The Message Remix (242 page)

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Authors: Eugene H. Peterson

BOOK: The Message Remix
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They came after us faster than eagles in flight,
pressed us hard in the mountains, ambushed us in the desert.
Our king, our life’s breath, the anointed of GOD,
was caught in their traps—
Our king under whose protection
we always said we’d live.
Celebrate while you can, O Edom!
Live it up in Uz!
For it won’t be long before you drink this cup, too.
You’ll find out what it’s like to drink God’s wrath,
Get drunk on God’s wrath
and wake up with nothing, stripped naked.
And that’s it for you, Zion. The punishment’s complete.
You won’t have to go through this exile again.
But Edom, your time is coming:
He’ll punish your evil life, put all your sins on display.
Give Us a Fresh Start
 
“005
Remember, GOD, all we’ve been through.
Study our plight, the black mark we’ve made in history.
Our precious land has been given to outsiders,
our homes to strangers.
Orphans we are, not a father in sight,
and our mothers no better than widows.
We have to pay to drink our own water.
Even our firewood comes at a price.
We’re nothing but slaves, bullied and bowed,
worn out and without any rest.
We sold ourselves to Assyria and Egypt
just to get something to eat.
Our parents sinned and are no more,
and now we’re paying for the wrongs they did.
Slaves rule over us;
there’s no escape from their grip.
We risk our lives to gather food
in the bandit-infested desert.
Our skin has turned black as an oven,
dried out like old leather from the famine.
Our wives were raped in the streets in Zion,
and our virgins in the cities of Judah.
They hanged our princes by their hands,
dishonored our elders.
Strapping young men were put to women’s work,
mere boys forced to do men’s work.
The city gate is empty of wise elders.
Music from the young is heard no more.
All the joy is gone from our hearts.
Our dances have turned into dirges.
The crown of glory has toppled from our head.
Woe! Woe! Would that we’d never sinned!
Because of all this we’re heartsick;
we can’t see through the tears.
On Mount Zion, wrecked and ruined,
jackals pace and prowl.
And yet, GOD, you’re sovereign still,
your throne intact and eternal.
So why do you keep forgetting us?
Why dump us and leave us like this?
Bring us back to you, GOD—we’re ready to come back.
Give us a fresh start.
As it is, you’ve cruelly disowned us.
You’ve been so very angry with us.”
INTRODUCTIONEZEKIEL
 
Catastrophe strikes and a person’s world falls apart. People respond variously, but two of the more common responses are denial and despair
. Denial refuses to acknowledge the catastrophe. It shuts its eyes tight or looks the other way; it manages to act as if everything is going to be just fine; it takes refuge in distractions and lies and fantasies. Despair is paralyzed by the catastrophe and accepts it as the end of the world.
It is unwilling to do anything, concluding that life for all intents and purposes is over. Despair listlessly closes its eyes to a world in which all the color has drained out, a world gone dead.
Among biblical writers, Ezekiel is our master at dealing with catastrophe. When catastrophe struck—it was the sixth-century B.C. invasion of Israel by Babylon—denial was the primary response. Ezekiel found himself living among a people of God who (astonishingly similar to us!) stubbornly refused to see what was right before their eyes (the denial crowd). There were also some who were unwilling to see anything other than what was right before their eyes (the despair crowd).
But Ezekiel saw. He saw what the people with whom he lived either couldn’t or wouldn’t see. He saw in wild and unforgettable images, elaborated in exuberant detail—God at work in a catastrophic era. The denial people refused to see that the catastrophe was in fact catastrophic. How could it be? God wouldn’t let anything that bad happen to them. Ezekiel showed them. He showed them that, yes, there
was
catastrophe, but God was at work in the catastrophe, sovereignly
using
the catastrophe. He showed them so that they would be able to embrace God in the worst of times.
The despair people, overwhelmed by the devastation, refused to see that life was worth living. How could it be? They had lost everything, or would soon—country, Temple, freedom, and many, many lives. Ezekiel showed them. He showed them that God was and would be at work in the wreckage and rubble, sovereignly
using
the disaster to create a new people of God.
Whether through denial or despair, the people of God nearly lost their identity as a people of God. But they didn’t. God’s people emerged from that catastrophic century robust and whole. And the reason, in large part, was Ezekiel.
 
 
From:
At twenty-six, Ezekiel was one of several thousand Jews taken as prisoners of war from Judah to Babylon in 597 B.C. They were taken as a warning to the remaining Jews: Surrender or Else. Ezekiel was supposed to become a priest, but that was Temple work, and the Temple was back in Jerusalem, nine hundred miles away. He was never going to see that Temple again. No home. No career. So he gave himself to a new assignment: combating denial and despair.
 
To:
For the first six years of Ezekiel’s ministry, the POWs’ homeland was still intact, and many of them were sure God would soon deal with the Babylonian problem and send them home. Denial. Others were sure that God—if there was a God—had abandoned them. Despair. When the news came that Jerusalem had been demolished, the despair camp ruled for some time.
 
