This is clearly a time of uncertainty. Reforms in institutions that were meant to make society better for all people are crumbling. Political offices that once held esteem are laughable. The economic system is designed so that wealthier keep getting richer and the poor are becoming increasingly more impoverished. Those on the margins of society are being pushed even farther to the edge. Foundational values and identities are in question; conflict and polarization abounds everywhere you look. Of course, I am talking about Jerusalem in the 6th century BC, just to make sure we are on the same page.
The Kingdom of Judah had been its most prosperous only three generations before the Kingdom and the city of Jerusalem would fall to the Babylonians. This era of prosperity was under the reign of King Josiah, who is described as being the most righteous king in Jerusalem since King David. He reinstituted provisions laid out in the Torah that would make Judah a more just society. However, only 50 years later, a combination of the power of mighty Babylon as well as political intrigue and corruption among the elite of Jerusalem would lead to the destruction of everything held dear to the Jewish people. Many of the Jewish people were captured and taken to far reaches of Babylonian empire. Put very simply, the Jewish faith at the time rested on three promises God had made with the people 1) the promise land of Israel 2) a righteous ruler from the line of David 3) prosperity maintained by keeping the law of Torah and worship at the Temple in Jerusalem. In a matter of a few years, their community, identity, and the very core of their relationship with God was ripped away. They now had to live among new people with new gods and a different way of life. This left the Jewish people with the question of, who are we? And who is God?
I just completed my first year of seminary at Emory University, and as you may be able to tell, I had to learn a lot of history, especially biblical history. It was interesting to read about the Jewish exile when seminary itself, held, on a much smaller scale, some similar challenges to those that the Jews faced in Babylon. Each of us had been removed from our comfortable contexts with those who shared similar theological understandings of God. I entered classrooms with students ranging from agnostic members of Unitarian Universalism to Southern Baptists from rural congregations in the Deep South to mainstream Methodists. As part of my studies, I held an internship this year with a homeless service agency in Atlanta where I worked as a chaplain to men experiencing homelessness, most of whom were black and from historically black denominations. My internship supervisor at the agency affiliated with the United Church of Christ but had been raised in Baptist and Pentecostal churches and still possessed a charismatic flair. Encountering these different people of faith was truly a challenge to the part of our compact that seeks to embrace those who “worship God however known.” I went to seminary to deepen my understanding of a God I thought I somewhat knew, but was frequently left with the questions, who am I? And who is God?
The Israelite prophet Ezekiel had these questions in mind as he sat by the Kebar River, better known as the Euphrates, in Babylon looking west towards his home in Judah. It was here that God appeared to Ezekiel in a new way. I have abridged our scripture reading quite a bit, because the vision Ezekiel has of God is one of the longest and most detailed visions of God described in the Old Testament. What you have in the bulletin is only about a third of the description of the creatures, the wheels, and the vault above them, and I welcome you to read the full passage when you have the chance.
What is most interesting to me about this vision is not the frightful descriptions of the storm and the four-headed creatures, or the majesty of God’s splendor, but the idea that God has wheels. Previously, the Ark of the Covenant, a large chest-like object and the physical manifestation of God’s presence in the temple, had to be carried by the people. The people had not been able to carry the Ark into exile and it was likely destroyed in the invasion. It was not possible for God’s presence to have been brought with them into Babylon. But now God had wheels! Wheels intersecting wheels that had no limitations in direction and moved wherever the spirit of God took them. God could now not only be with the Jews in exile but with all people. And Ezekiel was to tell of this new way the people could know God. But, as God states, some people did not want to listen to this. There were those who hoped that Israel would be restored exactly to the way it was, and that the God of Israel would remain in Israel with Israelite people. God had been known in this way for hundreds of years, and now Ezekiel was telling them that the nature of God could be different. God was able to travel to everyone and be with the people of different nations, perhaps even with those the Israelites did not like or did not trust.
One thing I learned while reading the bible is to never assume that you reflect the “hero” of the story. I tried not to enter my chaplaincy internship at the homeless service agency with a charity mindset, the harmful idea I had to rescue people who had no power. However, a part of me thought that I would be like Ezekiel, that I would take my progressive, enlightened theology into this space and bring a new vision of hope to those who had a more “limited” theology. As the year went by, I could not have been proven more wrong. I was absolutely not Ezekiel, I was the person who was obstinate and stubborn, who could not see God working through the people I was with.
