+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It seems to me that it’s pretty misguided, if not positively dangerous, to base one’s worldview around a cliché. This may strike you as non-controversial, (who would do that?) but let’s consider some examples. “I’ll forgive, but I’ll never forget!” or a second, which is like unto it, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!” I think some people really do live by these aphorisms, which seem more likely to produce resentment than anything approaching actual mercy or forgiveness. Thank God that God does not seem to live by these aphorisms or every one of us would be doomed.
One cliché my father-in-law mentions sometimes that I think he heard from a radio evangelist when he was a kid sounds a little better, but only until you scratch the surface. “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything!” Well, sure, it’s important to have convictions (particularly as it pertains to Christian doctrine), but taken to an extreme and applied to every possible controversial topic this leads inevitably to rigidity and an inability to grow in one’s understanding of the world.
And, one more bad aphorism: I hope I need not belabor the point that “God helps those who help themselves” is not in the bible. Neither is it borne out in reality for countless folks who seem to persistently strive for success but just can’t seem to get there, whether out of some personal problem or as a result of being born with the deck stacked against them. Worse, at least as far as I’m concerned, is this particular adage implies a sort of Pelagianism, or “works righteousness”, which can lead us to believe in a God who will only love us and show us mercy if we work hard enough for it.
For what it’s worth, we 21st Century Western Christians are not the first people ever to be in danger of adopting the religious ideology of a hallmark card or motivational poster. It seems the exiled Jews of the Sixth Century B.C. were prone to the same problem of taking folk wisdom clichés and turning them into an all-encompassing worldview. “What do you mean,” the Lord said to Ezekiel, “by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, “the Fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?” In other words “why do you keep saying, the parents’ sins will be visited on their children?”
Now the question about whether or not this is how God operates is found throughout scripture, and the biblical witness is complicated. Some would disagree with me here, but I don’t think scripture is actually self-contradictory on this issue, but there is a tension in the text that would take more time to tease out than we have today. It should suffice to say that while there is good evidence, particularly in the deuteronomistic books of the Old Testament, to believe that the results of wickedness in one generation can certainly negatively affect future generations, the overwhelming message found in both the Old and New Testaments is that God does not directly punish people for sins their ancestors committed.
So there is a distinction here between the generational effects of sin and what God does as judge and avenger. Apparently Ezekiel’s people, however, were not so keen on clarifying this distinction, instead assuming a pithy adage from Poor Richard’s Babylonian Almanack as sufficient basis for a coherent theology.
It’s a shame our Old Testament lesson skipped 21 verses, because those verses make the point even more explicit. If somebody is an idolater or an adulterer or a robber or commits usury or sheds blood, that person is in trouble. But that person’s parents and children are not. God may punish the wicked, but he doesn’t take it out on their families. End of story.
You’d think the response to the clarification by the Lord through the prophet Ezekiel would elicit some gratitude and relief. But how does the house of Israel respond? “That’s not fair!”
This is such a human response. Last week we saw the flip side of this coin, as it were, with the laborers in the vineyard who wanted to be rewarded for their hard work more than the people who didn’t do as much, even if we got ours. Just as it is with reward, so it is with retribution. “Sure, I’ll take my lumps so long as the other guy, the one who did me wrong, really gets it… and his family, too.”
We can understand where this impulse is coming from; Ezekiel’s audience was suffering; they were in exile in Babylon. They wanted to see God’s vengeance. I am reminded of just how powerfully they felt this on the 28th day of every month in the psalms appointed for Evening Prayer. So, tomorrow evening, I will, with great discomfort, recite once again for about the 300th time since I started praying the daily office in earnest about twenty-five years ago, “Happy shall he be who takes your [Babylonian babies], and dashes them against the rock!” This is not a godly sentiment; that’s not why it’s in scripture (and it is scripture; we don’t get to pick and choose). It’s not normative, but it gives us a powerful sense of how exactly God’s people felt when they were in Babylon.
Ezekiel is calling his people, and, indeed, he is calling us to a better way. On the one hand he is just stating a fact about God’s justice, which is not ours, but he’s also speaking a word to us, to convict us of our anger and hatred and desire to see retribution done against those who may not even be personally responsible for some harm done to us. God alone is judge of both hearts and actions, and he judges us as individual moral and spiritual agents, not as representatives of some clan or class of people.
Now this last statement is controversial. It cuts against a particular orthodoxy embraced by both fundamentalists and religious liberals and by both the left and the right in the political sphere. It is essentially the same lie, though of course neither “side” would much appreciate being compared to the other, and it is especially difficult because like all good lies there is enough truth in it to be believable. All the problems of the world are caused either by some evil or communal guilt borne by “that group over there” which is an inherently sick class of people or all the problems of the world are caused by our privileged group which is inherently sick and collectively guilty. Both of these responses is present at both ends of political and religious spectrums, depending on the issue in question. So, your two choices are victim blaming or performative, self-indulgent confession. Pick your poison.
None of this is to suggest that one ought not be aware of how one might have benefited from the sins of one’s ancestors or attempt to make some restitution based on that reality. That is another issue entirely, worthy of careful consideration, and moral theologians shouldn’t cede that issue to secular activists and technocrats. It is worth addressing as the church. It is to say, however, that each of us inherits precisely the same guilt as everyone else, Adam’s sin, and we needn’t start some complicated accounting to see if you were born more guilty than I based on what your great-grandparents might have done versus what mine did. We are all equally stained by original sin, and some complicated accounting of past transgressions doesn’t change that. Indeed, this only leads to an endless, generational cycle of blame and violence. If we start down that dark path, we get the Hatfields and McCoys or the Greek and Turkish Cypriots or the Hutus and Tutsis.
It is significant, I believe, that the same prophet who spoke God’s word in today’s Old Testament reading, later mediated God’s word which provides the solution to this horrible cycle of blame and shame and unending violence. “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” May God be swift to remove that stony heart from our breasts, the heart which delights in enmity and rage and retribution, and implant within us the heart of flesh, that we may be merciful and kind, slow to anger and quick to forgive. Just as God’s wrath is slow to rise and ready to abate, may we in our efforts to become more Christlike have the same spirit, for the sake of our souls and for the sake of the world.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.