EZEKIEL'S CHALLENGE

THIS WEEK'S TERRIBLE JOKE
Once upon a time there was a shepherd looking after his sheep on the side of a deserted road in the Highlands. Suddenly, a brand new bright Red Porsche 911 appears and screeches to a halt beside him. The driver, a woman wearing a Chanel suit, Ray Bans and a Cartier watch, steps out and asks the shepherd, "If I can guess how many sheep you have can I keep one?". The shepherd looks at the large flock and says 'Okay'. The woman connects a laptop to a mobile phone fax, enters the NASA website, scans the field using GPS, opens a database linked to 60 Excel files with logarithms and pivot tables, then prints out a 150 page report on a high tech mini printer.

She studies the report and says to the shepherd "You have exactly 1,586 sheep". The shepherd replies "That's correct. You can have the pick of my flock". The woman packs away her equipment, looks at the flock and puts one in the boot of her Porsche.

As she is about to leave the shepherd says "If I can guess your profession will you return the animal to me?". The woman thinks for a moment, then agrees. The shepherd says "You are an NHS manager". "Correct" responds the woman, "but how did you know?"

The shepherd replies "Simple, first you came without being invited. Second, you wasted a lot of time telling me something I already knew. Third, you don't understand anything about the work I do, but interfere anyway - now please can I have my dog back?"

Sometimes you need to know the answer to a situation from somebody who’s been there before you and actually knows what they’re talking about... I hope that we’ll find out in a moment that Ezekiel might be a bit more practical use to us today than that management consultant was...

THE LECTIONARY

I’ve had the great pleasure and privilege of being your parish priest for more than three years now. You will notice that the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) works in a three year cycle (A,B,C). The RCL is the selection of readings set for each Sunday followed by the liturgical churches - so the Roman Catholics, the Anglicans, the Methodists and some URC congregations all follow this lectionary.

The great thing about using a lectionary is that in three years we cover virtually the whole bible. We don’t pick and choose, we don’t skip the difficult bits or just concentrate on the nice bits; we’re not at the whim of the leader to ride a hobby horse, or constantly have the same passages. In fact we engage with scripture so seriously that we force ourselves to see what the whole breadth of what scripture says to us - whether at first glance it appears relevant or not, because we know that the scriptures are so important to our formation as the people of God.

So that means that I’ve preached on the gospel reading for three years.

Never being one to go for the easy option, I’m trying now to preach on the Old Testament reading... You probably won’t know this, but the RCL offers two “tracks” of Old Testament readings in Ordinary Time: the first Track is the Continuous, the second is the Related.

In the first track we would follow through the story in an Old Testament book (1 Samuel 15 at the moment) - each week having another instalment of (at the moment) the saga of King Saul & King David. So the Old Testament may shed some light on the Epistle and gospel, but that will be by chance rather than design.

In the second Track - which the Redemptorists who publish our newsheet have chosen this year (and they alternate) - the Old Testament reading is related to the gospel.

SO.. EZEKIEL & A DARK NIGHT...

So today we’re in the world of the prophet Ezekiel, and the image Ezekiel uses of the birds of the air nesting under the tree which is the promised Messiah, is the one Jesus picks up and uses to illustrate the Kingdom of God. The shoot from the very top of the cedar is the Messiah from the house of David, planted back in Israel to protect the nation when they are restored from the current Exile in Babylon. So Ezekiel stands at what could be described at the lowest point of Israel’s history, but also one of the most decisive.

Throughout the book the prophet is seen trying to restructure Israel’s worship and faith. They are in Exile without the temple, without the traditional instruments of the faith to support people, and Ezekiel tries to revitalise the older traditions of God’s acting through history, to strengthen the idea of personal faith through worship and observance of the Law - rather than seeing Israel and their relationship with God as tied to land, or temple. Because of the way Judaism developed after this with the drawing up of the canon of scripture, and with the emphasis on the Law as central, Ezekiel is sometimes regarded at the “father of modern Judaism”.

So the chips were down . Things were bad. They were at the darkest part of the night and trying to make sense of their situation.

CRISIS? OH YES!

I’ve just started reading all the way through a tome which is a seminal text for mission thinking. It’s called Transforming Mission, written in 1991 by David Bosch, who was a South African Protestant missiologist. It’s a deliberately ambiguous title (will he be transforming the way we think about mission, or is it the mission which is transforming? - the answer is of course, both!), and is widely regarded as a hugely important book. I’ve dipped into bits of it before, but I’m attempting to read the whole thing from cover to cover. 500 odd pages and no pictures to colour in. I started this week and I’ve got to page 7...

One of the things he says is that the Church is in crisis. And this he says is actually Good News - because the Church ought to be in crisis! It is when there is no crisis in the church that the engagement with contemporary society has ceased so that the Church has got comfortable and apathetic - that’s when the trouble starts!

Quoting a theologian called Kraemer, Bosch says “one ought to say that the Church is always in a state of crisis and that its greatest shortcoming is that it is only occasionally aware of it... [the Church] has always needed apparent failure and suffering in order to become fully alive to its real nature and mission” For many centuries the Church has suffered very little and has been led to believe that it is a success... now at last we are ‘back to normal’ and [don’t] we know it! [Bosch p2]

He goes on to remind us that the Japanese character for “crisis” is a combination of the characters for “danger” and “opportunity” (or “promise”).

