Do you know what the number one fear for people is?
It’s glossophobia… the fear of public speaking, getting up
in front of a group of people and speaking to them. Jay Leno quipped it’s so
bad that at a funeral most of us ‘would rather be the person in the casket than
the one giving the eulogy’. I’m not
sure about that, but it does sum it up for many of us.
You might think that as I stand up and preach each week and
lead worship that I’m immune, but that is not the case. I always tell couples I
marry that on the day, I’ll be the most nervous because I’m the one who has to
say the majority of the words. At
funerals, I always make sure I’ve got everything I’m going to say written down,
including my own name, just in case I forget it. When I’ve had to speak at
places like presbytery or general assembly in a debate I quite literally shake
and often what I say comes across as emotionally charged. But I stand up and
preach because I believe it is what God has called me to do, to take his
timeless word and open it up in a timely manner for his people. Praise God he
gives me the strength I need to do it by his Holy Spirit.
I think in the Church there is another fear that people
have, that is sharing their faith with others, talking about Jesus Christ in
their everyday life. I’ll put my hand up and say I’m like that as well.
Heading into Pentecost this year we are working through a
series looking at the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament: From hovering over the
waters in the creation story in Genesis right through to being poured out in
fulfillment of the prophecy in Joel chapter two. Seeing what the Holy Spirit was
about then and there and how Jesus changed all that and what it means to us
here and now. Today we are looking at the calling of Ezekiel to be a prophet,
to speak God’s word, and what that has to say to us today about being called to
be witnesses to Jesus Christ risen from the dead. 
Ezekiel is a prophet who speaks to the Jewish people in
their exile in Babylon. He was a priest
by profession and at the opening of the book we find him amidst the exiles at
the Kebar river, which is a channel off the Euphrates river just to the south
of Babylon. We are told that the hand of the Lord, a metaphor for the Holy
Spirit, was on Ezekiel, he was anointed as a priest but you get the sense that
God has been leading and guiding him in life. Even bringing him to being in the
midst of the exiles. There as a priest to be of some comfort for his people as
they mourned about where they were. Psalm 137 paints the picture of Jewish
gatherings in exile “by the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down, there we wept
when we remembered Zion”. Ezekiel has an
overwhelming vision of God. God on his throne, carried by these amazing living
creatures, four faced seraphs. The image behind me is from the Book of Kells,
and it is a representation of the four gospels as each of the faces of those
four creatures, the Man, the Ox, the Eagle and the Lion. An amazing image of
the reality of Jesus Christ carried to us by the four gospels. Ezekiel’s vision
is of God being with his people in exile. Ezekiel sees the one who is on the throne and
falls flat on his face, in fear because he has seen the Lord. That is where the passage we had read to us
this morning comes in. It is the passage of Ezekiel’s call to ministry.
God says ‘to stand up and he will speak to Ezekiel’ and as
he says this we are told that the Spirit came upon Ezekiel and it enabled him
to stand and to hear what God was saying to him. Ezekiel had an amazing
spiritual experience, he saw God sitting on his throne, but what stops that
from just being something that overwhelms his senses and leaves him terrified
is the presence of the Holy Spirit in his life. It gives him the courage to
stand in God’s presence and to hear what God is saying. This is what the Holy
Spirit is still doing in and for us. As we saw last week the Holy Spirit’s
presence in our lives is a seal of his ownership , that we don’t need to grovel
and fear God but we belong to him, that we can stand in his presence through
Jesus death and resurrection. In John’s
gospel Jesus speaks of not leaving us as orphan’s but making us part of his
family by sending the advocate, the comforter. The comforter, the spirit of
truth, that will teach us all we need to know and will bring to our minds all
that Jesus has said. The Holy Spirit in us enables us to stand and to hear
God’s words.
