KEEP READING! Just because there is a little Bible in it doesn’t mean it boring or stupid!

Text: Ezekiel (Hebrew Scripture)

I myself will take a sprig

from the lofty top of a cedar;

I will set it out.

I will break off a tender one

from the topmost of its young twigs;

I myself will plant it

on a high and lofty mountain.

On the mountain height of Israel

I will plant it,

in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit,

and become a noble cedar.

Under it every kind of bird will live;

in the shade of its branches will nest

winged creatures of every kind.

All the trees of the field shall know

that I am the LORD.

I bring low the high tree,

I make high the low tree;

I dry up the green tree

and make the dry tree flourish.

I the LORD have spoken;

I will accomplish it.

Growing up in Indiana,
in a city
but always closely associated
with farmland,
backwoods, and just plain Hicksville,
I am often appalled
at the ignorance of my city-kids.
Sometimes my children say things,
or ask things
that tell me how far from my roots
they grew up,
and all I can do is shake my head in disbelief.

Not only do they not know about hoeing,
they don’t know how easy or scary it is,
to get lost in a cornfield after early July,
or even how differently hay
smells from alfalfa.

I realize none of that matters a whole lot;
except that it was such a huge part of my life
that I take for granted
other people close to me,
like my children,
know what I know.
But that is always a big mistake.

When we do not know
what one another knows,
it becomes difficult to share ideas,
language,
and take for granted
common understanding.

If we did not know, for example,
when Ezekiel was writing,
there is no way we could know
what the heck he is talking about.

If we do not know
what Ezekiel knows,
then all we are left with
is a slightly interesting poem
with a plant grafting metaphor.

I will try to make this as interesting as possible,
because, believe it or not,
what happened in 597 BCE
and Ezekiel’s commentary on it,
has something we desperately need in it.
Like the rapidly disappearing
Amazon rain forests,
from which potent natural medicines
could be lost forever,

Ezekiel holds a human secret
we simply must have
in order to survive and,
if survive,
thrive.

So picture some Hollywood version
of a world dominated by the Babylonian Empire,
and the infamous King Nebuchadnezzar.
I mean the name itself,
Nebuchadnezzar,
was enough to infuse the air with fear.

Descriptions of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace
tell of a long, elaborate hallway
leading to the throne room
where King Nebuchadnezzar received
heads of state and emissaries
from all the vassal city-states
and nations he had vanquished
and enslaved.

The hallway
was longer than a football field,
and adorning both sides,
for the full length of the hall,
were huge, elaborate
chiseled and painted scenes of battle.

Each panel
told the story of a Babylonian conquest.
Each scene
depicted what happened to the vanquished.
Some of the scenes
revealed in gory detail,
punishments meted out
upon rebellious kings from conquered lands:
Heads on spears fencing a city laid to waste,
bodies flayed,
which is a nice word for skinned alive,
women and children ravaged and enslaved,
just to mention a few choice depictions.

The point of displaying such carnage
in this particular hallway,
was that those waiting to see Nebuchadnezzar
had to shuffle along a slow moving line
through these scenes
blaring like billboards on either side.
The message projected
was one of power and might,
as well as threat and warning.

I mention all of that because
Ezekiel is writing his lovely little poem
while shivering under the shadow
of the Babylonian Empire
and threats from King Nebuchadnezzar.
You see,
we need to know what Ezekiel knew
if we are going to discover
what he wants us to know.

Here is what happened.
Jerusalem had its own king
and had been a sovereign country
for about four hundred years –
twice as long the United States
just to put it in context.
In the year 597 BCE –
this is not mythology now,
this is history,
and it took place exactly
two-thousand, six-hundred and nine years ago.
In that year,
King Nebuchadnezzar
overpowered the tiny kingdom of Judah,
and then imprisoned its king
in exile in Babylon.

It is doubtful Judah’s defeated king
walked down that hallway I just described,
because he was more likely
just thrown in a dark, dank prison.

