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Day One, Year One
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It makes it not
so hard – to be so many miles apart. |
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Psalm 137:1-4 {read in the
course of the message}
Luke 17: 26. “As it was in the days of Noah,
so will it be in the days of the Son of man. 27.
They
ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day when
Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. 28.
Likewise
as it was in the days of
A
History of Hurricanes in the Western Florida Panhandle 1559-1999
Betsy (1965), Camille
(1969), Eloise (1975), Frederick (1979), Elena, Juan & Kate (1985), Hugo (1989),
Andrew (1992), Allison, Erin & Opal (1995), Danny (1997), Georges &
Earle (1998), Floyd (1999), Charley & Frances (2004), Ivan (2004?).
In the fourth month – On the
fifth day – Of the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin...
Have you ever endured an event so
distressing that it restarted your clock?
Perhaps it was the year of some big storm. Maybe you had a brush with death that you
look back to as a mile marker in your life.
Maybe the year you endured more pain than any other. Some may look back a war that set their
clocks back to year one. Some
have been formed by the Great Depression or World War II or the Korean Conflict
or
In the fourth month – On the
fifth day – Of the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin...
The prophet didn’t use the name of the
Hebrew month. Nor did he record time
from the year of the Exodus as his ancestors had. Something new stirred the lives of Ezekiel
and his people that forced them to a new means of reckoning tied to an
event – an event that’d stopped time and started it all over
again for his people and him.
¿What
kind of event has the power to restart a person’s historical clock? For many, many people, the new starting point
hovers around the day that hijacked planes took down the Of the exile of King Jehoiachin, in the fourth month of the fifth year – On the fifth day – this day kicked off year one for Ezekiel the Prophet. |
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Just what exactly reset his clock? Why, he was one of thousands exiled from his
homeland in what’s known as “the Babylonian (or Chaldean) captivity.” The Chaldeans conquered
This is exactly what Jesus meant when he
cried out to the unprepared masses of
Luke
17:34b. “That night there will be
two in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. 35.
There
will be two women grinding together; one will be taken and the other left.”
In the first wave,
Daniel was taken and Ezekiel left behind.
In the second wave, Jeremiah was left behind and Ezekiel was taken away
with the king. That day became day
one of year one for him.
Since, he’d been counting.
Counting . . .
In the fourth month – On the
fifth day – Of the fifth year of the exile
of King Jehoiachin...
. . . counting the
days. Have you ever been in exile of
some type in which you could do little more than count the days?
Waterless Days of
Wondering
Maybe you can remember a time of being without
water. I’m not talking about being
inconvenienced by a broken line or impaired service due to a hurricane. I mean being without any fresh supply of
water for an extended period of time.
One missionary to Africa relates being without water frequently –
sometimes for days – with no explanation and no promises. By the third day, she looked back to when the
water went off as day one. By now
she’d emptied the containers that stored water “just in case.” By the fourth day, she started leaving water
in the basin when she washed — just in case it was needed later. By the sixth day she had to collect
wastewater from others in the house to flush the toilet. By the seventh day, the missionary went
begging for water then searching the house for some possession with which to
bribe a water truck driver. By the tenth
day, when the water finally came back, she was dirty, exhausted from thirst,
and conditioned to being without water – conditioned, that is, to fear
of her future survival. She knew
only one thing for sure – it was her tenth day without water.
In this same way, the Judeans in exile were
counting the days – to what? Death? Repatriation?
Singing the Blues
Ezekiel ended up with exiles encamped beside
one of the chief rivers in Babylon, the site of one of Nebuchadnezzer’s famous
canals he was building with forced Judean labor. Imagine!
It was horrible enough to be taken away and resettled in the swamps of a
river – more horrible to have to dig there. The only real advantage was the abundance of
water. But even with that, there were
the swamp flies. Considering the
situation, the despairing words of Psalm 137 are even more painful to hear:
By the rivers of Babylon — there we sat down and wept when we
remembered Zion. We hung up our harps on
the willows. For there our tormenting
captors gleefully asked us for songs, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of
Zion!” How could we sing Yahweh’s
songs in a strange and hostile land?
(Psalm 137:1-4)
Actually, this lament is a song – that’s
what psalm means – song. Can you
guess the song’s style? It’s nothin’ but
the blues. The blues is someone’s pain
and misery set to music. Since the
music’s always the same, and is repeated over and over, the series of chords
becomes a permanent fixture in the mind.
Everybody knows the blues. The blue
person only needs to supply words from some wretched situation to make others
blue too. It seems like the constant
rhythmic repetition, the redundant melody and repetitive, doleful lyrics
actually make the blues more bearable somehow.
The mood of this blues psalm, like all others, is clear – these people
are miserable, enslaved, flee-bitten and homesick, longing for the past,
disavowing the future. Everything
changed on day one of year one, didn’t it?
In the Congo, people sing ma-ma-ma-ma-ma
when someone dies. This isn’t much different from singing
mah-oh-mah-oh-mah! Some folks in the
south shake their heads and mumble umm-umm-umm. That’s a form of the blues, too – usually
our first official act
(after crying, ‘O, God!’)
when something shakes down our world, displaces or uproots us, restarts our
clocks, makes us so distracted that we can’t see anything else.
Then It Happened
I’m certain that Ezekiel was numb for awhile
then sang the blues for awhile. But when
the numbness wore off and the blues got old, he began to seek out the deeper
meaning of the catastrophe. There must
be more than conquest – something’s behind it all – a bigger picture – a plan –
there must be! There just must be!
Then it happened. Ezekiel tells the story: “I was among the exiles by the Chebar canal
and I SAW YAHWEH!” While others
continued in numbness or blues singing the – but Ezekiel sees visions from the
Almighty. Had he gone overboard? Had the hardship and humility been so
overpowering that he was delusional? Or
was his vision truly insightful?
