God sometimes calls us to healthy confrontation

Sermon preached at St. Mark’s Honey Brook, PA

by The Rev. Thomas C. Pumphrey, July 9, 2006

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 9, year B), Ezekiel 2:1-7

Ezekiel 2:1-7 (NRSV): [God] said to me: O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak with you. And when he spoke to me, a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet; and I heard him speaking to me. He said to me, Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day. The descendants are impudent and stubborn. I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, "Thus says the Lord GOD." Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall know that there has been a prophet among them. And you, O mortal, do not be afraid of them, and do not be afraid of their words, though briers and thorns surround you and you live among scorpions; do not be afraid of their words, and do not be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house. You shall speak my words to them, whether they hear or refuse to hear; for they are a rebellious house.

A friend of mine gave me a gift of a DVD of old episodes of the Dick Van Dyke Show. My friend knew me long before I grew my beard—she said I often reminded her of Dick Van Dyke. Anyway, we brought out this DVD during our vacation and enjoyed this show from the sixties. Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore are husband and wife and they have a young son. In one of the episodes, the plot turns on the need for the two main characters to confront each other about problem that they face—about how each one has hurt the other. But they are afraid to talk to each other, so they talk with their friends and avoid the issue with great comedy until finally they have the honest conversation they’ve been avoiding. They find, of course, that the confrontation that they feared really was an opportunity for grace and for reconciliation.

I’m amazed at how after forty years, this scenario is still the basis for so many sitcom plots. We avoid confrontation. Unless we’re angry, we’re uncomfortable with bringing up a problem or confronting an issue. When we’re angry, of course, we’re not often ready to work on renewal or reconciliation. Confronting someone about a problem takes emotional energy, requires vulnerability, and releases a lot of negative energy into relationships. Confronting an issue is no fun, and we tend to prefer the appearance of friendliness. Yet sometimes God calls us to healthy confrontation so that we might bring God’s grace and renewal.

God called the prophet Ezekiel to an entire ministry of confrontation. We heard about this calling in today’s Old Testament reading. This was not a fun enterprise for Ezekiel either, and God didn’t try to dress it up. “Mortal,” God says to Ezekiel (literally, God calls Ezekiel “Son of Man”), “Stand up on your feet and I will speak with you.” And when God spoke, the Spirit entered Ezekiel and set him on his feet. “Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me;” they are impudent and stubborn. “You shall say to them ‘Thus says the LORD…’ …You shall speak my words to them whether they hear or refuse to hear; for they are a rebellious house.”

God gives Ezekiel straight talk about a tough job—for Ezekiel will bring a challenging call to repentance to a people who have suffered great loss. Israel is destroyed and the people exiled in Babylon. Ezekiel is called to preach to the people of Israel at a crucial moment in their history. You know how the sweep of Old Testament history goes—from the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; then the time in slavery in Egypt, led by Moses to the promised land. Then they lived in tribes for generations before they gathered together under kings—first King Saul, then King David, then Solomon. But then the kingdom split in two—Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Most of the kings that followed led the people away from God and toward foreign gods. So Israel was destroyed by the Assyrian empire, and Judah was destroyed by Babylon. Jerusalem and its sacred temple to God was destroyed, and her people led away into exile. They had lost everything, and it seemed that God had abandoned them. In the midst of this exile, God calls Ezekiel to confront the exiles about their infidelity to God, to call them to repent and return to the LORD.

In our own lives, very few of us are called upon to confront a whole nation. Unlike Martin Luther King or others who have called us to deal with our problems as a nation, our calls to confront problems come on a smaller scale. Teachers sometimes have the difficult task of talking with parents about a student’s learning disability. Adults sometimes must confront elderly parents about growing health problems. Husbands and wives must confront each other about trouble in their relationship. Some families of alcoholics know about a process called “intervention.” An “intervention” is when a whole family gets together with an alcoholic to bring startling clarity to the destructive power of addiction. One by one they tell their story: “I’m here because I love you. When you drink, this is what I see. When you drink, this is what you do to me. When you drink this is what happens to our relationship. I am here because I love you.” Hopefully, resistance breaks down, and the alcoholic realizes that he needs help to reverse this self-destructive path.

This is the less humorous version of honest, loving confrontation. This is serious business, yet this daunting task can be an opportunity for God’s grace. Sometimes the difficult words, spoken out of real love for someone, can break through a silent impasse and change a dead-end direction into a life-giving and reconciled direction.

The truth is, of course, that we might be uncomfortable with confrontation because we fear being on the receiving end of that confrontation some day. I’m not talking about an angry tirade or a self-righteous condemnation. Even a kind admonishment can make us feel attacked and put down or diminished. Perhaps speaking the difficult word is easier than hearing the difficult word. If we only hear Ezekiel’s story from Ezekiel’s point of view, however, then we miss an important opportunity. What if we were to hear Ezekiel’s call from the point of view of the house of Israel? What if we were the exiles? What would we think of God’s tough words of how we are a rebellious house? What if we found ourselves in the alcoholic’s chair during an intervention?

I doubt that the exiles enjoyed hearing Ezekiel’s words, but Ezekiel’s words were indeed words of good news. The book of Ezekiel isn’t all about God’s tough talk to Israel and its infidelity. You might remember that Ezekiel is the book with the vision of the dry bones. Way later on—in chapter 37, God shows Ezekiel a vision of a valley filled with dry bones. God asks Ezekiel “Mortal, can these bones live?” Ezekiel answers timidly “O Lord GOD, you know.” God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones and they come together and gather flesh on them. God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the wind, the breath, the spirit (one word in Hebrew means wind, breath and spirit). God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the wind, and the spirit breathes into them and stands them on their feet, a vast multitude. “Mortal,” God tells Ezekiel, ‘these are the whole house of Israel,’ that house that God called a rebellious house when he first called Ezekiel. Though they were dead, God will raise them up again and give them new life. The Glory of the LORD will return to Jerusalem, they will return from exile and be restored as a people, and in the fullness of time, God will send his son Jesus to show them the fullness of the new life he has promised.

God’s words to us can be startling and sobering at times. God had tough words for the exiles. But God’s words are meant to bring life and restoration, wholeness and reconciliation. When God calls us to confront trouble either in our relationships or in our own lives, God brings good news. Instead of sitcom confusion, we find renewal of relationships, a greater wholeness and new life. We feel the grace of God through the forgiveness of Jesus Christ and the power of the Spirit who stands us on our feet. We feel the breath of new life breathe into dry bones. We feel the gift of God’s joy.