Word to the Wise
Thursday, August 16, 2012 - Thursday in the 19th Week in Ordinary Time
[Ezek 12:1-2 and Matt 18:21-19:1]I did as I was told. During the day I brought out my baggage as though it were that of a exile, and at evening I dug a hole in the wall with my hand and, while they looked on, set out in the darkness, shouldering my burden.
Ezekiel, like many of the other Old Testament prophets, is commanded by God to do some startling things! This time he is commanded to dig a hole in the wall and leave with his belongings as a warning to the people what will happen if they do not listen to his words. They will go into exile and their leader will especially try to escape through a hole in the wall at night in shame. Of course, Ezekiel was not listened to and his prophecy came to pass. We are still at an early stage in the book, however, and there is much more to hear from him. One wonders who was in the crowd that was looking on as he dug the hole in the wall and picked up his baggage and left in the darkness! Since he had already delivered God's opinion that Israel is a "rebellious house," I suspect there was much skepticism about that crazy prophet. How do we, in our own time, react to such forms of preaching?
In our own time, there have been people of prophetic vision with startling and threatening messages. The simple prophetic action of Rosa Parks in refusing to move to the back of the bus lit a fire that continues to burn in this country as we struggle with the remnants of racism. Some of these prophets or prophetesses have been writers. I am an admirer of the Catholic southern writer, Flannery O'Connor, whose writings are profoundly about grace and its working in "the territory of the Devil." Her characters are like the prophets of old and she speaks to an audience that is resistant to grace. Her letters and speeches reveal her intent. Ezekiel, I believe, would say "amen" to the following words from one of her speeches entitled, "The Fiction Writer and His Country" (1957): "When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock - to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures...." AMEN
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