Memorial of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Priest and Martyr

Lectionary: 417

Thus says the Lord GOD to Jerusalem: By origin and birth you are of the land of Canaan;

your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.
As for your birth, the day you were born your navel cord was not cut….

Ezekiel gives us some of the most graphic images in the Bible, and lessons that should stick to us even if we’re not paying attention, even if we wish he’d use nicer expressions!

Today’s parable of the unfaithful bride is especially memorable. He begins with crude reminders: Jerusalem, you are a native of Canaan and your parents were different races. In the southwest United States the word is mestizo; white men might call them half-breeds. The word bastard is not far off. Unfortunately, contempt for mixed-race persons is neither new nor just an American thing. Christians should rid our minds and our language of this contempt for God’s image.

Adding more disgrace to his metaphor, Ezekiel compares the exiled Jewish people in Babylon to discarded infants. That too, is no rare phenomenon. This link to Safe Haven Baby Boxes tells the current story of efforts to save abandoned infants. SHBB recognize that bad things happen in our world and they would relieve young mothers of shame and blame as they offer a helpful alternative to a crime of desperation.

Israel is a discarded, mixed-race infant! The prophet can use no worse language as he tries to bring his people to repentance – until he takes a different tack.

He reminds them of the privilege they were given; they were found, rescued, adopted, and betrothed to the Lord God of Heaven and Earth. They had no claim upon the Lord except their pathetic wretchedness. Had the Lord walked on by no one would know and no one would blame him for it. Why should the Majestic, Magnificent One stoop to this indignity? But God claimed them for himself with pure, unnecessary, undeserved, unearned generosity. He poured upon them unimaginably splendid blessings:

You were renowned among the nations for your beauty, perfect as it was,
because of my splendor which I had bestowed on you,
says the Lord GOD.

But you were captivated by your own beauty,
you used your renown to make yourself a harlot,
and you lavished your harlotry on every passer-by,
whose own you became.

Many of us suffer a phobia around shame. Some parents, teachers, and older siblings use it carelessly, thoughtlessly, and cruelly on children for no apparent reason. Helpless, the innocent suffer obsessive thoughts that torture them years and decades beyond their childhood. If the abusive language is salted with religious imagery, the injury is worse; seemingly incurable.

In such a case, the individual’s response to passages like Ezekiel 16 are fight, flight, or paralysis. They get angry, shun religious teaching, or attempt to hide their thoughts, feelings, and presence from others. They cannot experience Ezekiel’s invitation to repentance even when they know their sins are real and their predicament is dangerous. Some have, in fact, resorted to drug abuse, prostitution, and suicidality to escape the burning sensation of shame.

That was certainly not Ezekiel’s purpose.

Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you when you were a girl,
and I will set up an everlasting covenant with you…
when I pardon you for all you have done, says the Lord GOD.

Ezekiel would have us know God’s goodness, and we should feel gladness at God’s kindness. If we think of ourselves at all, it will be with grief and shame. But turning to the Lord like Mary Magdalene to her Rabbouni, we are flooded with joy. God is good, all good, supreme good.

Ezekiel invites us to ecstasy, that complete forgetting of oneself, as he experienced by the river Chebar.  He invites us to let that self-forgetting ecstasy guide our thoughts, words, and actions toward generosity, courage, and compassion. We have sinned; we have done evil in God’s sight; but with Ezekiel’s vision flooding our vision, we remember only God’s goodness.