SEITZ PART TWO

Meditation 3: "Ezekiel - False Teaching in the Israel of God"

For thus says the LORD God, Behold I, I myself will search for my
sheep and will seek them out. I will seek... I will rescue.... I will
bring.... I will gather.... I will feed.... and I will myself be the
shepherd of my sheep (Ezek 34)

The New Testament gives full testimony to the challenge of faithful
leadership in difficult times. There is the challenge of the culture,
and this had an acute face for two reasons. Jesus was a Jew, and the
first Christians saw themselves as coming into a relationship with
Jesus and with the scriptures of Israel which promised his appearing
and which set forth a pragmatic and concrete way of life. Just as this
way of life had distinguished Israel from her neighbours, so too it
sharply distinguished Christians from their pagan culture. Gentile
Christians knew themselves to have been delivered from darkness, or as
Paul puts it, from being without hope and without god in the world.

The second acute challenge was an internal one. Those who had been
brought near, had been baptized, had been placed in leadership, were
constantly challenged to stand firm in Christ. This meant not falling
back into a rigorous but self-contained Judaism (this was attractive
for Gentiles as much as for Jews) nor treating the claims of Christ as
negotiable in the face of pagan culture. We know that Gnostics came and
went in their so-called Christian deportment, and the neither-god-nor-
man Jesus of their believing matched the shuttling restlessness of
their desires in the body, allowing them full release into the pagan
ways, but with a spiritual superiority and indifference at the same
time. That should sound familiar.

I am constantly shocked to see, influenced by a bad kind of
Lutheranism, how little modern Christians realize that to be a
Christian in the early church meant precisely being set off by a
pragmatic code of life. Whatever the dangers of the law or legalism, it
remains the case that the first Christians saw the law of God revealed
to Moses as a gift to the church-fulfilled in civil and ritual matters,
but still--a kind of foundation stone that no pagan philosophy could
outstrip, given its antiquity, scope, and relevance, not least because
this was Christ's own scripture.

False teaching and corrupt leadership were no stranger to the early
church. Knox was right to say that the synagogue of satan was always to
be found wherever the righteous were set apart in Christ's love. But
properly to deal with the challenge of false teaching in our day
requires severe intellectual discipline and humility.

Intellectual discipline because we must recognize that the church is
already divided, and this precisely in the area of its confessional
teaching. Even when with charity we speak of ecumenical friends, be
they Lutherans or Roman Catholics or the Orthodox or the Reformed, we
immediately see how difficult it will be to invoke a "true church"
solution to handle perceptions of false teaching in our own ranks.
Appeal to some distillate of common belief or ecclesial structure is
sadly what has proven unworkable, in historical terms; and where found,
it has often become divisive rather than uniting. I say this with
great sorrow as one committed in word and deed to Nicene Christianity
and a New Ecumenism. As one who sees common struggles across sections
of Christ's body, and as one committed to a rule of faith as a hopeful
ecumenical bottom-line.

I mentioned intellectual humility as well, because when we look to the
New Testament it simply does not comprehend our dilemma: the state of
the church as we now find it, so severely divided as it is across
denominated lines. What the challenge of false teaching cannot present
as an option is the establishment of the true church. The New Testament
cannot see that as a solution because it has not anticipated the fact
of Christian ecclesial division we know as our daily bread. And
"establishing the true church" has been tried, and having been tried
and found wanting, has only meant trying and trying and trying again.

But I wonder if the New Testament in its own way does formulate
something like a spiritual response to false teaching. Its ad hoc
formulations, to be vigilant, to draw back from, to separate oneself
from false teaching - these do not amount to concrete ecclesiastical
strategies for dealing with the challenge. Instead, they are vigorous
reminders of how fragile Christian faith is, in the best of
circumstances, and therefore they put us on notice to be watchful, for
ourselves and for our fellow Christians. They drive the Christian
believer into his or her prayer closet, into the bruised and forgiven
depths of his or her own soul, where fresh requests for strength and
hopefulness must be made and made and made again. And, on the other
side, they rule out pragmatic compromises made simply to keep everyone
together as an end unto itself. Which would only be a cheapening of the
cross and an emptying of its transforming power. John 17 is clear.
Unity is never a sociological end in itself for well-meaning
Christians. Unity is so that "the world might know," might see in
Christ and His body something that sets the church off and draws the
world in because of this. Schemes for unity along other lines obscure
this missionary imperative.

So this is why the Old Testament proves itself the durable witness the
Early Church knew it to be. Because it is clear about division within
the household of faith and because it resists ecclesial remedies for
spiritual waywardness. There is always only one Israel, just as God is
one, and his will is one.

