You Will Live Again

You Will Live Again

Ezekiel 37:1-14[1]

  At some point in life, many of us lose hope. We find that, whether due to our choices, or due to circumstances beyond our control, the ground has given way beneath our feet, and we have been swept away to a place where we feel completely and hopelessly lost. That experience of being lost is part of life. I think it can feel so hopeless because when you feel lost, really lost in life, it can seem like you will never find your way again. It’s hard to hope when fear and sadness, loneliness and uncertainty are your constant companions. You wonder whether you’ll ever find joy and peace again.

  It would seem that the people of Israel felt that way during their time of exile in Babylon. They were a whole world away from everything that was “home” to them. After spending not only years but decades in a place that was very foreign to them, it makes sense that they felt lost and hopeless. That was the whole reason for Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones. As the Lord speaks to the prophet, he says that the vision of new life was intended to address the fact that “the whole house of Israel” was saying “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely” (Ezek. 37:11). 

  Into this despair, the message that the Lord had for Israel is that nothing and no one is ever beyond hope! Think about the lesson for today: what could be more hopeless than dried-out bones. How can bones come back to life again? What possibility would any of us see for God to bring new life? And yet, before Ezekiel’s eyes, God gives new life to those lifeless bones. And the message that God has for the people is that “I will open your graves of exile” (Ezek. 37:12, NLT) and “you will live again” (37:14). It was a dramatic demonstration that nothing and no one is beyond the hope of new life—not even those who have felt lost so long they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be home. 

  It may be dawning on some of us that we’re in a situation similar to the people of Israel. Extended isolation can push our ability to hold onto hope past its limits. We don’t know how long this form of “exile” will go on. It may go on so long that we begin to feel lost; lost to ourselves, lost to life, lost even to God. But one of my favorite themes of Scripture is that those who feel lost are never lost to God. In story after story, somehow, God always finds a way to give them life again. I believe that still holds true today. No matter how hard it may get, the promise of scripture is that no one is ever beyond hope. No one is ever lost to God. Even though we may feel lost, we can trust that we are not lost to God. No matter what our circumstances, we can hold on to the hope that in his time, and in his way, God will bring new life to us all. We can hold onto God’s promise that we will live again.

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[1] ©2020 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 3/29/2020 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Thus Says the Lord

Thus Says the Lord

Ezekiel 2:1-5; 36:25-28[1]

I wonder whether we really believe in the possibility of new life any more. I wonder whether we ever believed in it. When you listen in on conversations about people, or about communities, or about society as a whole, there’s not much hope to be found there. It’s my impression that the way we talk about others can be rather negative. I’m not sure where this cynical approach to our fellow human beings comes from. I would say there’s probably not one source, but many. And chief among them would be the experiences of our own interactions with people who are less than kind to us, to put it mildly. Our experience makes it hard to believe in new life.

I find this to be troubling, because at the heart of our faith is the promise and the hope of new life through our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. That new life isn’t something we wait to receive when we pass from this world. It’s something that’s meant to change the way we live here and now. And the message of the Scriptures is that there is no one who is ever “too far gone” to find new life in Jesus Christ. But our negative outlook on people, as evidenced by the way we talk about them, flies in the face of our faith. I wonder if we really believed in the promise of new life whether the way we talk would take on a different tone.

The prophet Ezekiel had plenty of reasons to have a rather negative outlook on his situation. He, along with a fair amount of the people of Judah, had been conquered by the Babylonians. And as a result they had been deported to Babylon, a place far away from everything they knew. That included, in their minds, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Like most other people in that day, the Israelites believed that their God ruled over their land. But they were a long way from their land. They were living in forced captivity in a foreign land ruled by foreign gods. Given that assumption, you can understand why they might have given up hope.

Right into the midst of that seemingly desperate situation, Ezekiel had a vision that must have knocked his socks off. It was a vision of God: not tied to the land of Israel far away, but right there with him in Babylon. And the gist of the vision was that God is not restricted to one land, but rather he can go wherever he wants. In addition, the vision assured Ezekiel that his people were not “out of sight, out of mind” to a God dwelling way back in their homeland, but rather he is a God who sees what is happening everywhere. Ezekiel, along with many of his people, may have given up hoping in God, but God had not given up on them!

