Out of Ashes, New Life
Ezekiel 1:1-3
September 11, 2005
Things sometimes happen in life that are so dramatic or stressful or incomprehensible or life altering, that it changes the way we tell time.
I have had a friend for about 20 years who I met while he was recovering from a nine month intensive care hospitalization for hemorrhagic pancreatitis. There were weeks on end in which he hovered between life and death. He has fully recovered, although I like to tease him that his chest looks like a railroad track because of all the surgical scars.
One of the first things I noticed about him was that he has started to tell time differently. Many of his conversations begin with, “When I was in the hospital” or “I haven’t’ done that since before I was in the hospital” or “I remember that because it happened right after I got out of the hospital.”
There were a lot of folks around Fort Wayne who told time beginning with the flood of ’82. That has now been replaced, at least in this church with the flood of ’03.
People in Shipshewana tell time beginning with the Palm Sunday tornados that destroyed a large part of the town. Some people tell time beginning with World War II or the assassinations of John Kennedy or Martin Luther King.
Listen to the first three verses of the prophecy of Ezekiel and notice how he tells time. “In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the river Chebar, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. On the fifth day of the month (It was the fifth yearsof the exile of King Jehoiachin) the word of the Lord came to the priest Ezekiel.”
He didn’t tell time using the Jewish names of the months. Through Israel’s history, many had told time by the number of years since the Exodus, but Ezekiel didn’t do that either. He numbered time beginning with his exile.
There came a time in Israel’s history when the nation became just a shell of its former self. Civic life was in shambles; religious observance had been perverted by self-serving priests and kings; territory had been lost on the battle field against larger and better equipped neighbors.
Several hundred years before this, the land of Israel was divided into two political kingdoms – the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. Everything finally came to a screeching finale when Babylonian armies swept through the land of Judah early in the sixth century BCE, laying everything to waste. This precipitated the exile – the forced removal of Jews from Judah into captivity in Babylon. The exile was such a traumatic event in the life of Ezekiel and his fellow countrymen that he began to employ a new numbering system, a new way of telling time. For all practical purposes, time as he knew it ended and began again with the exile.
Have you ever had an event like that in your life? Have you ever experienced a time that was so intense, so powerful, and so unforgettable that it made you almost forget about the other years through which you had passed up to that time? Ezekiel knew a time like that.
“In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month…the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin.”
The Babylonian defeat of Judah didn’t happen all at once; therefore the deportations didn’t happen all at once. They went in stages or waves, with the last one being completed in 587. Daniel was taken away with the first group. Ezekiel went with the second group which included the king, King Jehoiachin. So, at the beginning of his prophecy, we find him there with the other captives as he sat by the river Chebar.
We are not really sure where that river was. Some have suggested that it wasn’t really a river at all, but one of King Nebuchadnezzer’s canals which had been built by forced Jewish labor. Imagine the scene if that is true. Not only had the Jews been forcibly removed from their homeland, but they were put to work digging canals for the conqueror.
Can you understand the depression and the desperation that caused one of the psalm writers to issue a lament through his poetry?
By the rivers of Babylon – there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and or tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?
Scholars may label this sort of Scripture passage as a lament, but if you think about it, the Jews over there in Babylon are singing the Blues. The Blues, after all, is only misery set to music.
But go back to Ezekiel for a minute and notice something else. He says that he was among the exiles by the river Chebar, and then he exclaims, “I saw visions of God!” Everybody around him; all of his fellow Jews; all of his friends and neighbors were singing the Blues…and Ezekiel saw God! In the midst of the greatest trouble his people had known since their days as slaves in Egypt, a thousand years before this, Ezekiel had a vision of God! In the worst possible time one could ever imagine, Ezekiel saw the Lord!
This morning, right here in America, right here in Fort Wayne, right here on the banks of the St. Mary’s river…we find ourselves in a time when we desperately need a vision of God.
I bet that if I asked, every person here this morning could tell me where he or she was four years ago today on September 11, 2001. I was in my car on US 20, a few miles west of Middlebury on my way to Sturgis, Michigan to pick up the family dog from the Vet’s office. I heard a mention on the radio that there were reports that someone had flown a plane into one of the towers of the world trade center.
