"A DIFFICULT TASK"
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 9)
July 8, 2018
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
"Son of Man, I send you to the people of Israel, to nations of rebels, who have rebelled against Me. They and their fathers have transgressed against Me to this very day. The descendants also are impudent and stubborn: I send you to them, and you shall say to them, 'Thus says the Lord God.'"
Ezekiel 2:3, 4 (ESV)
Quite a number of years ago, in the humor section of TheLutheran Witness, I read where a pastor suggested that the best way to get rid of those telemarketers who always seem to be calling at dinnertime is to start telling the caller about Jesus. The writer guaranteed that this would be effective. I don't know how humorous the item was, but I was troubled by what this says about people's priorities. It says, first of all, that the average person is far more willing to try to talk a stranger into buying something than he is to talk to a stranger about the free grace of the Savior. It also says that the average person will react so negatively to a Christian message that he'll hang up rather than listen to it. When I say that these revelations trouble me, I'm not at all denying that they are true. They indeed are true, but they're troubling.
Proclaiming the message that God has given to His people has always been a challenge. Even the Holy Scriptures concede that it's not easy. In the Scriptures we read about Moses, the servant of the Lord, in frustration asking the Lord to kill him so that he wouldn't have to put up with the people's constant whining and complaining and rejection anymore. In the Scriptures we find one prophet after another being rejected and persecuted. In the Scriptures we see the Son of God Himself--the One who came to seek and to save the lost--being rejected, betrayed, ridiculed, beaten, humiliated, tortured, and killed. To this day we can see all around us that the clear Word of God is rejected again and again in favor of whatever the current trend may happen to be. The Lord who called Ezekiel also calls us to speak for Him, not only in the world at large, but also among His own people. He is very honest and clear about both the difficulty of the task and the strength available to us to accomplish it.
The task of speaking for God is so difficult because of the attitude of the people to whom we are called to speak. The Lord described them to Ezekiel as "nations of rebels, who have rebelled against Me." This rebellion is not by any means a recent development or a passing indiscretion, for the Lord says: "They and their fathers have transgressed against Me to this very day." What's more, they are "impudent and stubborn," the Lord tells His prophet. Are the attitudes of the people to whom we are sent any milder? I don't think so. If anything, people today are even more hard-hearted about hearing the Word of the Lord than they were in Ezekiel's time.
What makes the task of proclaiming God's Word even more difficult is that very often the people to whom we are proclaiming it--the people who are so "impudent and stubborn" in their rejection of it--are people who are supposedly God's people. Ezekiel wasn't being sent to heathen lands; he was being sent to the Israelites--the chosen people of God--to urge them to repentance. People today who are believers (or Christians, if you will) often turn a deaf ear when they hear you urging them to repent. They suffer from what at least one modern Christian writer has called the "children of Abraham syndrome." And what is that? In the eighth chapter of John's Gospel Jesus speaks about His truth setting people free. The Jews protested that, as lifelong children of Abraham, they had never been slaves to anyone and therefore did not need to be freed. Many lifelong Christians today do the same thing. They don't think they need to learn anything, because they got it all in confirmation class. They don't think they need to repent, because that's for all those other people--all those "sinners" who haven't yet repented. Preaching the Word of the Lord to those who know it well is far more difficult than preaching it to those who have never heard it before.
This is a difficult task, to be sure, but not an insurmountable one. The God who called Ezekiel and us to this difficult task also provides us with the means to accomplish it. The ultimate strength that God gives us when He sends us out to speak in His name is the power of His Spirit working in the Word. Ezekiel is not told to speak his own word to these "impudent and stubborn" Israelites; he is told to tell them what the Lord says. The Word of God, particularly the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is a means of grace--a tool that the Holy Spirit uses to bring the saving grace of Christ to lost sinners. It is the Word that converts people, changing them from God's enemies to His children through the mercy of Jesus Christ. "I am not ashamed of the Gospel," writes Paul the apostle, "for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16). And the Lord, through the prophet Isaiah, says of His Word: "It will not return to Me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it" (Isaiah 55:11 NIV). There is power in the Word of God--power that equips us as God's spokesmen to proclaim it with confidence.
The power to perform the difficult task of speaking God's Word to people who don't particularly want to hear it is also seen in the fact that we are sent out to do this work in name of the Lord. Doing things in the Lord's name brings with it an awesome responsibility, but also a great comfort. When we speak in the name of the Lord we had best make sure that what we are saying is indeed His Word and therefore worthy of His name. But at the same time, we can rest assured that when we speak His Word in His name, He Himself is speaking through us. When we realize that, we also realize that we don't need to take it personally when the Word that we speak falls on deaf ears or is met with hostility. When people reject us because of God's message that we proclaim, they are really rejecting the One in whose name we speak.
The Lord has called you and me--all of us who through Baptism bear the name of His Son--to speak for Him in our world--to alert people to their sin and to tell them of their salvation in the crucified and risen Christ. He has also called us to speak His Word--the Law and the Gospel--to one another. It's not by any means an easy job. The Lord has made no secret of how difficult this task is. The Scriptures as well as the history of the Church testify to the kind of treatment people who speak for God can expect to receive, and very often that treatment is the worst when it comes at the hands of fellow believers. But as difficult as the task may be, it can be done by us, because the Lord who calls us has given us the power of His Word and Sacraments, as well as the power of His name, as we go about this work. The cross of Jesus that we preach is the salvation of the whole world. It is especially our salvation. We can share it with others, boldly and confidently proclaiming His Word in His name with His power, because it is His Spirit who does it--through that very Word of the Gospel that He has placed in our hearts and on our lips.
Amen.
May the Lord bless your hearing of His Word, using it to accomplish in you those things for which He gave it. May you be enriched and strengthened in faith that you may leave here today to go out into our world armed with the whole armor of God, prepared to be able ambassadors of your Savior Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it. Amen.