Ezekiel 18 "Blame and Grace" Scott Hoezee

Their lives became a nightmare last year. For Wayne and Katherine Harris and Thomas and Susan Klebold life as they knew it ended on April 20, 1999, when their sons Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold mowed down thirteen classmates before turning their automatic weapons on themselves. Suddenly the name "Columbine" went from a place few had ever heard of to a national metaphor for all that ails society. For the Harris and Klebold families, however, Columbine was no metaphor. It was their heinous reality.

But then, a scant five weeks later, still reeling in grief and no doubt numb from the surreal circus their lives had become, these two sets of parents faced still more horror: they became the targets of a $250 million lawsuit brought by the parents of victim Isaiah Shoels. But are these parents liable for what their sons did? Can they be blamed?

Mr. Michael Shoels surely believes so. "My son is dead! Who else do we blame?" he thundered in a speech given last fall in Brooklyn New York with the Rev. Al Sharpton looking on. Mr. Shoels' lawyer, Michigan's own Geoffrey Fieger, also believes the parents are wholly culpable and so should be punished.

Clearly, this is a debate and a legal question that is far from being settled. Can one generation be blamed for what another generation did? Should the legal system operate this way? Does God? Clearly many of the exiles in Ezekiel's day believed so. In that day there was even a proverb to that effect--a proverb so well-known it gets quoted almost word-for-word in both the Book of Ezekiel and the Book of Jeremiah. "The fathers eat sour grapes, their children's teeth get set on edge." In that time this catch-phrase was as well-known among the Israelites as today's slogans like "Just Do It" or a proverb like "What goes up, must come down."

"The fathers eat sour grapes, their children's teeth get set on edge." What does it mean? Well, it was the Israelites' way of carping against what they perceived to be God's grossly unfair practice of sending them into exile because of what their ancestors had done wrong. In other words, it was not only something they thought was just generally true of the way God operates but it was also a clever way to get themselves off the hook. "We didn't do anything wrong! It was our parents who did it, but we're getting the punishment!"

Why did they think this way? Well, obviously this was a self-deceptive way by which to look innocent (when really they were very guilty themselves!). We'll return to that aspect of this passage in a few moments. But first let's grant that there are some aspects of the Bible that appear to lend credence to the notion that God punishes people as much because of their association with past sinners as for their being sinners themselves.

After all, isn't one of the overarching doctrines of the Judeo-Christian tradition the idea that we are all born with "original sin"? And doesn't that doctrine claim that, without our ever having done a single wrong thing ourselves, we are simply born with sin? Further, don't we claim that the source of this guilt and misery gets traced clear back to what Adam and Eve did? Maybe they represented all of humanity and so what they did affected everyone who came later, but we never elected Adam and Eve to represent us. We didn't ask them to be our stand-ins! We didn't tell Eve to bite into the fruit! Yet although God punished Adam and Eve, most of the bad results of this sin which you read in Genesis 3 had as much to do with all of us who came later as it did with those two at the time.

Plus, doesn't God say in the third commandment that if someone takes his holy Name in vain, he will punish "to the third and fourth generations"? That sure sounds like an illustration of the fathers eating sour grapes and their children suffering the consequences.

So although the Israelites were clearly trying to be sneaky in coming up with and quoting that proverb about the sour grapes, we should not be too quick to label that entire line of thought as biblically preposterous. There is in Scripture a strong corporate element. Happily, as we've noted before, it works the same in both directions. "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive." Either way or both ways, however, it does appear that the generations can affect one another across time.

Ezekiel opens this eighteenth chapter by saying that God has heard this proverb on the lips of Israelites all over the place. And he doesn't want to hear it anymore! God here says not only that this proverb does not apply to the Israelite exiles, it's not an accurate proverb in general. It's not just that the current generation of Israelites had themselves been spiritually immoral people, it's also that God never operates the way the proverb claims he does. This entire chapter is one long diatribe against that entire way of thinking.

