Eat my scroll
We left Ezekiel yesterday at the end of chapter one face down on the floor, completely overwhelmed by the awesome glory of God.
Now he is ready to listen. Now he is ready to trust and obey.
God calls on him to stand up. To find the courage to stand before him. The spirit raises him up. God has a role for him to play. He is no longer to be a priest, but a prophet.
Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have been in revolt against me to this very day. Ezekiel 2:3
God stresses the rebellious bit. He reminds Ezekiel five times that the people are rebellious. Obstinate and stubborn. That although they are not a foreign people and do in fact speak the same language as Ezekiel, they will not listen. They will not take any notice of what he says. But whether they listen or not, they will know that a prophet has been among them.
God uses the phrase ‘son of man’ to address Ezekiel four times. In Hebrew, this word is ben Adam. Son of Adam. It means human being. It reminds Ezekiel of his humanity and his place before this mighty God.
‘Do not be afraid’. Three times God says this. Which implies there will be danger – something to be afraid of.
Do not be afraid.
And do not rebel.
So first of all, eat this scroll. A scroll of lament and mourning and woe.
Eat this scroll? Really? How weird is that?!
It’s symbolic. An act Ezekiel will never forget. The word of God was always going to be in him for this task, but this would be a visual reminder for those moments when he doubted he had the words to say. He’d eaten the words! The words were inside him!
God’s word is sweet. As sweet as honey.
The decrees of the Lord are firm,
and all of them are righteous.
They are more precious than gold,
than much pure gold;
they are sweeter than honey,
than honey from the honeycomb. Psalm 19:9-10
Now Ezekiel is ready to go to God’s people in exile and speak His words to them. Whether they listen or not. And God will give him the strength and courage and determination he needs.
But I will make you as unyielding and hardened as they are. I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Ezekiel 3:8-9
As the spirit whisks him away, he hears a loud rumbling sound. It’s the creatures and wheels from his vision. He’s reminded of the glory of God.
Before he’s left to sit among the exiles at the Kebar river for a whole week. Deeply distressed. And bitter and angry according to verse 14.
He doesn’t want this role. He didn’t choose this. And God has filled him with words of lament and mourning. He sees how rebellious the people are, how this role would not be necessary if the people had only listened. How none of this would have been necessary – the destruction of Jerusalem, the exile…
Bitterness and anger are a natural response to the cruelty and screwed up values of the world we live in. As is deep distress. We’ve had glimpses of the glory of God. We can glimpse how the world could be, how individual lives could be changed, how we ourselves could be transformed. The more we know (and eat – ingest, chew over, swallow, digest, derive energy from) God’s word, the more we see and understand how things could be. How things should be.
It doesn’t stop there, though. Like Ezekiel, we have a role to play. We have to stand up and stand out. Speak up and speak out. We have to be different. We have to let the world know there is a better way – God’s way – whether anyone listens or not. We do it anyway. We cannot control the response. That’s not our responsibility. Our responsibility is to show God’s love in action over and over and over and over again. Regardless of the response.