Then Ezekiel receives God’s commission to be his prophet. To
take his message to God’s rebellious people. In the Old Testament God chooses
individuals to do special tasks for him. Ezekiel is ‘to be sent’ to his people,
to speak God’s word to them, whether they will listen or not. He is to be a
faithful servant amidst a rebellious, hard headed, stiff necked people. In the
New Testament, the disciples are called apostles, and apostles basically means
the sent ones. Commissioned by God, and in the passage, we had read to us in
Acts Chapter 1 Jesus sends them and all his followers, he sends them to speak
his word, to witness to Jesus Christ risen from the death. To witness in
Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the end of the earth. Instead of simply
calling and sending individuals in Christ, God now sends his people, all of us,
to speak his word to the world. Just as
God gives Ezekiel his Holy Spirit to enable him to do what he is called to do,
Jesus sends his holy Spirit, to give us the power to do what God calls us to
do.
I was a bit reluctant to use Ezekiel’s call as an example
for us because it is unique in the scriptures, Ezekiel does not give God any
excuses why he shouldn’t do what God has said.
Most of the people God chooses and calls in the Old testament have big
buts. Which has nothing to do with how much they’ve got to sit down with.
Rather they have excuses and reasons why they are not the ones to be called. Moses wasn’t good at speaking, he had a speech
impediment, Gideon, was the least important member of the least important
family in the least important tribe of Israel, Jeremiah is too young, no one
will listen as he’s only a boy, Amos is criticized for being just a farmer from
Tekoa, (you can imagine Te koa being this small town down the east coast
somewhere, right next to nowhere, which of course is Maori for nowhere) what
has he got to say to the people in the big city. Jonah just plumb does not want
to do it, he hates the people of Nineveh. It’s not that Ezekiel is perfect,
rather in being called to speak to a rebellious people as a faithful servant,
he does not get a chance to voice his excuses. It does say in chapter 3:14 that
the hand of the Lord leads his home and that he is bitter and angry in his own
spirit. The key thing is God chooses ordinary people to do his will to speak his
word and to achieve his purposes. You could give the same sort of list of
people in the New Testament, and down through church history, however it is
God’s spirit that gives them what they need to do God’s work, to proclaim God’s
word.
The Key reason I’ve chosen Ezekiel, is because we get
something of the process by which God enables Ezekiel to speak his word and to
prophecy, which is important for us. It is easy to think of God inspiring
people to speak like someone being God’s loudspeaker system, or like God’s type
writer. God pushes the keys and the words come out. It’s not the case. Ezekiel
is told to speak God’s word, but first he is invited to eat what God gives him.
A hand, again a symbol for the Holy Spirit, gives him a scroll to eat. To
digest and allow to fill him up. You get the picture of it becoming part of
him, being the sustenance for life, and what gives him strength and energy for
life. Before we speak God’s words we must know God’s word and allow it to be
digested and fill up our lives and be our nourishment and food. Then we are
able to let it flow out of us. That’s the process of inspiration. Down through
history people have seen things as so inspired they are God’s word for all time
but for most of us it is God’s timely word, for the situation we are in…
Did you notice the paradox in how the scroll tastes to
Ezekiel. The scroll that is given to Ezekiel is full of lament and mourning and
woe. But it tastes sweet to Ezekiel. God is asking Ezekiel to speak to a
rebellious people, and the words of God’s covenant of grace has to be bitter to
them, they think God will come and quickly bring them back to Jerusalem, but
God’s word is that as they have been rebellious for so many generations that
this exile is going to last for a long period of time, so much so that they
will have to settle down where they live and learn to be God’s people all over
again in a foreign setting. It points out that they will have to change their
ways so that God can move in a new way. But to a faithful person like Ezekiel,
they are sweet because they speak of God’s desire to redeem his people, his
unfailing love for his people, that this exile has purpose and meaning in God’s
plans and purposes. It is like when Paul talks of the preaching Christ
crucified, it is folly to the gentiles and Jews, but to those who are being
saved it is the power of God for our salvation.
In this eating of the scroll we see how God enables and
inspires people to speak his word. His word is given to us, in this case it may
well have been the Sinai covenant with its list of blessings for obedience and
woes or consequences for disobedience and Ezekiel digests it and then it is
spoken to the specific time and place and situation through the personality,
words, and temperament of Ezekiel. We’ve mentioned the repetition of the phrase
rebellious people in this passage and repetition of phrases and words is a
stylistic part of the book of Ezekiel, it may well be a mark of how he speaks.