Like many of the prophets, the book of Ezekiel recounts his “call” by God to speak on his behalf. God was well aware of the spiritual condition of his people, and he was sending Ezekiel to confront them about it. In our lesson for today, God instructs Ezekiel to tell them “Thus says the Lord GOD” (Ezek. 2:4). And in fact, that phrase becomes a refrain throughout the book of the prophet Ezekiel, along with “The word of the LORD came to me.” God was not finished with his people, and he sent Ezekiel to be the one through whom God would declare his message of hope and new life to them.

One of the central passages where Ezekiel expresses that hope is in chapter 36. There, Ezekiel reminds the people that because of their failure to live for God with all their hearts, they had “profaned the name” of God in their exile. And yet, despite the people’s failure, through the prophet God announces that he is going to renew his people. He says, “I will sprinkle clean water upon you,” and “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you” (Ezek. 36:25-26). The idea is that, by his Spirit, God would radically and thoroughly change his people so that they would live for him. And they would live for him not because of external demands or the threat of punishment, but because God would change their hearts and give them his Spirit. The idea is that they would then want to live for God.

Many of us even in the church live our lives with a kind of “functional atheism.” We speak the words of faith when we come to church, but we live our lives as if there were no God. Or at least as if whatever God there may be doesn’t really make any difference in our lives. Bad things still happen to good people. Those who are truly wicked in this world seem to get along just fine, thank you very much. And those who are truly good struggle and suffer at the hands of the power-mongers. If we believe only the evidence we see that powerful people tend to take advantage of others, it’s no wonder we wind up with a negative outlook on the prospect of new life.

But just as in the days of Ezekiel, so today the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ will not leave us with hardened hearts. God continues to work in each of our lives by his Spirit to give us new hearts—hearts that love God and love our neighbors because we have experienced God’s love for us. Hearts that know the joy that comes from seeds of new life that God’s Spirit continues to plant within us. Hearts that continue to hope that the suffering we see in this world is not God’s last word on humanity. Perhaps when we let that really sink in, we will have a different outlook on life in general. Perhaps when we learn to trust the promises made in the name of the Lord, we will be open to new life in ourselves and in others.

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[1] © 2018 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 7/8/2018 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

A Boundless Heart

A Boundless Heart

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24;  Matthew 25:31-46[1]

It seems to me that the more diverse our world gets, the harder it is for us to practice compassion toward the people we encounter. When everybody looks like us, talks like us, dresses likes us, thinks like us, we can easily see them as human beings who have feelings and problems just like us. But the more our society changes, the more we encounter people who look different from us, who talk differently, who dress differently, and who think differently. When we are used to being around people who are basically “just like me,” we may find it challenging to show compassion to people who seem different.

I believe our Gospel lesson addresses this problem. The Parable of the Sheep and Goats is one that many of us know. “I was hungry” is a theme that has echoed throughout the centuries. One of the things I think we have to recognize is that this is a parable. It is story told for a purpose, not a lecture outlining what we’re supposed to believe. It’s not a simple prediction of what’s going to happen to “good” and “bad” people at the end of time.[2] And so our task is to try to understand what is the purpose of this story.

One clue that I find interesting is that both the sheep and the goats are surprised at the verdict.  The sheep are commended for being kind and merciful to Jesus, but they are completely unaware of ever having done anything special.  In response he told them when you were kind and merciful to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were being kind and merciful to me. Similarly, the goats are criticized for not having practiced kindness and mercy toward Jesus, but they seem shocked at such a verdict.  They seem to be among those who thought themselves pious and religious because they were devoted to worship at the synagogue or the Temple, or because they were scrupulous about following the Jewish laws about living lives that are “clean,” or because they were pillars of their religious communities.

If that is the case, we might think that surely some mistake must have been made. But it seems to me that Jesus was saying much the same thing that the prophets said centuries earlier. In fact, the passage we heard this morning from the prophet Ezekiel contains a scathing criticism of the leaders of the prophet’s day, who are identified as the “fat sheep” who have failed to care for the “lean sheep.”[3] In fact, they have positively trampled on those they were supposed to be serving. [4]  And like the prophets before him, Jesus reserves some of his harshest words for the religious pillars of his day.

