Plot Twists: Reflecting on Israel and Palestine, 2021
I wrote this as a sermon for a congregation in Ontario, Canada on May 22, 2021.
If the Bible is to be a living thing, if we are to claim that God lives, then we have to be inventive, prophetic, and adaptable. By “prophetic”, I mean pulling back the curtain on reality. Examining the inner workings of the watch to understand what makes it tick. On the lectionary calendar for today are these passages from the Hebrew Bible’s book of Ezekiel and the Christian New Testament’s book of Romans. I will do what I always do—apply them to what is happening today. In particular, the passages are Ezekiel 37:1-14 and Romans 8:22-27 and today’s issue is what is happening in Gaza.
Here is the passage from Ezekiel:
The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
So I prophesied as I had been commanded, and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them: Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.”
And from Romans:
We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. And God, who searches hearts, knows what is the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
SERMON
“In 1948, some 80% of the Arab inhabitants of what became the state of Israel either fled, were evacuated, or were deported. The real number is around 250,000-300,000 people. Between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Palestinians call this “al-Akbar” which translates as “the disaster” or “the catastrophe.” Some have called it “ethnic cleansing.” Arabs around the world commemorate al-Akbar every May 15. The first Israeli government prevented Arabs from returning to their homes or claiming their property. The lack of a right to return or to be compensated remains an open sore among Palestinians; deportations continue.
“Among the justifications for the state of Israel is the theological, biblical premise that Jews are God’s chosen people and has promised his people a political homeland.
“To evaluate Ezekiel in light of this often-challenged premise, we have to ask two questions: who was Ezekiel and what was his context? First, Ezekiel was the son of a priest in Judah and thus part of the Judean elite which lived mostly in Jerusalem. He was reared on orthodox Yahwistic theology. In other words, he was reared on Yahweh’s promises to the Israelites including the blessings emanating from the covenant forged at Sinai, God’s unwavering commitment to the house of David, and the inviolability of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the location of Yahweh’s Temple which could not be overwhelmed. At least not according to orthodox belief. Ezekiel was forced to reconsider his orthodox belief, however, when Babylonia defeated Judah; Jerusalem fell in 586 BCE.
“Following Babylonia’s victory, its king carried out a massive deportation of Jerusalem’s elite including the king, the king’s mother and wives, other officials, the warriors, artisans, and smiths in addition to thousands of other captives. Ezekiel was among them. The commander of the Babylonian forces systematically destroyed Jerusalem including the royal palace and the looting and burning of the Temple. Apparently, however, some of the elite stayed behind; his occupiers gave the nobleman, Gedaliah, a position of leadership. He used his position and the authority that went with it to call out to those captives who had been hiding in caves and the desert, telling them to return to their homes where they would exist under the overlordship of Babylonia. Gedaliah promised them they would enjoy wine, summer fruits, and oil while living in their old towns and old homes. He promised them a tenuous peace and a bartered paradise.
“God’s people or not, Ezekiel had nothing but contempt for those who remained behind, collaborating with Babylonia and, perhaps, shifting their allegiance to Babylonian deities.
“More to the point, I think, in the context of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple which orthodoxy insisted could never happen, Ezekiel had to reinvent Yahwistic theology. That which could not happen, not on God’s watch, had happened. There was no way around it. Ezekiel had to deal with it. He had to subject his own theology and his God to a radical critique. His ability to critique his own religion and his own God in light of what was actually happening on the ground is what makes his pronouncements so important. In this, he was dazzlingly inventive as his prophecies showed. He was what we might call contentious, antagonizing his audience, inviting their disapproval and their arguing. In his contentiousness, he had a purpose: he was laying out a strategy by which God’s people could once again be worthy of the name.
“Let’s jump over to Paul’s letter to the Romans before we look more closely at Ezekiel’s dry-bones vision. Paul wrote his letter in about 57-58 CE, a scant 8-10 years before the Second Temple, the rebuilt Temple, was destroyed again. Jerusalem and its Temple were never secure under foreign domination.
“Paul was a Hellenistic Jew. In other words, he was a Jew religiously but culturally he was Greek rather than a Hebraic Jew. Counterintuitively, he speaks of “adoption” in Romans 8 at the same time he speaks of the “birth pangs” a woman experiences groaning and waiting for new life to be born. In the real world, experiencing birth pangs is not part of adoption. A woman experiences birth pangs if she has been pregnant, but if she adopts, she has no birth pangs at all.
