Ezekiel 3:1–11

“Eat this scroll, and, go speak!” That Ezek 3:1–11 is not in the Common Lectionary is a sure sign that the lectionary was not constructed with preachers in mind. If it were up to me, I would decree that this text be inculcated into every preacher. They would not be forced to eat it, but they would need to be able to perform it in occasional Sunday sermons.

Ezekiel is a challenge for contemporary exponents of the Word for two main reasons:

Ezekiel is consumed with God-talk, whereas many of us are in churches that would rather talk about themselves. My teacher, Brevard Childs, speaks of Ezekiel’s “stark theological understanding” and “radical theocentric perspective.” ¹ With Ezekiel’s prophecy, it’s all divine either/or. God is not so much the covenant-maker or creator as a commanding, fiery figure atop a huge throne/chariot. Perhaps that is why God addresses Ezekiel as “Mortal” (93 times), thus stressing the distance between addressor and addressed, the great gap between the people of God and God.

Ezekiel’s prophetic speech is metaphorically charged, full of allegory, symbolic acts, visions, and ecstatic pronouncements of the sad news of coming exile and doom in a bold prophetic attempt to awaken and convict hardheaded Judeans. Stephen Cook says that is one reason why preachers neglect Ezekiel; the prophet’s “baroque, bizarre, and even offensive images.” ²

Everything in this passage is cast in terms of command/obedience. This God is apodictic and indulges in no gentle persuading: “Eat!” “Go!” “Speak!” Nor, Ezekiel finds, is there any possibility of negotiation or moderation. Extreme times, as well as a demanding God, combine to call forth exaggerated, over-heated rhetoric. For a modern analogy, Karl Barth’s lectures on homiletics sound like bizarre, opinionated, eccentric thoughts written by an exclusively bibliocentric preacher determined to ignore both his congregation and the contemporary context. Angela Dienhart Hancock suggests that Barth’s homiletic is incomprehensible to us because it was addressed to the Nazi-leaning professors and students to whom he preached and lectured in Bonn. ³ Sermons for audiences in extreme situations require theological focus and distinctive speech that does not arise from the preacher but rather via the command of God.

I have never eaten a scroll, but I and my fellow preachers have ingested thousands of pages of Scripture, so that we feel kinship with Ezekiel. Note that Ezekiel is not commanded to put the text in critical perspective, nor told to reconstruct the originating historical context, nor to do linguistic analysis of the text. He is told to wolf the text down as if it were his last meal, to chew on it like a cow chews her cud, to allow the text to settle deep in his gut. It is preachers’ peculiar vocation to have the text we thought we were consuming actually consume us.

I have also found, like Ezekiel, that my first delicate sampling of a piece of Scripture might taste like honey while I’m safe in my study, but it tastes terrible when that same text is preached to a hostile congregation. The word that comes to Ezekiel comes only for the purpose of being delivered. We are not simply reading a text; we are reading Scripture that is completed only in its public, communal, command performance.

Recent studies of homiletics suggest that our challenge in today’s world is to speak to people who communicate differently than through our outmoded pulpit rhetoric. Thus, preachers should be “culturally relevant” to our hearers’ social situation. It is not enough to speak God’s Word; we must be “hip” and technologically savvy. However, note that the God who commissions Ezekiel asks only obedience.

I love that the Lord who commands speech is not sentimental about the reception of the Word. Though Ezekiel shares his hearers’ language and culture, his sermon will probably not be truly heard. Lack of enthusiastic audience reception has nothing to do with Ezekiel’s inadequacies as a communicator or his failure to contextualize his comments; rejection is a predictable reaction to truthful, God-induced speech. The prophet is reminded that these resistant knuckleheads are “your people.” We meet no defiance to the Word among our congregations that we have not first encountered in our own hearts. Our backs bend under the burden of the same message we are attempting to lay on them.

One way to tell the difference between a true God and a false god (idol) is that a God both loving and true will always be rejected by a rebel congregation full of ossified hearts and hard heads. The prophet has no responsibility to force people to hear or to struggle to adopt some sure-fire, knock-down, successful mode of preaching. The same God who calls the prophet to speak knows what it is like not to be heard. God adds, “whether they hear or refuse to hear” (v. 11). Congregational response does not determine the fidelity of the prophet. Fortunately, the Lord equips the prophet with a doggedly persistent, stubborn disposition that is even tougher than his or her peoples’ hard heads. A “hard face” (v. 8), a head “harder than flint” (v. 9), and determined insouciance in response to spiteful “looks” are undesirable leadership traits in many professions, but not that of prophet.⁹

Preachers can hear gospel within Ezekiel’s prophetic commission to deliver bad news to Judah. Among clergy so often burdened by the unhappiness of our people, it is good news that we are not commanded to speak words people like; we are told simply to tell the truth. What a blessing, in a culture of lies, to be working for a true God who manages to combine grace and judgment, love and truth.

And one more thing: there is a blessed freedom that comes in preaching what we have been told to preach, by being clear with ourselves and our congregations that we are under severe external authorization. Our speaking is ultimately validated not by how we feel about it or by how well our congregations hear what we say, but rather by the fiery One who has commanded us to preach.

As demanding as service to this God can be when we are led into a text like Ezekiel 3 in our peculiarly exilic times, it is at the same time hopeful service in the name of the Holy One whose sure intention is “to cause breath to enter” (37:6) bones bleached nearly to despair by servility to our own whims and to the whims of our culture sure beats servility to our own whims or the whims of our congregations.