The reason for that is that if there’s one thing Jesus was good at, it’s cutting through the façade of religious pretense.  No amount of put-on piety could change the fact that many of the most “religious” people of his day were essentially unkind toward others.  In another context, Jesus said that they gave a tenth of everything, even their cooking spices, but they neglected “the more important things of the law, like fairness, mercy and faithfulness” (Matt. 23:23, NIRV).[5]  At the end of the day, they failed to relate to others with compassion or mercy.  And that is the whole substance of what it means to love God.

I think one of the main purposes for this parable was to remind us that the best measure for the genuineness of our compassion is how we treat “the least of these.”[6] And I think Jesus was trying to point out the hypocrisy of those who were up to their necks in religious devotion but who, when it came right down to it, were incredibly unkind to the people around them. I think what he was trying to do was to make it clear that that when your religion keeps you from practicing basic human kindness and compassion, it becomes a gigantic exercise in missing the point!

In the kingdom where Jesus reigns, what counts is mercy.  That’s what Jesus said when the religious leaders criticized him for hanging out with the wrong kind of people, the “different” people of his day.  He said, “Go and learn what the Scriptures mean when they say, ‘Instead of offering sacrifices to me, I want you to be merciful to others’” (Matt. 9:13, CEV, quoting Hos. 6:6).[7]  The whole point of true religious devotion is to inspire us to be people who are kind and compassionate to others—especially “the least of these.” We cannot escape the fact that, from Genesis to Revelation, God calls us to practice compassion and mercy toward the least and the lost and the left out.

Now, admittedly, kindness and compassion can be difficult—especially when it comes to people who may seem different from us. But no matter how much the people we encounter may challenge us, we are commanded by our Lord and Savior to cultivate genuine love toward our neighbors, all our neighbors.[8] And it seems to me that starts by treating people with basic kindness and compassion, regardless of who they are, or where they come from, or how different they may be from us.

In order to do this, I think we need a heart that is basically open to all people. We need what one teacher called a “boundless heart” to relate to others with kindness and mercy.[9] From my perspective, that means trying to see the people around us--all the people around us--especially those who seem most different from us--as human beings who have feelings and problems just like we do.[10] In fact, the Scriptures call us to see Jesus in the people around us, especially the least and the lost and the left out.[11] When we can do that, then we can freely and joyful feed those who are hungry and clothe those who are naked and welcome those who are strangers to us. Then we can practice the mercy and compassion that come from a boundless heart.

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[1] ©2014 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 11/23/2014 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, In the End, the Beginning, 71: “The point is not the judgement in accordance with good or bad works. It is the identification of the coming Son of man with the hungry and thirsty, the strangers, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned.” Cf. also Ulrich Luz, Matthew 21-28: A Commentary on Matthew 21-28, 282, where he points out that the focus of the passage is on the pronouncements in Mt. 25:40, 45, “which in their repetitions of the works of charity emphasize the standard by which people will be judged.”

[3] Cf. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel, 159, where he says that the context of this passage is the “economic and political exploitation” that occurred in “the upheaval following the Babylonian conquest.” He points out that the language here is similar to that in Matthew 25:31-46, “Disconcertingly, perhaps, the criteria for discrimination is not religious orthodoxy or orthopraxy but care for the weak and disadvantaged--the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the prisoner and the stranger.” 

[4] Ezekiel says, “You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost” (Ezek. 34:4).

[5] Cf. S. Westerholm, “Clean and Unclean,” in J. B. Green & S. McKnight (Eds.), Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, 131; Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 14-28, 670.

[6] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 3.2:507-508, where he identifies the “least of these” as “the world for which [Jesus] died and rose again, with which He has made Himself supremely one, and declared Himself in solidarity.” Many scholars believe that “the least of these” is a specific reference to itinerant Christians who went about without any visible means of support in obedience to Jesus’ instructions in Matthew 10:5-10.  See, for example, Luz, Matthew 21-28, 280-81 and Hagner, Matthew 14-28, 744-45. I find this interpretation overly specific. It seems to me that all of the “least of these” are included, not just specifically Christians or specifically Christian teachers. Besides those cited explicitly in the notes, other advocates of this “universal” interpretation include Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.3:890-92;  Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 3, 152–55; Kazoh Kitamori, Theology and the Pain of God, 98–104; Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 194, 200–203; Leonardo Boff, Jesus Christ Liberator, 71–72; and Jürgen Moltmann, Experiences in Theology: Ways and Forms of Christian Theology, 266–267.