Why say something once when you can emphasis it by saying it again and again.
With the Spirit being involved in the process and in the person what comes out
is equally tht persons word and God’s word to that situation. In the case of Ezekiel and the other books of scripture the decernment process of God's People lead by God's Spirit have seen as being God's abiding word for all time: authoritatively God's word for all people all time.
You and have the word of God, Jesus Christ living within us
by the Holy Spirit, we have the word of God in the scriptures of the Old and
New Testament which the Holy Spirit uses to speak into our lives, the spirit enables
us to speak that out to the people around us, to witness to Jesus Christ. The
Spirit brings it to mind, gives us the words when we need them. Because God has
gifted each of us with our own individuality it’s going to sound like us, but
God can use that to speak into people’s lives. We are called to do that weather
people listen or not… we are called to proclaim it by living
it out, and speaking it out.
Let me finish with a great illustration, audio bibles are
usually produced with the bible being read by someone with beautiful BBC English.
The Jesus story book which Sundayfunday are using is a great example its
produced in the states but the stories are read by David Suchet, the amazing
English actor, who ironically you will know as Agatha Christie’s Belgian
detective Hercule Poirot. He has a
wonderful voice. It is done I think because it gives the bible and the story
the authority that a BBC voice over might give a documentary. In fact that kind
of voice over is called ‘the voice of God’, this is how it is, this is the
truth, my BBC English proves it. We can have that idea of this is how God’s
word should sound.
But with the rise of the Internet and digital media, there
is a democratization of the voices you can hear broadcast… or rather pod cast.
People are doing their own content, their own shows, telling their own stories,
making their own comment. Bible in action in New Zealand are in the process of
producing what they are calling the pod bible. They are putting the contemporary English version
bible online. They have taken 300 volunteers from round New Zealand, men women,
young people, older people, people for whom English is their first language and
others for whom English is a second or even a third language and got them to
read a chapter of the bible each. With their own inflections and imperfections,
accents and inadequacies, there amateur passion of the scripture rather than
professional polish for the presentation. It makes the scriptures come alive,
you hear it in our voices, the voices you might hear down the road, at the
mall, beside you on the bus or train, at the football game.
This is what the Holy Spirit is doing in us. We have been
called to witness to what we know of Jesus Christ; it’s not the voice over word
of God BBC doco, unless that is you, the spirit allows you to speak and
proclaim what you know, how you know it, how it has been digested into your
life and made part of you. There are people who have a prophetic ministry and
calling, but we are all called to voice God’s timeless word in a timely manner
to the very time we inhabit, and it the Holy Spirit that enables and empowers
us to do that.
Jay Hotere died last
week. I’d never met him but he had influenced a lot of people who I know and
admire. One person placed a video of his testimony on line. I watched it…Jay
had grown up in a violent abusive environment and sadly for so many men in our
society was starting down the track of repeating that destructive behaviour. He
got to the point of wanting to kill himself and prayed well Jesus if your real
you’d better let me know because if you don’t I’m going to end it. The phone rang and it was a mate of his who
said, God had been telling him to ring, what was going on, and not to do
anything till he got there. Jay became a Christian and his life changed and he
helped transform many other lives. The voice and word of God came in a friend’s
voice. Adrian Plass is a wonderful Christian broadcaster and author in England
and one night read out a very personal letter to god over the radio, voicing
his doubts and fears and feeling of being unworthy. When he got home there was
a letter on his doorstep, from God replying to all his doubts and fears,
assuring him he was loved, and Plass said it was amazing how similar God’s
handwriting was to his mothers.
You are called to speak God’s word by the power of the Holy
Spirit. Amen
Postscript: I am aware that in this sermon I do not make mention of the phrase 'Son of Man' which along with it's mention in Daniel's vision in Daniel 7. Theologically this phrase Son of Man is significant because it is the title that Jesus Chose to use for himself. Son of Man in Ezekiel is a phrase which means 'Mere mortal'. In Daniel 7 it is a vision of heaven where one like the son of man appears as God's anointed one. The title pulls together both the idea of a mere moral, Jesus as totally human called to speak and proclaim God's word, and the son of man as God's son in Daniel.
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