Ezekiel 34:11-12 For the Lord GOD says this: “Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep and look after them. As a shepherd cares for his flock … so I will care for My sheep and will rescue them. (NASB)
Ezekiel was a man on a mission. And his mission was to get a job working in the temple. He had spent fifteen years studying to become a temple priest, which is longer than all the years of elementary, middle, and high school combined. He was so close to finishing his education and was just about to start his new career the moment he turned thirty. But before he came of age, the Babylonians arrived and everything changed.
It was sort of like leaving one school in the middle of the year and starting all over at another one. Only it was worse, a lot worse. Because Ezekiel wasn’t just switching schools or moving with his family to a new town to start a new job. He was taken away from his home by an actual army that bound his arms and made him walk hundreds of miles.
And what he saw along the road to Babylon gave him nightmares. The soldiers were not only strong but also cruel. He’d seen them let women and children starve to death. They threw rocks to hurt people and spat on them, and called them names. And so by the time Ezekiel arrived in Babylon, he already hated it.
But Ezekiel wasn’t just angry with Babylon. He was angry with his own people, too. He thought the family of Jacob had brought this tragedy upon themselves. There were warnings, so many warnings. There were prophets, so many prophets. All they had to do was listen and be better, and this would never have happened. But they didn’t listen, and they weren’t better. The family of Jacob fought and lied and cheated and oppressed the poor and worshiped idols and broke God’s commandments over and over again.
And so it was no wonder that God had not protected them from Babylon. Why would he? They were not wonderful. They were not even special. They were just normal, rotten, selfish people, like everyone else.
And so one day in Babylon, while Ezekiel was feeling particularly sad about everything, he went for a walk, sat against a tree by the side of a river, and cried. You see, he was sad because it was his thirtieth birthday, and no one was there to give him a cake or light candles. And as he cried, he imagined what he would be doing if he were back home.
He’d be preparing for his first day as a priest at the temple. It would have been the culmination of all his work, study, and effort. And people would come to see him perform the rituals. And they’d clap and maybe talk about what it all means and how it points to God.
But now, he’d never present anything for anybody. Now, he was a stranger in a strange land with no ritual to perform and no temple to perform it in. And as he was crying and feeling sad, that sadness seeped into his body, and he must have fallen asleep because he started to dream. And in his dream God spoke to him.
And even though it was just a dream, it felt real, so real. More real than any dream he’d ever had. Ezekiel felt warm, bright, powerful, and loved, just like you feel on your birthday when your family gathers round to sing you a song. And when Ezekiel woke up, he thought that it must have been sort of close to an approximation of what it might kind of have felt like to have been a priest at the temple, basking in the warmth of God’s presence.
And Ezekiel woke from that dream with a new hope for the future and a new vision for himself. Maybe he would never be a priest at the temple, but that didn’t mean he’d never perform for a crowd. So that night, Ezekiel began to pray to God for inspiration, and God inspired him to write plays — small one-man performances he could do on a street corner. And people came to see this new, first-of-its-kind entertainment.
Ezekiel started with something simple. He began by building a miniature set of Jerusalem, and then just as he finished the model, he tore it apart. It was dramatic and shocking, and the message was straightforward. The people clapped and talked together about the symbolism. And for a moment, Ezekiel smiled.
Inspired by his success, he tried something more daring. It was a long-form public art performance. It went like this: Ezekiel lay on his side, ate food cooked over dried dung, and kept doing this for weeks and weeks. The commitment to his art brought new crowds who came to see just how long he could keep doing this. But as the performance dragged on, as the weeks stretched into months, the audience dwindled.
So Ezekiel returned to a more traditional length while incorporating the personal commitment that had become the hallmark of his art. He was his own canvas, his own puppet, his own prop. This time, he shaved the hair off his head and then cut that hair into little pieces, and threw the pieces in the wind. Everyone watched as the hair dispersed into a million shards over Babylon. And the people wondered at how quickly it all disappeared. And then they thought about how they were like that hair, scattered over the earth. Whatever it all meant, they enjoyed how it made them think.
Then, Ezekiel decided to try a surprise performance. Just as the sun was setting, he broke out of the side of his home and ran away into the night. It was a hit. The people cheered and talked for a long time about what it might have meant. “I guess we will never know,” they said. But to Ezekiel, the art communicated a clear message, so he came back and told them what the play had symbolized.
And in all his performances, Ezekiel reminded the people about Jerusalem. He wanted them to remember where they had come from, because he had dreams of going back someday and rebuilding the city: the homes, the streets, and of course the temple. Except in his dreams, it was all newer and bigger and prettier than it had ever been. And the people were better, too, better than the family of Jacob had ever been.
And in his dream city, Ezekiel saw a river coming out of the temple. And the river spread across the world. And as it spread, the water healed oceans and brought trees, and fish, and life wherever it went. And the river was growing ever wider and deeper. First to the ankles, then to the knees, then hips, then chest, and finally too deep to do anything but swim.
And Ezekiel called his dream city, “The Lord is There,” because that’s what he hoped for more than anything. He wanted to feel it again. That feeling he had beside the river, on his thirtieth birthday. Even if it was just sort of close to an approximation of what it might kind of be like to be with God, it was enough.
And I wonder if maybe, just maybe, Ezekiel did not just dream God was with him on his birthday when he was sad and all alone. Maybe it really was God. Maybe it was more than an approximation of sort of what it might kind of have been like at the temple in Jerusalem. Maybe God followed the family of Jacob out of the temple, through Jerusalem, and all the way to Babylon.
Maybe God wasn’t trapped in a past golden age or some future paradise. Maybe God was not just the God of beautifully perfect people. Maybe he didn’t just care about the most righteous and most deserving. Maybe he even cared about the people who were only just approaching an estimation of being kind of close to good enough. Maybe even dried bones were not beyond his reach. Maybe he was coming for the family of Jacob. Maybe he already had. Maybe he was there now, weeping with them by the rivers of Babylon.
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