Restorationists

And the name of the city from that time on shall be, The Lord is There. Ezekiel 48:35

Ezekiel was off-putting to me at first.

Perhaps it’s just because I so identified with the earthiness of Jeremiah; his miry pit and tears and running debate with God; with his (for me) effective redefining of what a real, successful ministry looks like (a bit counter to what is in vogue amongst us). I greatly identify with Jeremiah’s teary and earthy groanings!

But then comes Ezekiel with his spectacular, technicolor dazzling light show – so seemingly ethereal and detached and “out there.” It was actually hard for me to get into it on many levels this time around. But ultimately, the other-worldly notes he strikes complete this combined symphony he shares with Jeremiah beautifully. Both prophets do their share of “dream smashing,” and both hit the notes of future restoration; what I noticed this time around is how Jeremiah excels in the former, while Ezekiel soars in the latter. It was hard for me to make the transition at first (perhaps I’m not alone in that). I like the drama of smashing a pot – but these weird visions are another matter beginning with the first vision “of the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord” that leaves many confused and others speculating about everything from LSD to UFOs.

And then the coup de grâce: the final vision occupying the last nine chapters of Ezekiel – a section through which in my own dullness I’ve generally had to repeatedly poke myself to remain alert while reading it. It feels like Exodus again. Not the dramatic chapters of plagues unleashed, of bondage broken, of a sea parted, of an oppressor routed, of a people freed. No, it’s the more tedious (to me) chapters of tabernacle description and construction. Back again in the land of many cubits.

Why all the minute details? Outer court and inner court, east gate and north gate and south gate, vestibule and priestly chambers, altars and sacrifices. Many get lost in all the details – details not nearly finding their fulfillment in the reality of the rebuilt temple of Zerubbabel – or even in the gloriously refurbished and refinished temple of Herod (finished practically days before its complete desolation). Old timers wept at the foundation of Zerubbabel’s rebuilt temple years after Ezekiel’s time; it just didn’t measure up to Solomon’s before or to the expectations of Ezekiel’s vision. Herod’s temple had the style and flash, but when it went up in flames, so did any thought that this was it either. So, many of us await another temple; we call it a millenial temple, and proceed to eschatological debates over timing and scenarios. And while I have no problem with a millenial temple or anything else that God wants to build during a future millenium or at any other time, I see something much bigger, much closer.

Ezekiel was measuring a dream. And like his first vision, I wonder if this one also is but “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.” What was so vividly taken away from them and destroyed is now vividly re-envisioned with a glory that caused even Solomon’s to pale. It may not be the dreamscape we would envision and design as dream architects, but Ezekiel’s vision on his mountain is a marvelous extrapolation of Moses’ vision in Exodus – a vision which gave Moses a working plan to build something that would reflect the heavenly pattern he had seen upon his mountain.

In Ezekiel’s temple vision, I see more than a meticulous plan for a future temple that we are all waiting to happen some day (and in the meantime, we’ll happily fill the time with arguing over how and where and when, or even engage in political manouverings to make it happen). This temple vision is not merely an eschatological curiosity, an end time’s bone thrown to an impatient crowd lined up outside the door; it’s a call to overt action rather than merely passive viewing. It’s a vision that sustained a generation of returning Israelites as they returned home and built up the waste places of what was once home. The temple vision is a vision of restoration – a restoration of justice and righteousness and truth and beauty and holiness. A restoration begun by a generation of returning Israelites; a restoration continued now in our generation, our culture, our time in present day followers of the Prince who has come.

Another interesting intersection.

Friends had me sit down with them and watch the 2007 film Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. I would never have suspected an Ezekiel connection. But there it was. (I’m not going into detail about that film, you’ll just have to watch it if you wish to fully appreciate this paragraph). Mr. Magorium sees seemingly endless, colorful, kinetic, kaleidoscopic possibilties where others see only a plain block of wood. The “Mutant” blindly calculates numbers, while children’s eyes see magic unfolding right before them and they enter joyously into creative play. Replace Mr. Magorium and the children with us, magic with the kingdom of God, and the toystore with the big, wide world all around us, and you just might see Ezekiel’s ever deepening river flowing through your own neighborhood. Through ghetto streets and red light districts and war zones and famine & disease stricken lands. And “wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes.” Ever deepening holiness, spreading everywhere. Through us. Unstoppable.

We’re not talking about escapism, wishful thinking or even wild-eyed imagination. We’re talking about Elisha eyes that instead of barren hills see the surrounding mountains filled with divine possibilities and then call those divine possibilities into being (prayer) through our own creative acts in engaging with our culture and our world (faith expressing itself by love). And even the dead-end Salt Sea becomes Galilee with such a diversity of teeming life that the Great Sea looks on with envy. The most arid and brown landscape has treelined streets whose branches are filled with life-giving fruit, and the very touch of their leaves brings healing. And there is always a tree. Always. Fully repenting of our first parent’s sin, we turn from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and it withers away. Always do we reach for and share the fruit from the growing forest of the tree of life. It’s shade is never far, its fruit always near.

How sad to keep this temple vision bottled up as we debate its contents.

How sad to think of this primarily as a river other there, some day.

The river is here, and the forest is spreading.

I look out my window. I see the man or woman standing on the street corner holding a sign. I see today’s headlines. I see my own daughter in her wheelchair. Do I see the river? Will I move in its currents? Will it flow from within me to the pain that I encounter daily? Or does the bitterness of a Salt Sea seemingly rising to high tide still sting and blind my eyes?