Today’s
Scripture Reading (June 7, 2017): Ezekiel 40
Desmond Tutu once said that “hope is
being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” The thought
was appropriate for Tutu’s divided South Africa. In spite of all of the
darkness, occasionally the light shone through. One moment of light shining
through the darkness that Tutu remembers from his youth also influenced his
vocation as an adult. "One day," said Tutu, "I was standing in
the street with my mother when a white man in a priest's clothing walked past. As he passed us he took off his hat to my mother.
I couldn't believe my eyes—a white man who greeted a black working class
woman!” In that simple action, there was
hope.
But Tutu’s words also appears to apply
well to Ezekiel’s life in Babylon. In spite of all of the darkness, there is a
ray of hope. Ezekiel 40 starts the last prophecy of Ezekiel. For the rest of
the book, we will only hear Ezekiel speak
in the vision. No longer will the man
speak. It is a familiar place for him – a place of comfort and hope in a world
that wasn’t offering much of either. The
year was 572 or 571 B.C.E. The temple, the center of Jewish life and the legacy
of King Solomon who was the last king to reign over a united nation of Israel,
was gone. The exile was in full swing. It had now been a quarter of a century
since the first exile when the best and the brightest had been removed out of Judah. Ezekiel’s last
vision, one that brings Ezekiel a sense of hope in the midst of the darkness,
is of a new temple. This temple has never
been built, and probably never will be constructed – at least not by human hands. The
Temple of Ezekiel vision is of a more metaphorical nature than of stone on
stone. And central to the metaphor is a sense of hope.
Ezekiel is told to speak the words of the
vision to everyone – to share his hope
with his fellow exiles. My wish is that we can do the same. We hold a hope that the world needs. Our hope is of a place that, just like Ezekiel’s temple,
won’t be built by human hands. There is something beyond this space in which we live. Jesus died so that we
could achieve it and his bones are no longer in the grave because he has gone
there ahead of us. We have hope.
What do you hope is going to happen today? In
your dreams, what does this day look like?
It is not an easy question. I wonder if,
for most of us, hope has very little to
do with today. We hope that we are happy, maybe that we don’t meet many grumpy
people. Maybe we hope to laugh at
something and spend time with some good friends. What is your hope for hope for
today? The truth is that we need hope just to get out of bed.
Maybe, like Ezekiel, we can lift our heads and
hope for more. We can hold a hope for
peace and a world that honors even the
“least of these.” This is the fabric of
the hope of the Christian faith. Welcome to hope!
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