One writer suggests that faith is
daring to dance to the melody of the future
(Brazilian author Rubem Alves).
Ezekiel dances to visions of Yahweh’s providence for the future smack in
the middle of more trouble than his clan had ever experienced –
ever. At the worst possible time, while
all others were looking back at the past, Ezekiel gazed ahead – far ahead.
A Little of His Vision
He saw a black hurricane coming in from the
north with tremendous lightnings and thunderings – great dark clouds with fire
flashing forth continually. Then Ezekiel
envisioned four of the most fantastic creatures imaginable – even in these days
of Hollywood wizardry. The creatures
looked like giant people but they had four faces on their heads – like a man’s
face in the front, like a lion and an ox on the sides and like an eagle on the
back of their heads. The creatures had
six wings. Beneath these wings there
were arms and hands – six of each – and feet as calves feet. There were burning lights – they were
extremely brilliant – blinding. The
creatures moved in perfect tangency in the blazing light – one pair of wings
outstretched and touching the others – and wherever the wind (spirit) would go,
they’d go with it, to and fro.
Then Ezekiel spied the famous wheel within a
wheel on the earth – gleaming, covered with lights that the prophet called eyes. This craft took off from the ground and
wherever it flew, the four creatures followed alongside, for the wheels
generated the wind that made the living creatures rise. Above these, he saw a great solid place in
the sky – a firmament – and upon it a sapphire throne with a gigantic, fearsome
entity upon it – and still above the entity was a glorious, multi-colored
rainbow – the sign of the most ancient of covenants. All was brightness and awe and power and
magnificence.
Understand that Ezekiel hadn’t experienced
anything in his life with which to compare these objects and creatures. He hadn’t the vocabulary to describe
them. He knew nothing about science
fiction. He’d never seen even one
episode of StarTrek on TV or one installation of the Alien series
of movies. But he knew what he
saw anyway. Ezekiel cried, “this is the
Shekinah Glory of Yahweh.” Then he fell
on his face as he heard a commanding voice from the throne.
“Son of man,
stand upon your feet, and I will speak with you.”
(Ezekiel 2:1) Then the Spirit entered into me and set me upon my feet; and I heard him speaking to me.
Can you imagine Ezekiel later struggling to
share his vision with his co-exiles?
And then they fly all around the wheel
within the wheel!
And did I tell you they had six wings and
six arms and six hands?
And did I mention the throne that sparkled
like sapphire and the rainbow?
Did I tell you that the Spirit entered
me?
And what the magnificent voice said to me?
Did I tell you? Did I tell you?
Security and Vision
Friends, the world’s hungry for visions of
the future, even more so since our nation endured the first-ever military
attack on our soil – the worst single tragedy we as a people have ever
experienced – a calamity that literally reset our clocks – and the clocks of
the world – to measure time from September 11, 2001. Since day one of year one, the
entire world has been and is being shaken, terrorized and destroyed. How, in the midst of all this, may WE see a
vision of the Almighty Creator Yahweh who, in his own words, is
Exodus 34:6b,7.
compassionate and
merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear
the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the
children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.
Luke
17:28b,29.
They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they
planted, they built, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and
sulphur rained from heaven and destroyed them all.
Were You There?
Let’s go back to day one, year one. Where were you when the towers came
down? I was staying at a minister’s
house in Georgia after preaching a homecoming.
Late at night on September 10th, I was telling my host about
what I’d said at the revival – that six thousand years of salvation history
had just come to pass, and that we should expect some cataclysmic event any
day that would change the world. The
next morning, the world changed.
I saw the live telecast of the second plane flying into the World Trade
Center Tower. We watched in numbness as
the events of that day unfolded. I need
not recount them again. You’ve heard
plenty about day one, year one.
Maybe you didn’t know that pastors of many
different groups in Manhattan put on their clergy robes, opened the
church doors and took to the streets to offer the afflicted a new
vision of the Almighty! Many in the
rubble were aided and comforted: folks found prayer partners among the
devastation; sanctuaries were made available for supplication. Soon, church members and caring volunteers
appeared with water, blankets and supplies for the displaced. Like us, it was Yahweh’s bunch – those who
are compassionate and merciful – in the streets
serving as visual reminders that the Almighty Father could make
his presence known and seen, even in the midst of destruction and
dispersion.
Undoubtedly, the apparition of fully
robed ministers, roaming the dust-covered streets of a Manhattan destroyed, was
every bit as profound to those suffering as Ezekiel’s vision of Yahweh was to
him.
Our Plan!
As we plan for ministry in these passing post-9/11
years, may I suggest that, especially for this congregation, it’s
absolutely vital that YOU turn YOUR attention away from the past to your
future. What is Yahweh’s vision for the
new world to come? What is to be your
part in that? Are you all to become a
memory or monument, like the grassy little park that now stretches over the
site of the World Trade Center? Is this
to be a place where people return to reminisce about a happy childhood? Or will YOU decide NOW to offer a fresh,
vibrant, and true vision of Father Yahweh to YOUR neighbors who, lately,
have been presented with so many false visions?
I’ve already made my decision as to
what I’ll do. I’ve seen the future, have
you? Or are you still counting the
days? You must come to a decision which
way you’ll look NOW!
Let’s see . . . In the years after 9/11
. . . will we hang our harps by the willows, substituting the blues for glory
of praises . . . lamentations for songs of victory? Like the captives of Israel will be ever
counting back?
In the fourth month – On the
fifth day – Of the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin . . . Yes or no?
Based on by Safiyah Fosua |
