During our mission work in Germany, my family were making a visit to a family in the city. It was a snowy day. But since it snows a lot in eastern Germany, you go on about your business no matter the weather.
On this day, the snow had already accumulated on the car, and I reached to scoop a big handful to throw a snowball at my 5 year old daughter. Just as I released my load, I heard a voice from above saying to me in German: “Machen Sie Dass Nicht!” “Don’t do that!” I turned to look up and a woman was leaning out of an apartment window about 4 stories up. She saw me scoop up the snow the car. As I realized what was happening, I answered back to her in German,
“It’s O.K. ma’am. It’s my car.” Hearing my answer, she closed the window and I proceeded to make my visit.
What business did that lady have policing the city streets telling me what I could or couldn’t do? I couldn’t imagine something like this happening in America. This lady really felt it was her social responsibility to protect everyone’s car down on the street. Wouldn’t we frown upon anyone sticking their nose in our business?
This brings us to today’s message: Is it my business as a preacher or as your pastor to tell you when I see you commit a sin? The shoe fits the other way too, doesn’t it? Is it your business to tell me if you see me in a sin? Is your sin my business? Is my sin your business?
WHOSE BUSINESS IS IT?
The most automatic response would be: “Mind your own business, preacher!” But before we all get “huffy” about it, let’s consider what God is telling the prophet in today’s Bible lesson.
“The word of the Lord” has come to the prophet Ezekiel in a very peculiar way. God begins this conversation with a story. He wants the prophet to imagine what it would be like if a sentinel, a look out, were standing on the city wall and sees the enemy coming. Most of the people in ancient world lived outside city walls and would enter when danger came. What should that sentinel do if he sees danger coming? Should he go about minding his business or should he sound the alarm? The answer is obvious. If the sentinel does his job it is his business to give the warning. Should the people not heed the warning and get slaughtered, it’s not his fault. The guilt for their blood will be on their own heads because they choose not to take the warning seriously. If, however, this sentinel does not do his job, when the enemy comes to kill them and they have not been rightly warned, God says, “I will require their blood, their innocent death to be upon the sentinel’s hands.”
Ezekiel may have been thinking: Who is this Sentinel who is supposed to warn the people about their greatest enemy---not an enemy out there, but their own sin that is “lurking at the door”? God answers: “So you, O mortal, I have made a sentinel for the house of Israel” (vs. 7). God has made telling Israel about their “sin” the prophet’s business. We might imagine Ezekiels’ reaction: “But…Lord, I know I should warn these people about their sins, but couldn’t this get dangerous? It’s not only the enemy who has swords. Besides, who am I to define some of them as the “wicked ones’ ( 33.8) as opposed to others as the “righteous ones” (33.12). Can I or anybody, but you really get this nail this down? I know that their sin will hurt them, but their sin can also hurt me. Are you sure this is my business, Lord? This whole “sentinel” business can be more than just a little bit tricky! “
A couple of years ago, it was around November, the weather was getting cooler. Teresa and I were headed out the back door after the final worship service at Flat Rock on that bright, crisp day. As she opened the door to walk through doorway, I looked down and a small brown and black looking snake was lying right on the threshold where the sanctuary and hallway meet. I hesitated about whether or not to warn her. I knew that if I warned her, she might overreact and accidently step on the snake. If I didn’t warn her, she might step on the snake anyway, and I would feel bad because I should have told her. What would you do? Do you keep quiet and hope she misses the snake, or do you warn her and hope she will not step on the snake in all the excitement?
What do you think I did? Well, what would you have done? Knowing how much Teresa feared snakes I didn’t want to say anything. Knowing how much I needed to warn my wife about the snake I told her, but it was right after her foot barely missed the snake. I took the gamble not to forewarn her, and fortunately, for her sake and mine, it worked out. She missed the snake. Then I told her I saw it coming. She responded sharply, “Joey, why didn’t you tell me!” As soon as it came out of her mouth, I knew that was coming. I just smiled, very thankful it all worked out, both in her favor, and in mine. What would have happened if I had yelled “snake!”