We know the story, but it must be hammered home to our gentile hearts.
God loved Israel for no inherent reason on her part. She was
unfaithful, a bride of youth become a whore, to use Ezekiel's strong
language. From the tenderest moment of her betrothal, rescued and
embraced, she preferred to become like the nations and cast God's love
in his teeth. God used Israel, it might be said, precisely to establish
his character as the desisting and forbearing God. The one who does not
deal with us quid pro quo, but on the basis of a vast reservoir of
mercy-so vast as to establish his divinity, for no one but God could
love like this.

But Israel is divided in judgment, north and south, exiled and
homebound, j ust as the church is today divided. And God promises in
those scriptures to bring the division to an end, and his plan for this
costs him his only son, the good shepherd. And more than that, the
miracle is that, in so doing, he brings within his embrace the nations
for which Israel was to be a blessing. And now he loves the church as
he once loved his beloved Israel.

When we read Israel's mature record of her walk with God, we see false
teaching and the challenge it presents. And we see that God's
forbearance puts a mighty strain on those he calls to be his faithful
ones.

Ezekiel is a prophet during the time of most severe judgment. He sees
into the temple and the priests who are there he names by name. Their
worship is the rankest abomination and idolatry. They are proud of it.
They see the division as just judgment - on those in exile! The
division, as they see it, has rid them of the judgment of God and of
their opponents, in one fell swoop.

Ezekiel is uncompromising in insisting that God's judgment is not over
but will continue, until it reaches into the inner chambers of power
and the most holy places which have been defiled by bogus self-worship.
And in announcing this he does not crow from afar, but from a place of
judgment, where he, caught up in Israel, as Israel, cannot claim
exception or exemption. He bears in his own body the marks of Christ,
to use Paul's language. He physically experiences the judgment of God,
existentially living it out. He loses his wife. He loses his beloved
temple and worship. He loses his right to intercede. But somehow,
through God's grace, the words he is given-lamentation, woe, complaint-
become sweet in his mouth, and he can bear this time of division and
false teaching and loss.

When he turns, in the midst of the judgment of God, toward the future,
he rehearses the tragic tale of false teachers. The shepherds, woe to
them. It reads a strangely contemporaneous text, mindful of our own
troubled shepherds in such disarray.

"Therefore you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD. As I live,
declares the LORD God, surely because my sheep have become a prey, and
my sheep have become food for all..and because my shepherds have not
searched for my sheep, but...have fed themselves...I am against my
shepherds and I will require my sheep at their hand...I will rescue my
sheep from their mouths that they may not be food for them."

False teaching is a threat because it does not feed. Because it
deprives the world of life-giving truth. It may also irritate us, and
frustrate us, those of us who are priests, as we see power in the hand
of those whose teaching we judge to be wrong or perjurious. But God's
concern is with what gets lost in all this. For us, it is a matter of
believing we have categories, standards of measurement, rule and canon,
and that something is being offended against -- but for others, it is
the insistence that no such categories actually exist, and that
Christian leadership is about attitudes and processes. That is the
struggle for us in leadership: category errors. But what God sees is
the deprivation, the starvation, the manipulation.

So what remedy does He provide?

Here I think it important to see what remedy is not provided, at least
not in the first instance. "Here are good shepherds, let them be
declared as such, and let the shepherds of forfeit be gone." "If there
are bad shepherds, bad bishops, let good ones be brought in to replace
them, and let a New Israel emerge." No, in the first instance there is
no such strategy. There is sustained talk of God's personal work in the
midst of judgment.

"For thus says the LORD God, Behold I, I myself will search for my
sheep and will seek them out. (Listen to the verbs heaped up with the
first-person) I will seek... I will rescue.... I will bring.... I will
gather.... I will feed.... I will myself be the shepherd of my sheep. I
will give them a home, I will seek, I will bring back, I will bind up,
I will strengthen, I will feed in justice."

And then the present flock is judged. For in this time of forfeit
shepherds, the sheep have fought against one another and have stirred
up mud and ruined the drinking water. They have pushed and injured one
another, and have caused scattering and prey-mongering.

Friends, we must lean into the promise that God is doing serious
shepherding in this time of trial we are in as a church. It may not be
clear to us. That is why God gives us prophets, like Ezekiel, to show
us what God does when all looks dark, when all is dark. When we cannot
fix it. When we cannot fix it. And so, setting up good shepherds and
some 'good Israel' distinguished and known as such over against 'bad
Israel.'

'Cannot' -- because God wants to work on us too, who have bruised, and
been bruised, have chocked down dirty water and kicked up mud and mire
ourselves. We are all in there with Ezekiel, but in there with him is
the promise of God. Shepherding in the darkness: seeking, finding,
rescuing, gathering, feeding, cleaning, binding up, strengthening,
giving a flesh heart instead of a heart of stone, breathing new spirit,
and giving us a shepherd, a good shepherd, always doing his job from
before the foundation of the world: the slain one with power to give.
Power we need this day, when it is hard to be a priest, at a difficult
time in the church.

