Israel. Despite these demonstrations, the people would not listen to Him. As you read, consider this – why are we so resistant to hearing the word of God?

 

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REFLECTION

 

Punching the Clock

by Andrea Taphorn 

Tehching Hsieh is considered by many a master performance artist. For one year, from 1980-1981, Hsieh made art by dedicating his time to punching a time clock every hour on the hour. Each time he punched the clock, he took one picture of himself.  These 8,760 pictures were made into a 6-minute movie. He shaved his head at the beginning of this endeavor, so his growing hair reflects the passage of time. Can you imagine living with this kind of restraint and dedication to a single action for an entire year? I sure cannot. But I appreciate artists like Hsieh who draw our attention to the human struggle and the human entrapment we call life.

Ezekiel was a bit of a performance artist himself who employs his body to communicate to the Israelites just how enslaved they are to sin. He was a dreary guy, maybe the one you don’t invite to your dinner party, because he was a bit of a downer. He takes clay tablets and draws Jerusalem and displays for the Israelites that Jerusalem will be sieged. He lays on his left side and then his right for well over a year, bound with ropes to symbolize being weighed down by the sin of God’s people. He eats only paltry bread to keep himself alive during this time. Bread baked from fuel derived from cow excrement. The picture he is painting to his friends and neighbors is one of slavery to sin that is fueled by more sin.

Ezekiel employed his whole body under harsh constraints to communicate to the Israelites just how deeply entrenched they were in sin to drive them to repentance, to open their eyes to the fact that they were drowning in their own sin and couldn’t see up from down. I wonder if we saw our lives both individually and collectively in its raw and unedited version would we be equally shocked at how deep our slavery to sin really is? Am I just as compelled as Hsieh to punching a clock, to be driven and obsessed with my own sin? I just don’t have eyes to see my own compelling drive to reach out my hand to grasp onto sin over and over again, just as methodically as reaching and punching the clock and with the same precision as Hsieh.

This certainly feels utterly despairing, but I wonder if this is exactly what God was driving at when communicating to His people so long ago through Ezekiel. People who think they are free, don’t see themselves as bound up and in slavery to sin. As people of God who lived in God’s city Jerusalem, they could not see their need for a savior. They knew their neighbors were in need of God, you know, their enemies-- those poor folks who didn’t know the truth of God and his laws. I imagine we can all paint a picture in our minds of people in our lives that are bound up in sin. We just don’t necessarily put our own face in that picture. 

The people of God have this long history of not liking their prophets. Ezekiel was one of those prophets. It seems like Jonah was the one who was the most effective at getting people to listen to him, and the folks who listened and repented were not God’s own people, but their enemies the Ninevites. God sent his own son, Jesus to be a prophet, the word made flesh, and the world didn’t like Jesus any more than any of God’s other prophets. We murdered God to get rid of both his message and his body. And how does God respond to this world that put him to death? Well, we have a relentless God who does not let our own dedication to our sin, nor the power of death to stop him from handing us salvation. It’s like he literally grabs our hands from the punch clock of sin and says, to us, "I am saving you from your slavery with my own life."

“But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying.” Titus 3:4-8a

UALC’S CAMPAIGN OF PRAYER

MONDAY - HUMILITY: Soften our hearts to one another. Give us eyes to see our common humanity, each of us and all of us created in your image, and give us the gift of empathy, to care deeply about one another.