It has been awhile since I have written anything about Ezekiel, so I thought a refresher would be appropriate to start this week.
Ezekiel is a collection of the writings from him and his followers. It is in 5 parts and it recalls his call by the Lord, the prophecies about the fate of Jerusalem, prophecies against foreign nations, prophecies about hope and restoration and the prophecies for a new temple for worship and the return of the way of life in the land of Israel.
Ezekiel is an uncompromising spokesperson for the Lord, like most all of the Old Testament prophets. He is passionate and displays it through his prophecies. He offers words of both judgment and encouragement as they face the crisis of the exile to Babylon and the false hope the people put in Jerusalem. He calls out the people to be responsible for their actions, not the community as a whole, although he still has words of warning for them as well. The individual actions that people take, make them responsible, but when you take all of those individual actions separately and combine them together, they form the actions of the community, there is no escape for the entire community.
Ezekiel had to breakthrough their self-pity and defensiveness to get them to understand that God was not punishing them on account of their parents, as was the belief when bad things happen in those days, but that the individual who sin are the ones being held accountable for their actions.
As part of his judgment speeches, he often opens the with the phrase "thus says the Lord," and concludes with the formula "that you may know that I am Yahweh." He uses these figures of speech to emphasize that he is not the one who is making these judgments, but that they come from God himself.
Being in exile himself, he has first-hand knowledge of what the people are going through. He uses images of how the people look, like dried up bones, people rising from the graves, and living in the burial grounds of the Babylonians with no hope. In the midst of this forlorn scene, he points out there is hope in the Lord.
God has told them He will put His spirit within them so that they will know He is the Lord; He will raise them from the graves they are in. To be in a right relationship with the Lord, for them meant they would return to this beloved Jerusalem to worship Him. To be in a right relationship with the Lord for us means that we will get to experience His love and mercy for us at all times.
There are 855 references to the word spirit in the bible, and a couple hundred more of derivatives of the word spirit. Paul makes use of the word spirit 29 times in Chapter 8. Paul uses the word spirit in two different ways. The first method of using spirit is to point to the way in which a person lives in a right relationship with God. The opposite of living in the spirit is living in the flesh, living in the ways of the world, not the ways of the Lord. It is whether a person is open to the ways of the Lord or are they against, turned away from the Lord.
The second way Paul refers to the Spirit, is how we think of the third person of the Holy Trinity. It is the Spirit of God that gives the power, the life to all things. It is that breath that is breathed into our lungs, it is the power of the Lord descending upon the disciples at Pentecost that allows them to hear everyone speaking in their native tongue, but understanding what was being said by all.
Paul is telling us that without the spirit the human body is like a corpse because of the influence of sin in our lives. It is through the Spirit living within us that we belong to Christ as one of his flock, as one who he cares for and will look after as His own. When we live by the Spirit, we no longer have to worry about our eternal life, we have a share in it now because it is a life-giving gift from God.
During this time of Lent, we have been reading many passages from John’s gospel, and some of them have been very long. Today is no exception, where we read from verse 1- 45. Each of these long passages are filled with long stories of the actions of Jesus and of those people around Him. These passages are meant to teach the followers of John just who Jesus was and what He did for the people.
Today’s passage is no different when John writes about Jesus close friend Lazarus who had died. Jesus is trying to teach His disciples that there is nothing God can’t do, even overcoming death.
To make the story more dramatic, He remains where He was for two days after receiving word of Lazarus death. When He finally decides it is time to return to Judea, His disciples try to convince Him they should not go back because of the way the Jews were treating Him.
After much dialogue with both Martha and Mary Jesus tells the people to roll the stone away from where they had lain Lazarus. Showing His love for His friend through His tears, He prays to the Lord so the people understand it is not some magic He is performing, but an act of Love and Mercy so that the people would believe in Him.
The people began to believe in Jesus after witnessing Lazarus returning to life. We need to believe in Jesus through faith and by what others experienced before us.