We are in a period when our judgments must be tentative and penitent.
But the question out there, the question about God's care and
providence, must be answered strongly and positively: Can we view this
as a time when God is anything but tentative? When in the confusion of
ECUSA, He is more at work in the silence than He may seem to be when
all is well?

There was a special power in Holy Saturday. All looked dark and lost:
our man done in after he walked the long green mile, for us, into the
foreign country, for us. There was this long day when nothing seemed to
be happening, and yet it was a day when God was more alive and active
that He had ever seemed to be.

May God give us grace to lean into this special power of His, at this
time, this difficult time when we are priests in His church. Withdrawal
and setting up our own good shepherds - these are out as options. We
have a Good Shepherd and in him God is at work. Hard at work, at this
hard time in the church, when it is difficult, but when God is doing
His special Holy Saturday work, just as he was in Israel's, in
Ezekiel's, exile of judgment.

Meditation 4: "Daniel - The Freedom of Exile"

Our God who we serve is able to deliver us from the burning firy
furnace, and he will deliver us from thy hand, O King. But if not, be
it known unto thee O King, we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the
golden image thou hast made (Dan 3:17-18)

When I was asked to do this series, on being a leader at a difficult
time in the church, my first thought was, do it all on Daniel. There
could hardly be a better fit for our time, if we agree that this is
where we now are.

The institutions of Israel have collapsed. King, priest, prophet, the
three great bulwarks, have been dashed to the ground. There is no
temple. No regular round of offerings. No regular round of worship. No
state. No home. No support for familiar religious habits which feed the
soul and keep the heart of faith alive. The daily round for the
faithful Israelite is gone.

Rehearsing this, it actually sounds like we've got it pretty good.
Maybe clarity comes when all the familiar supports are cast aside.
Because Daniel is a man with clear vision. Let's consider how this is
so, why it can be.

I guess the first thing to note is that Daniel has friends. Three
companions. And he didn't insist on this, as a survival strategy, it
just happened that as the secular authorities culled out some of the
Israelites to study their language, Daniel and S,M,A were cast
together. There is no in-fighting. The bottom line has been discovered.
They are men of God, the One Lord, and that is where their identity is.
They can sit easy to the names and labels of this world; in fact, they
have double names in this time of exile. The name we go by, related to
our Lord Jesus, and the name the world knows us by, in this time of
God's good judgment, when the ECUSA is being sifted toward some new
purpose God alone can see.

When Daniel, through prayer and conviction, learns the dream of N and
when he gives God glory in reporting it to him, and when he is
promoted, his first act is to see to it that his friends share in his
fortune. "Daniel made request of the king, and he appointed S,M,A over
the affairs of the province of Babylon." For it is not his fortune, but
a fortune which is theirs together . And when as a consequence of this
promotion, there comes greater exposure and so greater trials, fiery
trials, S,M, and A stand firm, in the manner of Daniel. Daniel faces
his own trial in the lion's den, later, under the reign of Darius. But
in all their trials, they are as one man. There is no destiny, trial or
accomplishment which is about Daniel alone. In the time of judgment we
cast away the familiar round and throw ourselves on the mercy of our
God. Throwing ourselves on him means finding new fellowship, of the
kind that was hard when we felt secure, winning victories that had to
do with us and our talents, in God's service to be sure. But Daniel is
never a man alone. He had friends. True friends. They were friends and
they were true because this was the fruit of the time of judgment, when
just this kind of fruit gets grown, if we are faithful in the manner of
Daniel.

What else do we learn from Daniel? The familiar rounds are gone. The
worship books have been changed. The places of prayer, where the knees
fit the kneeler, are gone. The leaders we trusted for this or that
divine service -these are gone. New languages must be learned. But
Daniel and his friends never miss a beat. Well, there are simply new
rounds to be discovered, or old rounds adapted for a new day and a new
purpose.

It is ominous to hear the opening lines of Daniel, of the temple
vessels being brought to Babylon, and lodged in a foreign god's house
of worship. What a potent symbol. And then in that same context to hear
of vessels of wine and rich food, there at the University of Babylon.
Will the old wine of the One Lord now get poured into vessels of a
different sort, associated with a kindler, gentler, compromising small-
g god?

No, Daniel and his friends, without any fuss or bother, simply prefer
a leaner fare in this time of exile. They don't screw up their faces or
make noises appropriate to pride and self-sacrifice. And in the end,
their diet actually improves their complexion, and the Chaldeans want a
piece of the action as well.

And later, in chapter nine, we hear of Daniel pouring over scripture,
straining to hear a word in the midst of judgment. How long? Jeremiah
said seventy years. Is that word the container of a deeper word, the
Holy Spirit alone can teach us to hear? The only way to know is to read
and read and pray and pray. And then a fresh word comes. It is a time
to discover scripture speaking and sustaining in a way that is hard-
won, but also deep truth conveying. A new way of hearing, a new way of
being taught.