Then Nebuchadnezzar,
after dispatching the true sovereign king,
enthroned his own choice for king,
a local nabob named, Zedekiah.
Zedekiah sat on the throne
in Jerusalem for ten years
feeling more important than he actually was.
But for the entire decade he was there,
Egypt,
which was not under the influence of Babylon,
but also not the empire it once was,
kept sending emissaries to Zedekiah
to blow up his ego
like a water balloon.
Egypt kept promising Zedekiah,
that if he joined Egypt’s global initiative
and rebelled against Babylon,
then it, Egypt,
would send armies and, together,
they could be a great “coalition” force
to defeat the dreaded enemy.
Then, the Egyptians promised,
the world would be free;
Zedekiah would be a real king
instead of a puppet for Nebuchadnezzar;
and all would be right with the world.

So finally, in 587 –
ten years after he was set up
as a puppet king –
Zedekiah attacked the ‘dark Lord’
and initiated a rebellion against the evil empire.
But wouldn’t you know it,
the Egyptian army never arrived.
Oops.
The bad guys came swooping in,
destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem,
sacked and burn the city,
probably doing a lot of beheading and flaying,
and took Zedekiah and his whole family
back to Babylon.

No doubt
they marched them down that hallway,
on the way to meet
Nebuchadnezzar on his throne.
In fact,
they likely became one of those scene
on the hallway,
because here is what Nebuchadnezzar did.
In front of Zedekiah,
as he stood powerless,

Nebuchadnezzar had both of Zedekiah’s sons
sliced to death by the sword.
And then,
as if that was not bad enough,
he had Zedekiah’s eyes cut out
so that the last thing he saw
was the death of his sons.
Then, he threw Zedekiah in prison
to be forgotten and die.

As word filtered back to Judah about Zedekiah,
with Jerusalem still smoldering in ruins,
crops and orchards burned into coals,
bitterness and grief lining graves in the rock,
Ezekiel writes his little ditty.

Now we know what Ezekiel knew:
that everything around them was in ruins,
that brutality and violence defined their lives,
that the few
with power and money and weapons,
controlled the destiny of the many,
and that God,
who was supposed to be powerful and just,
was allowing it all to happen.

And knowing what he knew,
Ezekiel wrote his poem…
of hope.

From the lofty height, he wrote,
of the tallest, most powerful tree,
God will clip the most precious,
tender new shoot,

and plant it on the highest mountain.
And it will grow,
and it will become so vibrant and luscious,
that it will shelter every creature in its arms.

Ezekiel’s message was clear:
it ain’t over,
and God, not Nebuchadnezzar,
has the last word.

Now we know what Ezekiel knew.

In the midst of a temple of healing,
a life-saving physician of great promise
abuses and murders a woman
he supposedly loves.

On a shady quite street,
a drunken driver
snuffs out the life of a skateboarding teenager.

On a street not far from Trinity,
or over on Grider at Mozelle,
a drive-by shooting can penetrate
the thin siding of a house
and take away the life
of a grandparent or child.

In a nation that promises
freedom and dignity for all,
prisoners are kept on an island we stole
and now occupy,
without due process
and with the scars of torture,
and all in the name of Patriotism.

In a nation of great wealth,
millions and millions of children
live in poverty;
millions and millions of children
receive sub-standard education;
millions and millions of children
receive poor health care; and
millions and millions of children are fed ruinous diets.
AND, at the same time,
we spend,
you and I and our fellow citizens,
$570 billion MORE
on our military than the nation
that spent the next most: China.

In other words,
the global leader of the so-called free world
impoverishes
and economically oppresses its own people,
while spending almost as much
on weapons of death
as the rest of the world combined.

Let’s get our minds around
that piece of darkness,
so we can get deep into the mind of Ezekiel:
We spend
almost as much money
as the rest of the world combined,
on weapons of destruction –
mass destruction and otherwise.

If that were not dark enough,
we go around the world
assassinating people at will,
knowing ahead of time utterly
innocent people will be collateral damage.
We do not need a hallway
like Nebuchadnezzar built,
because the rest of the world
already knows what we do.

So…we are the victims of violence:
near our homes,
in our homes,
in our hospitals,
in our schools, even in our churches.

