Sermon for 17th Sunday after Pentecost – Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

Who watches the news a LOT more than you used to? I do. When the pandemic first hit, I started leaving the news on all the time, because I wanted to know more. In a lot of ways, it’s good. I feel a lot more informed, and I guess knowledge is power. But at the same time, it’s exhausting. There’s not a lot of good news out there. So many problems that we don’t understand. So many arguments. People I’ve known for ages saying things that I never would have expected and it makes me feel like I don’t know them the way I thought. Do you ever wonder how we got to this point?

How did we get here? That’s what the children of Israel wonder in our Old Testament reading. The story starts back in Jerusalem, where there’s been a line of self-serving kings with their own agendas, abuse of power, corruption, and folks abandoning God for all sorts of idols. Maybe this sounds familiar? So with Jerusalem falling apart, Babylon seizes the moment. They conquer and cart off thousands of folks back to Babylon. The Babylonian Exile. But they don’t take everyone. Just the movers and shakers. The folks who have power and like to use it. The smart ones, because Babylon figures they’re useful. And here they are, confused and traumatized.

How did we get here? Well, we know God’s chosen people have a track record of rebelling. So God keeps sending prophets like Ezekiel to preach. Repent and return to the Lord, or be swept away into exile. Well, guess what? Here we are, where we don’t want to be. Do they repent? Of course not. Remember, these were the folks with power and self-confidence. They’ve got answers for everything. But not this. So they cling to a proverb. “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Our unrighteous ancestors set us up to fail! Now, before we judge them, consider the facts. Jerusalem was already a train wreck for generations. God sent how many prophets, and it wasn’t enough. But didn’t God even say to Moses, “I visit the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” Strong words. Terrifying, even. We know the choices we make today affect everyone who comes after us, but who has a crystal ball to see what shakes out? No one wants to hear this from God.

But when we’re overwhelmed and feel stuck, when we can’t figure out how we got here, something happens in our hearts. Desn’t it feel a LOT better to be a victim than a perpetrator? How about righteous anger? That’s even better. It feels like control. So no surprise, we hear the exiles protest. “The way of the Lord is unfair.” But God’s fed up, so God commands Ezekiel to preach. “Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way unfair? Is it not your ways that are unfair? When the righteous turn away from their righteousness and commit iniquity, they shall die for it; for the iniquity that they have committed they shall die.” Basically God commands the exiles to stop passing blame and own up to their own unrighteousness. God says, “The life of the parent as well as the life of the child is mine: it is only the person who sins that shall die.” Now, this kind of sounds like good news, like God’s relenting and saying no, you’re not really the sum of your ancestors. You’re a free agent by your own merit. But here’s the problem. God doesn’t walk back what was said to Moses, and God’s not being contradictory. Both are true, and that’s bad. God’s really saying they’re guilty for everything. Sure, they’re guilty for seeking their own selfish ways and alienating each other instead of caring for their neighbors, but they’re also guilty for not dismantling the legacy of injustice that left Jerusalem broken and ripe for the taking. It’s like Jesus says – “No city or house divided against itself will stand.”

What about us? Maybe this story is more familiar than we want to admit. We know about cycles of violence when folks who were abused become abusers. We know about folks born into generational poverty, and how often the zip code we grew up with has a lot to do with where our lives go. We know about the ways our legacy of slavery plays out in the racial injustice that’s exploding around the country every day. Heck, let’s put climate change on the table too. Is anything off limits? We’re paying for the sins of our ancestors, and that’s terrifying, because we don’t really know how we got here. And it’s hard to find answers when we’re so polarized and political. Everyone’s an enemy. Who can we really trust? But here’s the thing – if we’re this alienated from each other, how much more alienated are we from God? What if all of this is our own exile, where we’re more worried about personal rights than about our neighbors. And if we speak out, how do we really know the difference between fighting injustice or just craving to prove we’re not a part of the problem? God tells Ezekiel “I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God.” Yet, we’re surrounded by death.

But even if we don’t know how we got here, thank God someone has come to rescue us. Jesus, God’s only Son, who graciously comes to us as our friend and our savior. Jesus sees the truth of who we are, and still he graciously binds all of our sin, our politics, our confusion, and even our regret to his own body. All so that by his dying and rising he binds us to the power of his resurrection. Because he refuses to let us be exiled or alienated any longer. Not from him or from each other. He’s had enough, and now he’s going to do something about it, by doing something TO us. Not with threats or commandments, but by filling us with the spirit of repentance.

Now here’s the thing. We always misunderstand repentance. We think it’s the thing you have to do in order to be forgiven, because otherwise forgiveness doesn’t work. But Jesus doesn’t wait for us to be ready, because we never are. He comes anyway, and tells us “I forgive you all your sins.” By this in the power of the Spirit, he actually repents us. He changes our minds and hearts because we couldn’t get outselves together. Makes us to see the kingdom of God, because what’s the point of forgiveness if it doesn’t create something new? And we know exactly how we got here.

So Jesus shows us what this all looks like. A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father? The first. How? He’s not obedient. He said no. He’s not guilty, because Jesus would have said so. No, it’s repentance. That new mind and heart that drives him into the vineyard, because that’s just what you do. And the other son? The one who doesn’t keep his word? Well, for as much as the gospel of Matthew loves to threaten with weeping and gnashing of teeth, none of that here. Just open possibility and reason to hope, because God always gets what God wants.

As God tells Ezekiel, “Know that all lives are mine.” Us, our neighbors, and especially our enemies, the folks whose politics we hate. The folks who just don’t get it. But they will. I mean, if Jesus can repent folks as stubborn as us, how much more will Jesus do with them? Thanks be to God.