The bulk of this chapter consists of three parallel panels sketching out three fictional generations. Verses 5-9 conjure up a man who lives a wonderful life of holy deeds. He shuns idolatry, impure sex, and cruelty. What's more he actively engages in deeds that promote justice: clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, being fair in his business dealings. This man is saved by virtue of his being so fine and God-like an individual.

Well and good. But then in verses 10-13 we get the negative image. This man has a son who, as children sometimes do, refuses to have anything to do with his old man's lifestyle. Instead he worships false gods, sleeps with whomever he pleases, and does whatever it takes to get ahead in life, always and only watching out for Good Old #1. This son gets the comeuppance that his lifestyle deserves. He cannot draw off the bank account of his father's moral merits. He, like everyone, is on his own, with only his own deeds to show for himself (and in this case, to be punished for).

Verses 15-18 trace generation number three as the first man's grandson returns to the ways of grandpa. Unlike his own father this lad does it all right again in God's sight. But far from being punished by virtue of sharing the same genetic code as his father, this third man is rewarded for the same reason grandpa was: because his own life showed a love for God and also for God's imagebearers in the community around him.

This is all so straightforward, so very much a scheme of simple "tit for tat" that you could wonder why Ezekiel goes to such great, exhaustive, vaguely tedious lengths to make the point. Each person suffers for, or gets blessed for, what he or she personally does. The wicked get punished, the righteous get saved. Those who had once lived well but then turn some dark corner get treated according to what they had become, not according to what had once been true long ago and far away. Similarly those who had once been real scumbags but who then turn some bright corner to become saints who pursue justice and purity get rewarded for what they had become, not punished for the lowlifes they had once been.

In short, God is not unjust and he does not blindly ignore the peculiar shape of any given person's life in favor of imposing on that person the reputation of some less-than-savory ancestor. "It is not I who am unjust" God thunders in verse 25, "but you! I dole out punishments only to those who deserve them. So if you are now enduring a dark period of punishment . . . well, you figure it out!"

But beyond the mere tit-for-tat nature of all this shines something else. The Israelites had come to view God as some ogre who actually enjoyed being cruel. This was so much the case that they had come to believe that with a kind of fiendish delight God ricocheted his punishment from one generation to the next. It was as though God so enjoyed zapping sinners that he dished out way more than was deserved. God, in the popular imagination, had become like some galactic bug zapper: a purplish light that shined in the darkness only to lure people to their soul-frying doom!

But woven into Ezekiel 18 are several lines which make clear that God hates not just wickedness but having to punish the wicked. "I take no delight in dealing with evil people," God cries out. "I want people to be saved. I want you to be saved. My door is always open, including for you exiles. The covenant has not been abandoned, the promise of life abundant has not been withdrawn. It is nurturing life and a flourishing of shalom that is my heart's desire. So change your own ways and I'll show you just how lavish I can be!"

In general, what Ezekiel 18 sketches for us is a universe hemmed in by grace, radiant with the divine desire to save, yet also a universe with plenty of room for people to flee from that grace. Justice exists. Evil will not be ignored but dealt with. Blame may not get assigned to the innocent, but it most surely will not be avoided by the guilty.

That is very simply the message of Ezekiel 18. There is no missing it. But if by now your mind is not joining my mind in fairly screaming at how all of this appears to contradict the notion of salvation by grace alone, then you are missing something after all! We Calvinists have been, not to put too fine a point on it, rather uncompromising in claiming that getting saved is not a matter of God's observing the shape of our lives and only then rewarding us with eternal life. Salvation, we say, is not a matter of reward and punishment but of election and sovereign grace.

So what do we do with a passage like this one? Martin Luther is said to have intensely disliked the Epistle of James because it seemed like James said we are saved not just by faith alone but also by virtue of what we do. Luther is even said to have once been tempted to throw that part of the Bible into his woodstove. By that token you rather suspect Luther would be tempted to wire explosives to something like Ezekiel 18!!