I’ve heard people say that the Church of England is in crisis... We are about to be torn apart, people say, over women priests, women bishops, gay priests, gay bishops (possibly even gay women bishops?)... Numbers are falling, people are leaving the church in droves... we face financial problems... it’s all doom and gloom

I’d want to ask two questions about that:

• Is that really the case? and
• Is that our experience here at St John’s?

For, make no mistake about it, we are the Church. Are we about to fall apart at the seams? Are people forsaking St John’s by the drove?

If the Church is facing a crisis (other than internal squabbling) the much more important crisis it is facing is of how we, the Church, relate to the world.

It has been said before that the Church is only one generation away from extinction... but the Church has ALWAYS been only one generation away from extinction! If nobody had evangelised our generation St John’s would be empty. If we don’t evangelise the current generation, St John’s will be empty - that’s a situation which has faced every generation who have worshipped here!

How do we make the faith relevant to our generation?

EZEKIEL’S CHALLENGE

It’s the same question which exercised Ezekiel, although his context was different. For Ezekiel he and his friends have been taken away from St John’s church and taken off to Siberia. Somebody has flattened the church and with it the organ, the vestments, the thurible, service books and everything: how are they to be the people of God in a strange land without these things?

We may not have been transported to a strange country, but we could be forgiven for wondering whether the country has changed around us... Is this really the same country as it was when we were growing up?!

We are now in a society which by and large doesn’t seem to be much interested in the Church, in a disciplined life, or in absolutes; it is materialistic, morals are relative, me and my happiness has become the yard stick against which things are measured. Money, fame, popularity and pleasure are the best goals we can strive for. And yet people seem unsatisfied, lonely, cut off and directionless. We worry about things that might go wrong, we seem to believe in the strangest things and our hope is vested in the National Lottery or a football team’s performance...

So what is there in today’s readings that might help us?

PARABLES OF GROWTH

Ezekiel uses images and metaphors of plants, growth and trees to talk about Israel the people of God. In the gospel Jesus is talking to his disciples about the Kingdom of God in terms of seeds that sprout and grow to maturity, about great promise from unpromising looking things, about how inclusive and sheltering the kingdom is - just as birds shelter in the branches of a mustard tree.

In particular the image which Ezekiel starts off is an image of growth leading to inclusion (every kind of bird), protection (nesting) and provision (shade). It’s an image of hope in a desperate situation. And in the last verse he reminds his listeners, that whatever the situation looks like, however dire things may seem at the moment, it is ultimately God - not the leaders of the nations - who are in charge: “I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish” he says [Ezekiel 17.24]

GOD’S IN CHARGE

So our response to the situation around us is not to despair or give up; it’s a reminder to us that whatever things may look like at the moment in our small corner of the world, God is still in charge. And God’s will, plan and purpose seems to be all about inclusion, protection and provision.

INCLUSION.

There is a place for all. The kingdom of God is not an exclusive dinning club where only certain people can come in or enjoy the privileges of membership dependent on birth right, class, skin colour, gender, sexuality, or importance . Every kind of bird finds shelter in the branches of this tree. There is a place for all in the kingdom of God, and not dependent on rules we make up, but dependent on God’s love. And that place is not dependent on people changing - although we will change as we respond to God - we are already loved, called and precious because of who we are, not what labels we wear, what’s in our bank account or how many friends we have.

PROTECTION.

Not that bad things will never happen to us - our baptism is not an insurance policy against accident, or vaccination against never getting a cold again... (Remember little Ollie Brown? - baptised at St John’s on Sunday and in big trouble on the beach on Monday!) The kind of protection we are promised is that God will hold us in the palm of his hand. God won’t let us go. Through out the storms of life God will be with us. In the highs and the lows, in the excitements as well as the disappointments. People may let us down, or forsake us, but God won’t go off because he’s found somebody better. We can rely on God’s love and protection.

PROVISION.

We may moan from time to time that we could always do with a bit more money, or another foreign holiday, but we know that God has given us more than we need... A generation or so ago - when people had less material things than we do today - people were constantly encouraged to “count your blessings.. name them one by one and you will be surprised at what the Lord has done...” We are rich in privileges, opportunities, friends, freedom and in so many material ways. God has provided and our job is to use those gifts wisely and say thank you.

CONTEXT...

So there is much in Ezekiel’s preaching to a tired, dispirited, frightened people that finds an echo with our situation today. We may not have been wrenched out of our land, but some of us may well feel we’re being wrenched out of our comfort zones... we may long to go back to an era when doors didn’t have to be locked, when neighbours helped each other, when there were less cars, a different kind of morality... But just like the Exiles Ezekiel spoke to, that going back wasn’t going to happen in the way they thought.

OUR MESSAGE

Ezekiel’s message - to the Exiles and to us - is that God is in charge; that the situation has changed, but that there are all the resources in God that we need in order to thrive and live and pass on the faith as we seek to work with God to build the kingdom here:

• working to declare God’s sovereignty, to be inclusive as a community;
• to affirm God’s protection and unshakeable presence
• and to revel in our blessings and God’s provision for us.

So at the darkest time of Israel’s history, there is still hope, God doesn’t abandoned his people, whatever the outward appearance of circumstances. Is the Church of England in crisis? I hope so! Because that is where God is to be found - in the really nitty gritty or engagement with the culture, in the working out of what we believe, in the communication of the gospel of grace, in the winning of this generation to Christ. Crisis? I hope so!!

Fr. Andrew Perry
Rector, St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea

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