“This is a plot twist on a theme common in the Bible. I've often noticed that whenever a pregnant woman shows up, the authorities get anxious. There is an inventiveness here, this plot twist. Someone else has birth pangs with an adoption, not the family into which someone has been adopted. Unless, of course, you are willing to expand on the meaning of "birth pangs" as meaning something other, something more than literal birth pangs. Despite DNA and genetics, does the adopted one become an authentic member of the family? Plot twist!
“By the same token, Ezekiel is offering a plot twist on a theme: that Yahweh, Jerusalem, and the Temple are unconquerable-unconditionally unconquerable. He has to make theological adjustments in light of contemporary developments. He is inventive.
“In his vision, the Spirit plops him down in the midst of a valley filled with bones. The Spirit leads him all around the bones, showing the bones from every angle to Ezekiel. Clearly, something terrible has transpired. There has been some sort of catastrophe endured by mortals and so much time has passed since the catastrophe that not only has the breath or spirit left the bodies but also their skin, their flesh, and their sinews are gone. They are good and dead.
“The Spirit then asks a nonsensical question, "can these bones live?" to which Ezekiel responds ambiguously, "you know." Astonishingly, God then commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones! God tells him what to say to the bones: "I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord."
“More astonishing still, step by step the bones began to come back to life rattling noisily as bone re-attached to bone! Sinews form as did flesh, and skin covered the whole. But the bones were not alive. God spoke another order to Ezekiel: prophesy to the breath! Prophesy, Mortal!! Prophesy! Say, "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." As soon as Ezekiel obeyed, the slain came to life, stood up, and were a great multitude. If the dead, the good and dead, being re-membered and brought back to life is not a plot twist, then I do not know what is.
“Another thing to think about is Ezekiel's audience-he was a Jew dealing with a catastrophe and basically yelling about it to other Jews dealing with the same catastrophe in a public setting. They were a live audience, standing in front of him or perhaps surrounding him, probably yelling back at him, debating him all the way. It is unlikely that his condemnation of them, which is what this vision is about in its broader context, made him likable. He may not have been likable, but he was obedient and maintained Jerusalem had been destroyed because of the Jews disobedience to God. It turned out that God wasn't the same today as yesterday, He wasn't the Jews' pet rock, He wasn't an idol to be manipulated. His protection was real but it was contingent. It was contingent on Jews' own decisions. This seems to have been Ezekiel's point of view, a point of view born of a catastrophe both spatial in terms of land and deportation and theological in terms of having to adjust his view of Jerusalem, the Jews, and Yahweh if he were to remain faithful. Being faithful to God insisted that Ezekiel be theologically inventive.
“What does all of this-Ezekiel's vision of dry bones living brought into contact with Paul's idea of adoption-have to do with the horrible situation in Palestine today?
“I want to propose that context is everything. I want to propose that it is now the Palestinians who are the people about whom Ezekiel prophesied, i.e. it is they, not the Israelis, who have experienced deportation and forced exile by a power militarily greater than they; it is they, not the Israelis, who are the ones whose Jerusalem has become politically contested and which they seem to be losing; it is they who are surrounded, cut off, and in danger of losing not only their lands, their homes, and their families, but of losing any context for hope. The Palestinians are now those looking to be adopted, to be made a bona fide part of God's family. I do not in any way mean to suggest they should become Christians, although many are. I mean it is they whom God is looking out for like a mother hen caring for her children. The Israelis have become Babylonia and Rome. They are those with whom the largest military power on earth, the United States, has formed an unholy alliance for reasons having nothing to do with obedience to God.
“We should not deceive ourselves. God really and truly cannot be mocked. We sow the seeds of our own destruction when we do. There needs to be among us a serious plot twist. God is calling us now to be visionaries, to re-imagine our God, to re-invigorate our faith, to create a context for hope for those civilians in both Palestine and Israel where little seems to exist, to look out for those who, like orphans, few seem to be looking out for, caring for them as much as we do for our own blood kin. Can we do that? Can we imagine a plot twist? Time will tell.”
END OF SERMON
UPDATE:
As of today, I have seen no evidence of any sort of plot twist, only an escalation of the Israeli assault on Gaza. I have escalated my language to reflect reality: Israel, with the aid of its patron, the United States, is committing genocide. 35,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered. Disproportionate numbers are women and children. All the universities are flattened as are the hospitals. Starvation is spreading.
Can these dry bones live? Will Gazans experience true global adoption? I see little evidence of any sort of timely plot twist.