The clear-as-crystal fact is that this chapter presents God pretty much the way the world conceives of how things go salvation-wise. Having just come through another Christmas season we are all well aware of the Charles Dickens story about Scrooge and of its common, underlying notion that so long as Scrooge remains crotchety, stingy, and mean, he'll go to hell encumbered forever with chains. But when Scrooge wakes up a new man, sends a Christmas goose to Bob Cratchet's house, and actually turns into a pleasant soul to be around, then--and only then--is Scrooge "saved."

The good go to heaven, the wicked go the other way. It's all based on the relative merits of the life you lived. Yet Paul claimed it has nothing to do with that. Jesus seemed to operate on the same principle, which is why he did not wait for tax scoundrels like Zacchaeus to clean up their acts. He was kind to them first and only then did their lives turn around. And anyway, we know that in this life no one is perfect such that if God grades on the curve (much less if he requires perfection), we are each of us done for.

Well, as it is, in the balance of this sermon I am unlikely to completely crawl out of the hole I just dug for myself, so I'll stop digging to ask again: what do we make of this chapter? Although redolent of justice and in accord with the common sense way by which most people conceive of salvation, Ezekiel 18 nevertheless seems to fly in the face of the gospel of the New Testament. So what can we say? Let me throw out a few ideas.

First, at minimum this chapter serves as a shining illustration of what was said in this morning's sermon: namely, the true God of the Bible always unsettles us, startles us, and bursts our limited abilities fully to grasp him. Chalk up Ezekiel 18 as one of the harder-to-fit pieces in the Bible's larger jigsaw puzzle of the divine mystery. This chapter does not and need not wipe out the "grace alone" message of the gospel, but it may remind us not to presume on the grace of God.

In a sense this passage delivers both warning and hope. To those who think that grace means you can live however you wish, Ezekiel 18 reminds us that God is not blind. He does pay attention to life on this earth. Also, he's not unjust. Somehow, some way, when the cosmic day is done, we can be well assured that the books of justice will balance. Whether that is through the death of Jesus, the direct punishment of all sinners, or some combination of both, we can be assured that anyone who, like the Israelites in Ezekiel's day, alleges that God is inherently unjust is flat out wrong.

But to those who feel trapped by sin and evil, this chapter brings hope. It's never too late. Grace and divine compassion abound in such hyper-abundant quantities that there is no sin that cannot be blotted out. The past need not determine our future and the future is not locked up. God's door is never closed and he fairly pleads with all to come in, including maybe those who, again like these Israelites, are already enduring the less-than-wonderful fallout of their own sins. We should not presume on the grace of God, but neither should we forget it! It is the universe's hope.

Life matters to God. This creation matters to God. This morning we thought about those who today say things like, "Why would it possibly matter to God whether a person goes to church or not?" The idea seems to be that the real God is too lofty, too high-minded and ethereal to either notice or much care about such mundane things. But Ezekiel 18 reminds us that God cares very much for things like business practices and the charging of interest on loans. God cares whether or not we do something about the poor and homeless around us. Some today claim that God could not possibly be concerned with what people do with their sexuality. Of course he is! God sees the needy, the homeless, the policies of corporations and banks, the bedroom as well as the boardroom. And it matters.

When we bring Ezekiel 18 into dialogue with the stunning New Testament revelation that God himself, in the person of his Son, died for our sins, we perhaps would do well to nuance this chapter. Our sins do not have the last word because God took those same sins onto himself. But what such an inter-testament dialogue must not do is repeal the revelation that life, this life, matters to God and so how we live it should matter also to us. The last word of this chapter is "Repent and live!" That's exactly what God wants for all people: he wants them to live! He wants them to flourish! He wants them to do well, to do good, to be happy in the shalom he himself invented. And what's more, he wants that flourishing to begin, as much as possible anyway, not in the life to come by-and-by but right now.

We have not tied off every loose end this evening, have not answered every serious question that arises in our hearts when we read a chapter like this in the light of the New Testament. But perhaps we've seen enough to realize that this is another biblical illustration of God's being on our side and on the side of the creation generally. For all its cross-currents this is a chapter which concludes with "Repent and live!" And in that sense at least it is not so very different from something our Lord once said: "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will not die." Just so. Amen.