Re:
593-571 B.C. Daniel, who had been taken captive to Babylon some eight years earlier, was finishing his studies as a Babylonian bureaucrat by the time Ezekiel arrived. The much older Jeremiah was still back in Jerusalem, trying to stop the catastrophe that both he and Ezekiel knew was inevitable.
In distant China, Lao-Tse was probably born around this time. Lao-Tse wrote the
Tao Te Ching
, and his philosophy is now called Taoism. He taught followers to become virtuous by deeply experiencing their oneness with nature and all things. He wanted them to be brave and generous spontaneously, without worrying about right and wrong or what other people thought. He didn’t believe in a God (or gods) that was a being with a personality or a sense of justice. Taoists loved paradox: a classic Taoist story is about a man who dreams he’s a butterfly, then wakes up and wonders if he’s a man who dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he’s a man.
EZEKIEL
 
Wheels Within Wheels, Like a Gyroscope
 
001
When I was thirty years of age, I was living with the exiles on the Kebar River. On the fifth day of the fourth month, the sky opened up and I saw visions of God.
(It was the fifth day of the month in the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin that GOD’s Word came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, on the banks of the Kebar River in the country of Babylon. GOD’s hand came upon him that day.)
 
I looked: I saw an immense dust storm come from the north, an immense cloud with lightning flashing from it, a huge ball of fire glowing like bronze. Within the fire were what looked like four creatures vibrant with life. Each had the form of a human being, but each also had four faces and four wings. Their legs were as sturdy and straight as columns, but their feet were hoofed like those of a calf and sparkled from the fire like burnished bronze. On all four sides under their wings they had human hands. All four had both faces and wings, with the wings touching one another. They turned neither one way nor the other; they went straight forward.
Their faces looked like this: In front a human face, on the right side the face of a lion, on the left the face of an ox, and in back the face of an eagle. So much for the faces. The wings were spread out with the tips of one pair touching the creature on either side; the other pair of wings covered its body. Each creature went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit went, they went. They didn’t turn as they went.
The four creatures looked like a blazing fire, or like fiery torches. Tongues of fire shot back and forth between the creatures, and out of the fire, bolts of lightning. The creatures flashed back and forth like strikes of lightning.
As I watched the four creatures, I saw something that looked like a wheel on the ground beside each of the four-faced creatures. This is what the wheels looked like: They were identical wheels, sparkling like diamonds in the sun. It looked like they were wheels within wheels, like a gyroscope.
They went in any one of the four directions they faced, but straight, not veering off. The rims were immense, circled with eyes. When the living creatures went, the wheels went; when the living creatures lifted off, the wheels lifted off. Wherever the spirit went, they went, the wheels sticking right with them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When the creatures went, the wheels went; when the creatures stopped, the wheels stopped; when the creatures lifted off, the wheels lifted off, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.
Over the heads of the living creatures was something like a dome, shimmering like a sky full of cut glass, vaulted over their heads. Under the dome one set of wings was extended toward the others, with another set of wings covering their bodies. When they moved I heard their wings—it was like the roar of a great waterfall, like the voice of The Strong God, like the noise of a battlefield. When they stopped, they folded their wings.
And then, as they stood with folded wings, there was a voice from above the dome over their heads. Above the dome there was something that looked like a throne, sky-blue like a sapphire, with a humanlike figure towering above the throne. From what I could see, from the waist up he looked like burnished bronze and from the waist down like a blazing fire. Brightness everywhere! The way a rainbow springs out of the sky on a rainy day—that’s what it was like. It turned out to be the Glory of GOD!
When I saw all this, I fell to my knees, my face to the ground. Then I heard a voice.
 
002
It said, “Son of man, stand up. I have something to say to you.”
The moment I heard the voice, the Spirit entered me and put me on my feet. As he spoke to me, I listened.
He said, “Son of man, I’m sending you to the family of Israel, a rebellious nation if there ever was one. They and their ancestors have fomented rebellion right up to the present. They’re a hard case, these people to whom I’m sending you—hardened in their sin. Tell them, ‘This is the Message of GOD, the Master.’ They are a defiant bunch. Whether or not they listen, at least they’ll know that a prophet’s been here. But don’t be afraid of them, son of man, and don’t be afraid of anything they say. Don’t be afraid when living among them is like stepping on thorns or finding scorpions in your bed. Don’t be afraid of their mean words or their hard looks. They’re a bunch of rebels. Your job is to speak to them. Whether they listen is not your concern. They’re hardened rebels.
“Only take care, son of man, that you don’t rebel like these rebels. Open your mouth and eat what I give you.”
When I looked he had his hand stretched out to me, and in the hand a book, a scroll. He unrolled the scroll. On both sides, front and back, were written lamentations and mourning and doom.

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