Your mother was like a vine in your vineyard planted by the water; it was fruitful and full of branches because of abundant water. – Ezekiel 19:10

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 12, 2014): Ezekiel 19

The CBS show “48 Hours” has decided to use portions of a four minute voicemail recorded by Danielle Thomas just moments before she was murdered. In fact, it might be that the moment of her murder is caught on the audio tape. The decision to air portions of the recording is a controversial one. Those close to Thomas have no desire to hear the tape and wish that CBS would reverse their decision. However, millions of others most likely do want to hear Thomas’ final words. Maybe it is a sign of our morbid preoccupation with death (even though death is something that in Western Culture we seldom talk about.) But I wonder if the more likely cause is that we want desperately to make sense out of life – and a young woman being killed in the prime of her life doesn’t make sense. So we struggle for details. We want to know the answer to the whys as if in the act of knowing we can make sense of the tragedy. But often it is a fool’s chase – some things just don’t make sense.

We often play the game at funerals. We like to trace the life, we give eulogies (sometimes very long ones) that attempt to give reference to the life that we are celebrating – a life that has now ended. We tell stories of life that are intended to ease the pain, but sometimes seem to just heighten it, especially if the one who has died, did so before their time. All of this is just part of what we do – and they are ways for us to try to move past the tragedies. I do not think that we ever heal from these times of sorrow (I know that I am often reminded of the people who were important to me that have passed away – and always with a fresh feeling of pain), but survival in our world requires that somehow we get past the pain and the sorrow – and get on with life.

In a lot of ways, Ezekiel 19 is a eulogy of a life that is gone too soon. The princes of Israel may remain, but the nation (the mother of the passage) is now totally gone. There is no remnant and no life. And Ezekiel begins to look back over the life of the nation and what he sees is a life that began with so much promise. The vine (Israel) was planted by the water. In ancient times, especially in the heat of the Middle East, a vine had to be planted near water if it was going to produce fruit. And Ezekiel declares that Israel bore fruit – at least for a time.

Ezekiel also describes the vine as full of branches. Israel had been a place where all of the tribes, the descendants of Jacob, were able to find life – and maybe more importantly peace. There was no violent breaking off of branches on the vine – at least not until the Assyrian captivity for the Northern Tribes and now this snuffing out of Judah by Babylon.

But what had started off with such potential had now ended. All that is left is the cries of the princes in a place that is not their own. It is a sad story of life ending early and of promise never being fully reached. But the story is supposed to be sad, after all, it is a eulogy being given at a funeral, it is the last words being recorded on tape before an untimely death. We are not supposed to find good things here – this passage is all about potential that has ended before it’s time. And Ezekiel’s final words of the chapter remind us of this single focussed reality - “This is a lament and is to be used as a lament.”  (Ezekiel 19:14)

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 20