[7] Cf. Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13, 239: “Mercy is a better way of obedience.” Cf. also Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8-20: A Commentary on Matthew 8-20, 34.

[8] Cf. Desmond and Mpho Tutu, Made For Goodness, 142-43, where they suggest envisioning those we have difficulty being kind toward as children who are themselves vulnerable.

[9] “Even as a mother protects with her life her child, her only child, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings.” Cf. “Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha’s Words on Loving-Kindness” (Snp 1.8), trans. by The Amaravati Sangha, Access to Insight, 14 (June 2010); accessed at http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.1.08.amar.html .

[10] Cf. Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, 41: “Compassion is born when we discover in the center of our own existence not only that God is God and man is man, but also that our neighbor is really our fellow man. ... This compassion pulls people away from the fearful clique into the large world where they can see that every human face is the face of a neighbor.”

[11] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 127, where he observes that this passage has often been treated ethically, “with somewhat colourless talk about ‘love of our neighbor’.” He continues,  “But it is not only love that is demanded. It is in the first place faith, the faith, namely, that the least of the brethren are waiting in Christ’s stead for the deeds of the just man. It is not that the wretched are the object of Christian love or the fulfilment of a moral duty; they are the latent presence of the coming Saviour and Judge of the world, the touchstone which determines salvation and damnation.” He concludes (p. 129), “the question is not how people or happenings outside the church respond to the church, but how the church responds to the presence of Christ in those who are ‘outside’, hungry, thirsty, sick, naked and imprisoned.” Cf. also Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.2:658.

Nothing Lost

Nothing Lost

Ezekiel 37:1-14[1]

  At some point in life, many of us will lose hope.  We will find that, whether due to our choices, or due to circumstances beyond our control, the ground has given way beneath our feet, and we have been swept away to a place where we feel completely and hopelessly lost. From the days of Homer’s Odyssey, this theme has been the subject of poetry, novels, plays, and even films.[2] The experience of being lost is part of life.  I think it can feel so hopeless because when you feel lost, really lost in life, it can seem like you will never find your way again.  It’s hard to hope when fear, sadness, and pain are your constant companions, and you wonder whether you’ll ever find joy, peace, and love again.

  It would seem that the people of Israel felt that way in exile. They were a whole world away from everything that was “home” to them.  I’m sure after spending not only years but decades in a place that was very foreign to them, it was difficult for them not to feel lost and hopeless. In fact, that was the whole reason for Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones.[3]  As the Lord speaks to the prophet, he says that the vision of new life was intended to address the fact that “the whole house of Israel” was saying “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely” (Ezek. 37:11).  We don’t really know how long they had been in exile when the prophet received this vision, but it’s likely that they had been there for perhaps 15 to 20 years![4]  They had felt lost for so long many of them had probably begun to forget what it was like to be “home.”  It’s no wonder they had given up hope!

  Into this despair, the message that the Lord had for Israel is that nothing and no one is ever beyond hope!  Think about the lesson for today: what could be more hopeless than dried-out bones. How can bones come back to life again? It would seem that there was nothing left to which God could give new life. And yet, before Ezekiel’s eyes, he sees new life come to those lifeless bones. And the message that God has for the people is that “ I will open your graves of exile and cause you to rise again.” (Ezek. 37:12, NLT). It was a dramatic demonstration that nothing and no one is beyond the hope of new life--not even those who have felt lost so long they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be home. [5]

  If there was ever anyone who deserved to feel lost, I think it was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Bonhoeffer immediately began to oppose their propaganda, even though he put himself at great risk to do so.  He took part in forming an underground community known as the Confessing Church, and illegally ran a seminary that was closed and relocated several times. Although he had two different opportunities to leave Germany, Bonhoeffer decided that he had to share the fate of the church in Germany if he were going to have a role in rebuilding it after the war.[6]  And as a result of his work with the German resistance movement, he was arrested on April 5, 1943, and was held in prison without trial until his execution on April 9, 1945.

