A Thing for Rebels--July 9, 2024

A Thing for Rebels--July 9, 2024

[The voice of God] "said to me, Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have belled against me; they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day. The descendants are impudent and stubborn. I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, 'Thus says the Lord GOD'." [Ezekiel 2:3-4]

It turns out that God has a thing for rebels.  Or maybe, more accurately, God has a soft spot for the covenant people of God, and it means that God will stick with them and keep bearing with them even though they have a track record of rebellion, stubbornness, and being just plain ornery.

I need to make that clarification, because I don't mean to say that God likes it when we rebel or turn away.  This is nothing like the "Good Girl in the poodle skirt falls in love with Bad Boy in the leather jacket" trope of movies from the 50s. It's not that God gets infatuated with rulebreakers because they are cool or mysterious or provocative. And it's not like the Star Wars movies where being part of the "rebellion" is actually being on the side of goodness, justice, and freedom from the Evil Empire. It's more that God loves us as we are, and that means God has made the choice to love us even when we are in the act of rebellion, even when we have covered our ears, and even when we have turned away from God.  God has a thing for us... even when we've been heart-hearted and hateful in response.

That's one of things I really love about the way our friend Ezekiel tells the story of his calling as a prophet, here in these words many of us heard this past Sunday.  Ezekiel knows he's being set up for rejection, and that by most accounts he will look like a failure.  Ezekiel is one in a long line of prophets and truth-tellers God had raised up to call the people back to faithfulness, to justice and mercy, and to loving God and neighbor.  And ol' Zeke knows that the message of prophets had never gone over very well with the people.  Most prophets were ignored and shunned at best, or run out of town or killed at worst.  

And most of the time, people didn't listen to what God had to say through the prophets. Going back to their earliest memories in the collective storytelling of Israel's history, the people of God remembered their own story as one of repeated stubbornness, constant defiance of God's good will, and repeatedly turning away to other, lesser loves--the gods and idols of the nations, their own wealth or military power, or the lure of a powerful nearby empire as their protector, and usually all of the above.  In other words, God didn't keep bearing with the people of Israel because their track record was typically good, except for a few occasional lapses in judgment; God kept bearing with them in spite of the fact that they kept blowing it and repeatedly dishonored and disrespected God.  So neither God, nor the prophet Ezekiel, is under any illusions that the people will be eager to obey this time around.  Past experience tells both God and the prophet to be prepared to meet with rejection yet again.

And yet... God doesn't give up.  And so neither does Ezekiel.  

There is something deeply beautiful about the way God keeps loving us, despite the fact that we keep rejecting God's love and rebelling against God's good ways.  It's an unrequited love story, but it's a love story all the same.  And for whatever else we might say about "the people of God," we have to at least admit that God's people are not known for their faithfulness to God.  Just the other way around, actually: it's God's faithfulness to the people that makes them God's people, not our reputation of good behavior.

In a way, then, it shouldn't surprise us at all that Jesus makes such a point of surrounding himself with notorious "sinners," sellouts, mess-ups, and scandalous outcasts.  Jesus doubles down on God's approach from centuries before, deliberately seeking after the people who have consistently rejected God's ways and run away from God's goodness.  Jesus' kind of people are sinners, because that's the only kind of people there are.  And our belonging doesn't depend on our track record of faithfulness, but on Jesus' consistent love.

To be sure, there's a place for us to have a conversation about why and how that kind of love does change us.  And certainly, God's desire is NOT for the people to keep rebelling and ignoring God's good directions for their lives.  God wants the people to choose wisely and well, and God wants them to say "Yes" to mercy and justice and goodness and neighborly love.  But it's worth noting that Ezekiel goes out to his people with that message, knowing full well that it's likely to be answer with a door slammed in his face or a bunch of angry rock-throwers.  And yet he goes anyway, because that's the way God loves: vulnerably, persistently, and faithfully risking that the people will be rebels once again.

Before we worry about what we're supposed to do or how we are supposed to act and look like "holy" people, this is where we begin: as people who are relentlessly loved even when we are repeatedly rebellious.  And our belonging as God's people has everything to do with God's choice to claim us, rather than our attempts to earn a spot on the team.

That's just the way God's love works--God has a thing for rebels.

Lord God, let your love find us where we are and as we are, and let it turn us back to you away from our rotten rebellions.