Despised at birth
Ezekiel 16 addresses wicked Jerusalem and reminds the people that
(still) live there of God’s goodness to them in the past. A little
girl-baby, newly born, covered in blood, the umbilical cord still
attached was unwanted and left lying where it was delivered (on the side
of the road?). People saw it as they passed by but no one moved to do
anything to help the dying infant. Someone finally thought it would be
best to throw the baby into an open field—out of sight and out of mind.
And that’s where God found her, despised, in a pool of blood,
kicking...and dying. And God said to the blood-covered infant that was
dying—Live! And she did. God kept his eye on her and with his blessing
the little baby girl that no one wanted grew and was ready for marriage
and one day God came by and asked her to marry him and she said yes.
Before he was done she was a beautiful bride and a beautiful wife and
then she became treacherous. She corrupted herself, corrupted her
family, slew her children and set up brothels in every town she visited.
Never a thought for the early days, never a thought for the only one
that cared for her, never a thought for the dangers he rescued her
from—all forgotten!
I don’t think that gratitude is the foundation of all virtues but
there’s something awful about a thankless heart. God doesn’t need to be
pitied that Israel treated him so but he should have been thanked,
gratitude may not be the queen of virtues but if she's not there the
heart of a man or woman or nation shrivels and dies.
And so Jerusalem (as chapters 1—24 tell us)—Jerusalem must fall. But
God’s judgement against her is not vindictiveness or a final rejection
for he fully intends to redeem the whore and he will later call her "the
virgin". The judgement has a redemptive purpose! Isn’t that
astonishing?
But Ezekiel’s word to Jerusalem is God’s word to the human race for
God’s history with Israel is a word to us all—including Israel. The
entire human race lay in an out-of-the-way galactic backwater, out of
sight, lying in a pool of our own blood, squirming in our despair,
having stabbed our world with deep atomic, social and moral wounds with
no one to care for us or heal us. And God came by and saw us as we lay
in our blood and said, "Live!" In and as Jesus Christ he came and said,
"Live!" And in his corporate body, the Church he moves through the earth
and says to us, one and all, "Live!"
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