  It’s hard for me to imagine how hard those two years must have been for him.  Yet, even in a Nazi prison, Bonhoeffer was able to maintain his hope.  In a letter in which he described the difficulty of waiting in prison without any prospect of release, he reflects on the words of a German Christmas hymn.  In one verse, the Christ child says to all those who suffer: “Let pass, dear brothers, every pain; what you have missed I’ll bring again.”[7] Bonhoeffer concludes from this “that nothing is lost, that everything is taken up in Christ, .... Christ restores all this as God originally intended for it to be.”[8]

  In a very real sense, many of us have experiences in life that can push our ability to hold onto hope past its limits. Our forms of “exile” can go on so long that we can begin to feel lost; lost to ourselves, lost to life, lost even to God. But one of my favorite themes of Scripture is that those who feel lost are never lost to God.[9] In story after story, somehow, God always finds a way to bring them home again. I believe that still holds true today.[10] There are all kinds of ways we can find ourselves lost in this world. And some of us have to endure that “exile” so long we may lose hope of ever feeling at home again. But the promise of scripture is that no one is ever beyond hope. No one is ever truly lost to God. Even when we may feel lost, we can trust that we are not lost to God. No matter what our circumstances may be, we can hold on to our hope that in his time, and in his way, God will bring new life to us all.[11]

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[1] © 2014 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 4/6/2014 at First Presbyterian Church of Dickinson, TX.

[2] Among others, James Joyce patterned his Ulysses (the latinized version of the Greek name Odysseus) after The Odyssey; Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain bears some similarities and was called an “American Odyssey” by the New York Times; Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions draws on both Ulysses and The Odyssey; and the 2000 film by Joel and Ethan Coen, “O Brother Where Art Thou” is loosely based on The Odyssey.

[3] Cf. Katheryn Pfisterer Darr, “The Book of Ezekiel,” New Interpreters Bible VI:1503: “Their hope has perished; and without hope, they might as well be dead.  The future, ..., seems as barren as the past years and present experience of exile.” Cf. also Walther Eichrodt, Ezekiel, 310-11, “The despair of the exiles meets here with something much more than a mere superficial word of comfort. Ezekiel does not see any less sharply or realistically than the rest of his fellow countrymen the utter ruin to which Israel has been reduced.  He therefore demonstrates to them that under such conditions the sole basis of hope lies in the superhuman and miraculous power of his God, ... .  All that has been said about the way in which such a God will accomplish salvation must be seen against the background of well-justified desperation on the part of man.  That desperation can only admit itself to have been overcome when it meets with the Lord of life in all his mysterious power.” (emphasis added)

[4] On the dating of this oracle, cf. W. Zimmerli, F. M. Cross, F. M., & K. Baltzer, Ezekiel: A commentary on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, 245-46, 258.

[5] Darr, “Ezekiel,” NIB VI:1504: “When we raise our vision to look beyond what our mundane eyes can see, we watch the impossible happen through God’s eyes.”

[6] Cf. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, 655.

[7] Cf. Peter Frick, Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation: Theology and Philosophy in His Thought, 29. It is Paul Gerhardt’s hymn, “Frölich Soll Mein Herze Springen.”

[8] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 169.  He also says that this is related to the idea expressed in Ephesians 1:10 of the restoration of all things.

[9] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.3:771: God’s “omnipotent mercy rules over all without exception, … no matter how lost they are they are not lost to him.” (emphasis added). Cf. also Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2.2:29: “God Himself in His freedom has decided that [man] shall stand, that he shall be saved and not lost, that he shall live and not die.”

[10] Cf. Darr, “Ezekiel,” NIB VI:1504 where she quotes Elie Wiesel to the effect that “every generation needs to hear in its own time that these bones can live again.”

[11] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 209: This is a new promise of life, for it is no longer attached to the condition of a possible repentance, but promises a creative act of Yahweh upon his people beyond the bounds of the temporal and the possible .  Cf. also Paul J. Achtemeier, Romans, 134: “Only when the power of sin, ..., has been overcome by the greater power of God’s Spirit, working through his Son, can people trapped in that life be free to pursue another kind of life. ... But once the Spirit, working through Christ, has broken that power, a new world is born and a new life is possible (vv. 9, 11a).”