I remember my first reaction. I assumed that it was a small, private plane. I remember thinking to myself, “What kind of idiot would do daredevil stunts around the New York skyline and be so stupid not to see those great big buildings?”
Just then, Toni called me on my cell phone and asked me if I heard the news. It wasn’t a small plane after all, but a jetliner. I switched over to NPR just in time to hear that a second plane had crashed into the other tower. It was an incredible moment when, not long after that, I heard the reports that one tower, then the other collapsed.
That was an event…that was a day…that has gotten us to reset our clocks. We now tell time in a different way, just as Ezekiel did. We now talk about, “…since 9/11…” or “…in the days of 9/11…” or …”following the events of 9/11…” Heartache has gripped us now for four years, just as it gripped Ezekiel for the thirtieth year…the fourth month…the fifth day of the month... the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin.
Four years later, on this very day, we still grieve. Our anger, fear, and frustration still boil over. We just don’t understand. That event of September 11, 2001 may possibly be the worst thing that has ever happened to us as a nation…but it could also be the greatest opportunity that the church in America has ever had. I hope that in the time between then and now, we have not squandered that opportunity.
Jim McCord, a son of Indiana who grew up not far from here in Larwill, was pastor of Johns Street United Methodist Church, just two blocks from the World Trade Center on that day. He and other clergy of lower Manhattan threw open the doors of their churches and went out into the streets to offer comfort to people who were desperate. In the midst of the tragedy, they offered a glimpse of God and what it is that God’s people do.
Following up on the coattails of the pastors came church members with blankets, fresh water, sandwiches, and other necessities for people who had been affected…because that is what God’s people do.
But since that time, the task of the church has been to decide how we can continue to preach a vision of a fresh, vibrant God in the midst of some of the worst pain that some of our sisters and brothers have ever experienced. How can we continue to preach the graciousness and goodness of God when we have young men and women fighting and dying in far away countries? How can we continue to preach and believe in God when our cities remain targets for terrorists?
“In the thirtieth year…in the fourth month…on the fifth day of the month…of the fifth year of the exile of King Johoiachin…”
In the fourth year after the towers came tumbling down…in the time when we are at war…in a time when we live in fear…”
What shall we do? I have a feeling that we have a couple of options. We can hang up our harps on the willows and spend our time singing the Blues…or we can work, as the people of lower Manhattan worked, to offer the world a fresh vision of God.
We can remember Ezekiel, who in the midst of tragedy saw a new vision of God. Ezekiel realized that, as long as God is involved, there is always hope. As long as God’s people seek his will, we need not sing the Blues.
Ezekiel knew that God has not abandoned his people. He knew that God’s will had become difficult to discern for a season, but he had not abandoned those he loved. The resurrection of Christ is a reminder to us as well…we who stand here on this side of the cross…that God has not abandoned us either.
I confess to you that I am still struggling to understand the implications of September 11, 2001. I am still struggling to find God at work. But I know that God is here. I know that God is working. I know that we are not going at this alone.
Four years ago, Manhattan was buried in a sea of dirt, debris, and ashes. As we sit here this morning, the dirt has been cleaned up, the debris has been cleared out, the ashes have been swept away, and there is a new plan to rebuild the site. New York, Washington D.C., and the whole nation are rebuilding.
We know that real estate was not the only toll taken that day. Thousands of lives were lost, tens of thousands more were shattered, and millions of us have been forever changed by the experience.
But God has not changed. Just as God brought a new people out of the ashes of slavery in Egypt; just as God restored the nation from the ashes of Babylonian exile; just as God sent his Son to earth to raise humanity from the ashes of sin and death; so God is at work still, and will raise us from the ashes of national tragedy to new life.
We may now tell time a little differently than we did four years ago. But the time of God’s eternity has not changed. God’s eternal clock is still set at the appropriate hour. The hour of the Lord’s coming is here. Let us look up, capture the hope of the moment, renew our faith, and praise God from whom all blessing flow.
