Sent to Rebels:
“Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, rebels who have
rebelled against me.... Hard of face and obstinate of heart are they to
whom I am sending you...” So spoke the LORD in his prophet Ezekiel. And
so must the Spirit speak to anyone who seeks to speak and to live the
truth in any society, including our own. There can be no doubt, however,
that before Ezekiel could confront the spiritual disease of others, he
had to bend his heart and mind again and again to the Spirit. Closing
one’s mind to God is spiritual disease. Each of us at times can turn
away from God and be “hard of face and obstinate of heart.” And each of
us must allow ourselves to be confronted internally by the Spirit--or
perhaps from a messenger not of our own choosing--in order to reform us
into a genuinely prophetic people. For it is easy to say that every
baptized Christian is anointed to share in Christ as “priest, prophet,
and king,” as we say in the baptismal ritual. But how costly it is for
each of us to be challenged, confronted, purified by the Spirit so to be
a priestly, prophetic people. The reorientation of the soul to the
presence of God, and away from a self-centered existence, requires a
perpetual spiritual struggle. No one has “arrived,” no one can justly
say, “I am saved.” By faith we can say: I am seeking to cooperate with
the living God in my reformation.
Weakness and grace:
Today we also hear the word which Christ spoke in prayer to his
Apostle, Paul. Apparently the Apostle was complaining about an ailment,
his “thorn in the flesh.” In response to Paul’s prayer, the Risen Christ
said to him and to us, if we listen: “My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (Note how Christ speaks to
Paul in Paul’s own words and characteristic thoughts. How else could the
LORD speak to him?) Only those who discover and admit their own
limitations, deficiencies, weaknesses, can or will submit themselves to
God and to His Christ. Some of the most impressive human beings I have
met experienced a powerful “thorn in the flesh” in the form of an
addiction, and most often alcoholism. They were ground down and
humiliated by their weakness, by “the curse.” But some of those ground
down not only “hit bottom,” but humbly turned themselves over “to a
Power greater than themselves.” Then they really experienced, time and
again, the liberating power of God at work in and for them. Admitting
emptiness and futility in themselves, they called on the “Higher Power”
and found a strength flowing in, and liberating them. Those who have
known enslaving addictions, and truly surrendered to the God time and
again, fully understand the LORD’s words to the Apostle Paul, that “My
grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
