Ezekiel 13:1-10. Isaiah 55:6-12

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1 Ezekiel 13: The word of the LORD came to me: 2 Mortal, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are prophesying; say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: Hear the word of the LORD! 3 Thus says the Lord GOD, Alas for the senseless prophets who follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing! 4 Your prophets have been like jackals among ruins, O Israel. 5 You have not gone up into the breaches, or repaired a wall for the house of Israel, so that it might stand in battle on the day of the LORD. 6 They have envisioned falsehood and lying divination; they say, Says the LORD, when the LORD has not sent them, and yet they wait for the fulfillment of their word! 7 Have you not seen a false vision or uttered a lying divination, when you have said, Says the LORD, even though I did not speak? 8 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Because you have uttered falsehood and envisioned lies, I am against you, says the Lord GOD. 9 My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and utter lying divinations; they shall not be in the council of my people, nor be enrolled in the register of the house of Israel, nor shall they enter the land of Israel; and you shall know that I am the Lord GOD. 10 Because, in truth, because they have misled my people, saying, Peace, when there is no peace; and because, when the people build a wall, these prophets [a] smear whitewash on it. Isaiah 55: Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? 8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator [ a ] shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. 9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, 10 if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. 11 The LORD will guide you continually,

2 and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. 12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.

3 Wholehearted Living in a Brokenhearted World Week 5: Go into the Gaps! Ezekiel 13:1-10 and Isaiah 55:6-12 A sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Virginia McDaniel March 18, 2018 Fifth Sunday of Lent Good fences make good neighbors, right? Robert Frost famously gave us that line in his one of his early poems. 1 The memorable poem tells of a rock wall that borders two properties. Each spring the two neighbors go out to repair the wall that continually breaks down. Something there is that doesn t love a wall muses one. To which the other responds, Good fences make good neighbors. It s quite an image, that rock wall, tumbled down by frost s upheavals and passing hunters. The breach in the wall is something that calls out for mending. It s an evocative image for us, as it was for the writers of the Hebrew Bible. Civic architecture in ancient times was defensive architecture, as it has been throughout history. Cities were built so you could gather everyone in from the surrounding countryside and hunker down if a neighboring tribe got it in mind to pillage or conquer. When an enemy approached, you could shoot at them from the top of the wall or drop things on them and drive them away. City walls were defensive walls, keeping enemies at bay and people and livestock safe. But a breach in the wall that s a dangerous thing! Using metaphorical images of siege towers, ramps, and battering rams as the backdrop, Ezekiel was the great prophet of the fall of Jerusalem. He told the leaders and people of Judah that they were doomed to conquest, destruction, and exile. He told them that they had completely fallen away from God s holy intentions for them, the way of the ancient Covenant. The metaphorical walls of the city that had been breached represented a broken covenant with God. For no one seemed to remember, maybe no one even cared, that they were called out by God to be a standard for the world, people called to live with justice and compassion. But the walls shoring up that shining city on a hill had been breached. And no one will stand in the breach, prophesied Ezekiel. A breach in the wall in ancient times meant you ve lost. It meant your whole way of life, everything you value, is about to go up in flames. If you see an ancient city in ruins, chances are that you are seeing a city that had a breach in its wall. If that city would 1 Robert Frost, North of Boston (David Nutt Publisher, 1914).

4 ever rise again, if the people were to be restored to safety and peace, you d have to first repair the breach. Someone s got to go into the gap. But a century after Ezekiel came the prophet Isaiah. I m pretty sure it was Ezekiel he had in mind when he spoke about breaches in the wall, but this time hopefully: 9 If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, 10 if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. 11 The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. 12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. For Isaiah, repairing the breach was so much more than fixing a wall! Walls are defensive. They are for times of crisis and tumult. But the breach Isaiah spoke about symbolized restoring a way of life grounded in love of God and neighbor. Remove the pointing finger, he said. Refrain from speaking evil. Offer food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of those in want. That s what will repair a wall. I think the wall Isaiah had in mind was not a defensive structure but a symbol of wholeness. wholehearted living in a brokenhearted world, if you will. We too live in a time of rapid change, of tumult and confusion. Some people feel like their whole way of life everything they value is under attack. Walls and the repair of walls are fitting metaphors for people living in fearful times. There have been many times in the past couple of years when I have felt like a resident of Jerusalem under siege, watching the city wall crumble before the force of a battering ram. Probably some of you have felt the same. Comfortable white folks like us, who think of ourselves as justice-loving and mercy-minded, have had some eye-opening moments