You and I have the same hesitation to tell each other about our faults, failures, and sins, don’t we? We especially have that “hesitation” toward those we love. We want to warn them. We want to alert them. But because we fear what their reactions might be, we let things go. We navigate carefully. Who am I to judge? Who are you to point the finger? You know something needs to be said, but you don’t want to be the one. You don’t want to lose the relationship. So, what do we do? In most cases, we just wait and see what happens. We pray that when they take the next step, they will miss the snake.
FOR OUR OWN GOOD
But Ezekiel does not have the luxury of waiting to see what may or may not happen. The snake has already bitten Israel. They are already in Exile. They have already lost their nation. There is no way back. They believe God’s judgment has already come down on them as a people and come down hard. But the question still on their minds is what’s next? It’s the same kind of question many have today, as our own nation suffers economically with way too many innocent victims. Why me? Why now? Does God blame us all for us for what a few of us have done? This question always looms in the background of Ezekiel’s message.
Ezekiel’s job, as a sentinel, is called to shift the responsibility from the nation as a whole to the individual person, now living in exile. It was Ezekiel’s particular “calling” to sound the alarm so that in the midst of terrible national collapse, individuals might have the opportunity to heed the warnings and ‘save their (own) lives”, even though the nation could not be saved. It’s too late for the nation, but it’s not for people to turn back to God. For God is not in the hurting or the killing business, nor is God in the condemning or judging business, for its own sake. God is in the saving business. “The LORD takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel.” (v. 11). God wants individuals to heed the warning for their own good. God wants to save people, one person at a time. But to do this, each person must realize their own person responsibility for their own sin. Hope begins with each person making their own sin, their own business.
It is no different for us today. Most people are smart enough to know that you can’t get up in the morning and simply live your life as you please. This is not life, but its fantasy. But it’s the very kind of fantasyland the wealthy Florida polo club owner believed he had while driving under the influence. Have you heard his tragic story on the news as it has been covering his trial? When he rammed an innocent victim into a swamp and walked away and letting the other fellow drown, he was thinking that nothing would happen to him. He went only living as he pleased without realizing the consequences, he and others would suffer.
I know that fellow was drunk, but he’s still trying to get away with it now that he’s sober. He is still trying to escape taking responsibility. He even adopted his girlfriend to give all his money to her in hopes of protecting his fortune. Oh, yes, he’s a smart guy. But is he really that smart when he thinks he will answer for nothing or can buy his way out of anything. If he keeps on denying what he has done, if he keeps trying to escape the consequences, what he doesn’t realize now is that one day, somebody will one day knock on the door of his heart and say “Hello!”, but there will be nobody at home to answer. Perhaps that’s already happened. If you lose your sense of value, your responsibility for life, your ground of rightness and goodness, and most of all, you lose a willinginess to face up to your wrongs, you may hold on to all your stuff, you may give your girlfriend your money to hold, you might even save your physical life and can buy your way out of jail, but what you will lose in the end is what you need the most and can’t ever buy back--your spirit, your mind and your soul. “What is the profit,” Jesus said, “if a man gains the whole world and then loses his soul?” What will you give to God, when you have no soul left to give?”
Through the prophet Ezekiel, God warned people, that as individuals they cannot keep on living just anyway they want to and still receive God’s blessings of life, hope and love. Life has a moral dimension. Faith is a promise you must keep. The life we live, choose, and the decisions we make (or don’t make) will have real consequences. Our personal decisions not only make us who we are, our choices can also make us into people we may have never intended to be---taking us places we never intended to go. So, when Ezekiel is called as a sentinel to warn the people, he is called to confront them with their sin to help save them from their sin. God does not want for the people to die in their own selfish, wayward, wrongful choices. God has made their sin his business and the business of his prophet for their own good---so they can make their sin, their own business too. Through the prophet God says: “If they turn from their sin and do what is right----they will surely live, they shall not die. None of the sins they have committed shall be remembered against them; they have done what is lawful and right, they shall surely live. (14-16).