My mind turns to a particular client, an elderly black man experiencing homelessness, who may be the person I learned the most from over the course of the year. I remember my first interaction with him was a little unsettling. After the formalities of introducing ourselves, he asked me “So how long have you been saved?” By “saved,” I assumed he meant, “How long have you accepted Jesus Christ?” I was taken aback by the question and hesitated. I responded saying something like, “I think I am still in the process of being saved.” He chuckled at that and we continued to talk. I would come to know him as a kind, thoughtful, and deeply interesting person. He knew scripture backwards and forwards, probably better than I ever will. Part of my job was to help facilitate a spiritual hour or a bible study, and when he would attend, I would often just sit back and let him take the lead. He always knew the right words of comfort for those in distress, and brought humor and joy into any group of people. Another one of my duties was to help facilitate chapel services, and it was in this space that I was privileged to witness the many spiritual gifts of the clients. There were poets who recited their work as part of our liturgy, songwriters who sang their praises to the Lord, and storytellers with testimonies of God’s presence in their lives. I was often moved to tears in this small concrete block room with plastic foldout chairs that was our chapel. This space would become as sacred as an ornate cathedral or a beautiful mountain vista.
However, there is no doubt that this environment did take some getting used to. The pronouns for God were always masculine, the translation of choice for scripture was most frequently the King James Version, and concepts of temptation and salvation were often tossed about in conversation. It was in this setting that I first heard someone speak in tongues during a prayer. The larger power dynamics of race, gender, and class were ever-present. The other chaplain interns were also white women enrolled in elite graduate programs, and we were tasked to work with a population experiencing homelessness comprised mostly of black men. There were obvious theological and social boundaries that had to be negotiated to create genuine relationships. The interns would have weekly reflection sessions with our supervisor about our work at the agency. Even in this familiar space we struggled with theological issues, both with how to address questions brought up by clients and simply with each other and how we understood the work we were doing. My supervisor, a woman who refers to her upbringing as “Bapti-Costal,” wears a clerical collar, and is covered in tattoos with various Christian images, was quite the contrarian and frequently challenged both the progressive and traditional ends of the spectrum. However, this woman was a prophet if I ever knew one, dedicating her life to those on the margins in Atlanta and demonstrating to others how to do the same. If I had been deterred by these boundaries and not done the work to truly listen to this polyphony of voices, I would not have been able to recognize the many prophets that were among us.
Ezekiel understood these boundaries of communication. Despite the expansive and meticulous description of his vision, Ezekiel does not definitively say, “This is who God is.” Instead he qualifies his description by saying, “This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God.” Let me repeat that, “This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God.” What he describes seeing, though vivid and astonishing, is at least three times removed from actually being able to fully see God. He knew that he was limited in his comprehension of how God appeared to him and the limitations of those to whom he would reveal his message.
And yet, he was compelled to tell his people, who were in deep despair and uncertain about what the future would hold, that God had not abandoned them, but was with the exiles in this strange new world.
The early psychologist and philosopher William James writes about this ineffable quality of mystical experience. In his famous work, The Varieties of Religious Experience, he writes that the mystical experience has the characteristic of not being able to put what one has experienced into words. The sensation of the experience comes first, and it is only afterwards that we try to create an intellectual framework to describe this experience we have to others. This intellectual framework is what we call theology or philosophy. Unfortunately, because humans occupy a wide range of social, cultural, and personal contexts, these frameworks do not always line up. This has been very apparent in my seminary experience, and was a clear challenge for Ezekiel. Ezekiel has many visions throughout the book, and the book of Ezekiel is considered one of the most perplexing books in the bible. In Jewish tradition, no one under the age of thirty was even allowed to read Ezekiel, because they were not mature enough to even approach his theological framework. Ezekiel’s complex visions exemplify the difficulty we have putting our nuanced experiences of the divine into words. And yet, like Ezekiel, we are social creatures and want to invite others to share our experiences, especially those experiences of blessing and grace that give us life. So if others listen or fail to listen, we still must speak our truth.
James also writes in his lecture The Reality of the Unseen, “Were one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.” The religious life consists of not being able to know for sure who God is, but like the wheels of a chariot, constantly moving and adjusting our frameworks to be in better relationship with each other and the unseen order that connects us. This does not mean we abandon our values or try to fit into a framework that does meet our needs or is potentially harmful to our wellbeing. But as I continue to meet other people of faith, I will try to remember that my framework is only one hypothesis out of many hypotheses and part of a long conversation that has continued since the beginning of creation. I will therefore continue listening, so that I do not miss the prophets that are among us. And I will continue to speak my truth, despite, as God says to Ezekiel, the briars and the thorns and those who may not listen, in the hope that I may also be able to reflect the prophetic spirit of God.
May 26, 2019
Shelby Hall