And we are defined by violence:
everywhere we go in the world
we are known for our violence,
and the sale of the weapons of violence,
and the perpetration of violence
for whatever we deem is our self-interest.

And now we know what Ezekiel knew
when, instead of writing of his despair,
he voiced hope.
Did you catch it?
What Ezekiel knew
even in the midst of the darkness?

Okay, let me make it
even more clear.
Let me go back to hoeing,
though I know it seems a total distraction.

When you hoe,
especially if you are hoeing brick dry earth
that has not been tilled for a long time or ever,
it is hard, hard painful labor.
Every rock in the earth
sends shock through your arms.
Every heave of the hoe
and its downward thunk into the ground,
is a pull up from your groin
and a jerk down from your back.

Every bite of earth
the hoe breaks apart
seems infinitesimal in comparison
to how far you have to go,
and how much earth you have to break apart
one small blade full at a time.

If, when you begin hoeing the garden or field,
you look to the distant edges
to see where you must hoe,
your heart will sink
and your WILL to begin shrivels
into nothingness.
You will have to talk yourself
into that very first whack
because your own two feet
and that small, hand-width blade
at the end of your wooden handle,
seem much too

Blisters will form on your hands,
and they will bleed.
Dirt and rocks will get into your shoes
and it will make you angry.
The sun will burn your flesh
no matter how you try to protect it.
Your bones and joints will ache
and your sinews will burn.
You will think of all the machinery
that could have done this job
without your hands bleeding
and without your back bending in pain
and without your mouth and nose
dried out like a potsherd.

And when you have finished,
you will look back and see…
dirt.
All you will have accomplished
for your troubles and pain
is dirt broken open and left in disarray.
But know this:
if you do not hoe,
you cannot plant;
and if you do not plant,
you cannot grow;
and if you cannot grow,
you will not eat;
and if you do not eat,
you will suffer and die.

Where in there is hope?
Hope is the only thing that keeps you hoeing
when you bleed.
Hope is the only thing that keeps you hoeing
when you ache.
Hope is the only thing that keeps you hoeing
when you want to quit.

Hope is not wishful thinking.

Wishful thinking
would be to set down your hoe
and wish that the planting could take place
without the work being done.

Hope is when you know
that if you keep working at it,
the reason and purpose for your labor
will come to fruition.

Hope is when you know
that if you quit there is nothing ahead
but suffering and death.

Hope is when you know
that even though it is bad now,
and there seems to be nothing but hard,
painful labor
for a long time to come,
you keep going because the future
holds a new possibility.
So now we know what Ezekiel knew.

Now we know why,
flattened underneath the jackboot of Nebuchadnezzar,
Ezekiel could still voice hope
when everyone else
could only wail in despair.

Religion and spirituality rooted
in wishful thinking
will cause us to give up,
quit hoeing,
and wish for a better outcome.

Religion and spirituality rooted in hope
will cause us to keep bleeding,
keep sweating,
keep aching,
keep breaking apart the earth
one stupid clod at a time…
until we are able to plant what needs planting
and grow what needs growing,
and so gather what gives life.

It is easy to forget
how many Ezekiel’s we have had
in our sacred tradition.
They are amazing,
and they carry gemstones to us
over years and miles,
and deliver them into our cupped hearts
if we allow it.

I think about people like the Lutheran pastor,
Dietrich Bonheoffer
who was hanged by the Nazis only six days
before the end of WWII,
and who wrote book-length notes
from his prison cell
about a future Christianity that would grow up, and,
as he said, “Come of age.”
He hoped as Ezekiel hoped,
and kept on hoeing
even unto death.

I think of Bishop Tutu of South Africa,
still a fierce warrior for justice and freedom
even as he is ill and aged,
hoeing and hoeing and hoeing.

I think of Sister Joan Chittister,
one of the best known Benedictine sisters
who will not be cowed by authoritarianism,
and who keeps hoeing and hoeing and hoeing.

Hope acknowledges the darkness,
it looks into the eyes of empire,
it sees the ills and the injustices all around,
and keeps hoeing
and keeps hoeing
and keeps hoeing.

That is what hope is
and that is what hope does.

Now…
what are you going to do?

©R Cameron Miller