5 Maybe it was the mounting tragedy of unarmed black men and boys being shot and no one held accountable. Maybe that made you feel like something was amiss in our justice system. And people of color have said, Where have you been all these years? This is not news. Every black parent has to give their children The Talk to teach them how to behave defensively in case they are ever pulled over. Maybe you ve been troubled by the restrictions on the number of refugees allowed to start new lives in our nation of immigrants. And longtime refugee workers have said, Where have you been all these years? Our country has always accepted very few refugees, despite our size, wealth, and the witness of that tall green lady in New York Harbor. Maybe you ve been alarmed by the removal of protections for those born in this country to undocumented immigrants. And the immigrant community has said Where have you been all these years, while the legal paths for immigration were narrowed to near impossibility, and our families have lived in fear of detention and deportation? Maybe you ve been alarmed by overtly racist speech becoming more mainstream. And people of color have said, Where have you been? We ve been hearing it our whole lives. The breaches have been there for a long time. Waking up to them is humbling. And it can be discouraging. It makes our hearts ache to realize that our nation is not living up to our boldest, biggest, brightest ideal as a city on the hill and that it never has. Not even close. It s tempting to sink into the bitterness and despair of the prophet Ezekiel, who saw so much around him that was profoundly broken, and no one cared enough to respond. We feel paralyzed because the broken places in our world just seem too big, too insurmountable. Sociologist Brené Brown identifies disengagement as another issues underling the majority of problems in our communities. We disengage to protect ourselves. We disengage when we feel like the people we ve entrusted with the task of leadership aren t living up to their end of the social contract. We disengage because rather than focusing on the common good, we can only see what s in it for us. But I don t want Ezekiel to have the last word. I d rather give it to Isaiah. The one who wrote in Isaiah s name, who took up Ezekiel s image of the breach, turned it from an image of destruction to one of restoration. And where Ezekiel gave voice to anguish, Isaiah offers something we very much need hope. Hope is possible when we set about being repairers of the breach.

6 I like to think of that kind of repair work as bridge building, rather than putting up walls. We who follow in the way of Jesus have as our role model someone who broke down the walls and barriers between people, and found ways to connect them. Jesus was always hands on no matter what a person s condition was or what others thought of hem. Whether it was healing Peter s mother-in-law with a loving touch, restoring the hearing of a man, or freeing a demon-possessed boy, Jesus changed the conditions of his day with his hands reaching out to others in God s name. Jesus shows us practically how to go in to the gaps and to repair the breach. Now if that sounds too remote, let me tell you a story. Osheta Moore (author of Shalom Sistas) writes about a day when she watched her 10- year-old daughter sob inconsolably into her pillow because she was not allowed to go to the annual father-daughter dance. Every spring the elementary school in Cambridge, Mass had two big fundraising events: the father-daughter dance and the mother-son Olympics. In that intentionally inclusive community, she thought it was odd to make these events the centerpiece of the school s fundraising calendar. Moore writes that she didn t want to be seen as a progressive snob, but it was a time when the family was financially stretched to provide new school shoes for their children, let alone afford the $50 ticket to the dance. Moore was eager to find a solution to console her daughter, so she called the planners and offered her help in exchange for a discounted ticket. She was told no. They were not interested in outside help. The ticket price was set and that was that. Moore says she understood the dance was a fundraiser after all. But setting the ticket price higher than a tank of gas created an unnecessary obstacle for some families. But there was something else that ate at Moore. It was the artificial division of families into a particular configuration. It excluded both girls who could not afford the $50 ticket, and girls who did not have father figures in their lives. Hope calls for us to look for a way to build bridges, so Moore didn t give up. She proposed to the rest of the family that they throw a party at their house on the night of the dance. And anyone and everyone would be invited. (Sounds a little like the kind of party Jesus would have thrown.) The daughter started inviting people a girl whose dad was absent, the girl who had two moms, a friend whose parents were in a bitter divorce battle. The boys who didn t understand why they couldn t have a night of dancing and fun too? Invited! Everyone could come to this party. We ll call it the Everybody come party announced the daughter. So Moore shared the Everybody Come party on Facebook and a funny thing happened: people offered to send money for the part.

7 Others sent encouraging words to the daughter to continue standing up for inclusion, someone volunteered to be a DJ. The party was a huge success for those tweens and their parents. Going into the gaps, repairing the breach, building bridges is hard work, friends. It can be ego breaking and brain-hurting. But it is also deeply relational. Building bridges creates pathways that challenge our disengagement and offer us a way forward with hope. Annie Dillard writes, The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. 2 Ezekiel tells us that the gap has always been there. Isaiah tells us that we always have the capacity to repair it. Jesus shows us how the work might be done. We carry what we can into that breach, that gap, that space between the world as it is and the world as God imagined it to could be. Go into the gaps, to build our way together toward wholehearted living, grounded in faithful love for God and neighbor. 2 Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek