dream smashing

I've been ruminating on Ezekiel for a month now as we approach the half-way mark in this 1189 journey; and so some thoughts on Ezekiel and Jeremiah, smashing dreams and visions of dramatic restoration...

After earthy Jeremiah, Ezekiel seems so other-worldly, so out of touch.

Jeremiah is among survivors in the land holding on to forlorn hope and dreams that their nation could still make it somehow – just one more political maneuver, just one more alliance; after all, God wouldn’t allow his own house to be torn down, would he? Ezekiel is among an early batch of exiled Israeli captives in Babylon, who are holding on to pipe dreams of their own of a last minute turn-around, the ultimate come-from-behind win that would soon have them all home. Both prophets essentially engage in a prophetic ministry of dream-smashing. False dreams, that is. And each goes about it in their own unique way.

Jeremiah takes the elders of the people to the potter’s house where he literally smashes an earthen pot beyond all hope of reassembly or restoration. God takes Ezekiel on something of a magic carpet ride as he is repeatedly caught up into celestial visions often involving a portable divine throne, a holy dais of sorts, borne about by four creatures with multiple faces, covered with eyes, possessing two sets of wings, and then there’s that whole “wheel within a wheel” thing – all of this being not the literal person and throne of God but “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.” This is a glory that comes to him in captivity; a glory that is dynamic and mobile, not static; a glory that he witnesses departing, step by step, from the Jerusalem temple – explaining its ensuing destruction by the Babylonians. Some five centuries later,that glory would descend once again into a rebuilt temple (another false dream that would be smashed) in the ultimate likeness and appearance of God in the face of Jesus.

Dream smashing.

What an odd (and uncomfortable for most) way to begin the process of restoration in a society. For restoration is the ultimate work and vision of Jeremiah and Ezekiel – and of Christ followers today. It’s where this whole story of creation and fall and redemption and restoration is headed. Gabe Lyons in his book The Next Christians highlights this four beat story and observes that to a large degree Christianity has myopically focused on the middle two notes of “fall and redemption” as if the story were simply about being saved from sin and then ultimately getting out of here. But fall and redemption are only half the story – and his thesis is that the “next Christians” are those who embrace the whole story with all four glorious notes. Lyons describes Christians as “restorers” or restorationists who engage culture as opposed to isolationists who withdraw or collaborators who blend in. He says that such restorationists have a natural reflex to respond to brokenness “as if they see right through the moment and into a future that bears a mystical resemblance to the pristine state of the past. Then they work to create that future. Their unique vision enables them to face some of the greatest problems in our world without even a flinch.”

And here’s the thing. To see right through the moment into a future that bears a mystical resemblance to the pristine state of the past (let’s call this the kingdom of God) requires us to challenge and, yes, smash the false dreams of the present rather than coddling those dreams or showing people how they can incorporate God into those dreams (or worse, as the false prophets of Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s day, to claim those false dreams as being from God himself to begin with). Do I really need to spell out the implications of this for Christians today when we come to the “American Dream”?

To wake up and see what was and thus to engage our current scene not as mere critics but as partners, co-creators with God of what could be, of what is and will be (the kingdom of God!), means the dream we're currently buying into needs to collapse (yes, we need a major "kick"!). And so Jeremiah comes with a commission to “pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow,” and only then “to build and to plant.” He tried to awaken a slumbering generation with the sound of a breaking pot.

And while Jeremiah smashes the pot and is lifted out of the miry pit, Ezekiel in all of his antics is quite literally flying high as he tries to rouse an exiled generation with the dream that should have owned and shaped them from the beginning.

to be continued...