HAVING IT YOUR WAY
God makes sin his business, the prophet’s business and even our own personal business, because God wants to save. Confronting our sin is for our own good. But there is one more question needing to be answered: How did they get in this mess in the first place? In their difficult, broken, tragic situation, they are saying what many say: “This is just not fair!” It’s not our fault all this has happens. If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s God’s fault. “The way of the Lord is not just (v. 17).” If God had not brought us out of Egypt…If God had not misled us in the wilderness…If God were not punishing us…If God were not so hard on us…. It is “the way of the Lord” that “is not just”. How do you answer that prophet?
When I was a teenager, one of the biggest theological debates we could ever have was about a certain doctrine “predestination”. The question that focuses around predestination is how much are our steps planned by God, verses how much are we responsible for our own steps. In those days, some people believed God was caused everything. Others believe God gives people free will and that we are responsible for the steps we take ourselves.
I have a close friend who is a Baptist pastor in Blowing Rock, right near Tweesie Railroad amusement park. Once he told me about his ‘Grandaddy’ Potts who was raised Presbyterian. His grandfather came to this country from Birmingham, England and they must have been staunch hyper-Calvinist Presbyterians who had strong beliefs in predestination. But one thing that often trumps religion is love. His grandfather became a Baptist when he married. Later in his life, when Granddaddy Potts was in his 80's, he fell down the steps of his church.
He was coming out of church one Sunday after worship at Riverbend Baptist Church near Bristol, Tennessee. Riverbend is a country church with high concrete steps. Granddaddy Potts took a terrible fall and hit his head. He spent several days in the hospital and weeks resting at home. A few months later my pastor friend, his grandson, paid his granddaddy a visit. They went riding around together looking at the places in the community. His grandson said, "Grandaddy, I was sorry to hear about your accident and I hope you are doing OK."
His answer was a bit disconnected from my offer of concern but very much what he had on his mind. He replied, "Well, it had been fore-ordained since the dawn of eternity that I would fall off those steps on that day."
His grandson said, "Grandaddy, I really do not think God goes around thumping old men off church steps." (Grandaddy was a straight talker about what he is thinking so it is best to talk straight to him as well.)
He said, "I can prove it to you." (The grandson was thinking, "This is going to be good.")
He said, "If I had had anything to do with it, it wouldn't have happened." (sic)
The grandson decided to leave it right there. There was nothing to be gained by going into a theological argument with Grandaddy over predestination. His grandaddy had his own mind and you could not change it. They left it right there.
Do we blame God for the things that happen to us? Just as Grandaddy Potts said, “If I had anything to do with it, this wouldn’t have happened.” That’s what many in Israel persisted on saying, even when it was clear they were suffering from the consequences of their own sins too, not just their nations sins. But the people kept on denying their responsibility, and many of died without hope, not because they had failed, but because they would not see their own sin and do the right thing and turn from it and turn back to God.
Ezekiel would say to them and to us: You just can’t blame it all on God. You just can’t blame it all on Politics, Wall Street, Your parents or anyone else and move forward. If you want to move on from this terrible place you find yourself, you must say, along with the spiritual, “It’s me, It’s me, O God, standing in the need of prayer. It’s not my brother, not sister, but it’s me O Lord, standing in the need of prayer. This is where grace begins, where hope begins, where the new day begins, not with denial, but with the acceptance of our own responsibility in what happens to us. Interestingly, even the righteous are not let off the hook in this. The prophet says, “The righteousness of the righteous will not save them, when they transgress” (v. 12). Ezekiel continues: “when the righteous turn from their righteousness and commit sin, they too will die for it (v. 18).
And the most serious message, from Ezekiel, is that if we fail to heed the warning God brings to us through his prophets today, God will let us have it our way. This sounds cruel at first, but surprisingly, it also the most hopeful message, full of all kinds of new possibilities. For you see, just as God lets his people suffer the consequences of their own actions, in that “the person that sins, shall die” (v. 18:20) he also says, “yet if they turn from their sin and do what is right….they shall surely live, and not die. None of the sins that they have committed shall be remembered against them….” (v. 15-16a! If we will make God’s business, our business, if we take God’s warnings seriously and turn from our wayward paths, we can save our lives, even though the world crumples around us. Hope is never completely lost, when one person will make God’s business, their business. This is, according to the prophet, the way to life. Amen.