And how can one worship in a strange land? Psalm 137, verse 4, "How
shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?" By the waters of
Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. There is a lot
going on in those four words: when we remembered Zion. Four words which
have their own special meaning in our difficult time.

Daniel had his own version of this estrangement. Laws had been passed
to prevent any worship of God, dreamed up by petty officials jealous of
Daniel. The text is clear. Precisely when he learned of these laws, he
opened his windows, faced in the direction of Zion, and got down on
his knees. He didn't complain, petition, or beseech, he gave thanks,
three times a day, "as he had done previously." Everything had changed,
but some things never changed, but instead, conveyed a freedom and a
revealed a freshness and a joy that can get buried during other times.

The British, under Churchill, used as a code during WW2. Three simple
words, which expressed their freedom in a time of trial. "But if not."
And the words came from Daniel's friends in chap 3. Our God whom we
serve will deliver us from your hand, O king, *but if not* be it known
we'll not serve your gods or worship the golden image which you have
set up." I've been to the mountaintop, it really doesn't matter
anymore. The freedom of the man who knows God is great, and his destiny
is bound up with full surrender to him, made possible because God has
shown himself again and again the surprise of strength to the weary.
And the way that happens is by sticking to the familiar rounds, adapted
for a new day.

Two final things require to be noted, I think. In a day of great
disruption and loss of the familiar round, God does things that are
special, that we may not have been prepared to anticipate. Daniel sees
great visions, long-range visions. Moses saw the promised land,
Jeremiah a field which would be purchased when exile was over, Ezekiel,
a new heart, a united Israel, flesh coming and spirit coming where
there had been dry, dry bones. Daniel sees a world vision. A vision
which he cannnot comprehend, because it does not pertain to his day. A
vision with miry toes, and figures and historical movements which lie
outside his ken. These are visions which are for us, and for those who
would outlive Daniel and take up this book and hear of a son of man, of
one in the furnace with the friends, and see the backward glancing
shadows of the Cross. A vision which was literally for the ages, under
God's guiding hand, wracking the faithful Daniel and making him ill,
but confirming that what he was enduring was for some larger plan, with
the same sure God of his day overseeing it and assuring us of his hand
over time, ours, and our children's, and our children's children after
them.

And finally, Daniel the Missionary. The man for the unwashed Public.
Daniel's disruption and exile and loss of the familiar, sent him out
into a world desperate to hear some word, different than the one they
had grown familiar with. It took several encounters, but Daniel's
steadfastness, and freedom, and fellowship, and loyalty to his friends
and his God, brought the mightiest man in the land to his knees,
confessing that Daniel's God was the Most High, and finding freedom in
repentance before his face.

And it is not just a one-off display of piety. There is the great
Darius, N's successor, actually rooting for Daniel in the lion's den,
rushing down to see if, if the great "but if not" was true. The great
"but if not" indeed meant some hope he had never known before,
clutching his idols of wood and stone. The king said to Daniel, "May
your god who you serve continually, deliver you." And the king spent
the night fasting; no diversions were brought to him, and sleep fled
from him (6:18).

And when dawn broke he rushed down there. Why? So that he might also
one day say, *but if not* and find himself one of Daniel's companions,
he who was the king of the known world but longed to know what Daniel
knew.

Being in exile meant that God could use Daniel to reach out in ways
God alone knew were part of his great plan of salvation and hope, for
the world.

Loyalty, friendship, steadfastness in prayer, bible study, and worship,
freedom, great visions - these are all possible in our time, our
difficult time in the church. No one could take these from Daniel, and
because they couldn't and because Daniel knew that, knew the freedom of
"but if not", King Darius the Great could find what N the repentant and
B the unrepentant too late discovered.

I make a decree, that in my royal dominion men tremble and fear before
the God of Daniel, for he is the living God, enduring forever; his
kingdom shall never be destroyed, and his dominion shall be to the end.
He delivers and rescues, he works signs and wonders in heaven and
earth, he who saved Daniel from the power of the lions (Dan 6:26-27).

What are the disciplines which sustain you during this time? What new
way has God used the scriptures, which you had not known before? Where
are your friends, your true friends? What competitions inside the
Household of Christ have you let fall away, as new fellowship during a
hard time has broken down pride, or simply showed a common cause in
Christ somehow hidden before? Have you had great visions, whose range
is beyond you, your own participation or full understanding, but which
may sustain a next generation? Where does the freedom of "but if not"
make its strong voice heard? And where are great works being done
because God is using your faithfulness to work change in others, even
during a difficult time being a priest in the church.

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END OF PART TWO