"Sitting Where Others Sit"
How God identifies with us, and transforms us, and how we should identify with others
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 11th, 2001
Text: Ezekiel III: 2 - 21
I sat down beside a great, large, wooden table. Sitting on my right was a colleague. The room was bare with the exception of three chairs, the table, and a man who was standing in the corner of the room. The walls were very thick, made of concrete, and the door, which was made of steel, opened slowly and a gentleman walked in through it. He was wearing an orange suit and embroidered on his chest was a series of numbers. His legs were shackled, and his hands were bound together. He pulled up the chair opposite us and sat down. The man on my right was there to speak to the individual. I was there on sufferance, having been given strict instructions that, under no circumstances, was I to say a single word. You can imagine how hard for me that was, can't you? The man on my right was a colleague with whom I had become friends. For twenty years he had been working on death row, in the United States, sitting with people who were facing execution. His work was so well regarded overseas that twice he had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In the presence of a man like that, my words would have been superfluous anyway. We were there to talk to this man who had been sentenced to death. In fact, the date of his demise was very close. He began to tell us his story: how he had tried to chase the good life, how he had tried to follow a life of profligacy and wealth, only to realize that he could not do it under his own speed or via normal means. So he turned to crime. And, having turned to crime and robbed a number of different places, one day he was finally caught. He had then picked up a gun and murdered the two men who were to arrest him. His story was dark. As he told the story of his life, of trying to find the good life, of trying to find wealth and fortune and turning to crime in his search for it, I must admit there were moments when I felt a profound sense of anger at this man. For while there was certainly a degree of remorse in his voice, it was clearly evident that he had thought that this was the only path that his life could have taken. Nevertheless, now in these declining hours and days of his life, I left that place, not only feeling a sense of anger at him, but also a great sense of compassion. Never before had I left the room of someone, knowing the exact moment at which he was going to die. It was a horrible feeling. The whole of the conversation I had with him, was permeated with this apprehension of death, the fact that he, without a doubt, was going to have to pay for his deeds. It reminded me of a phrase that is in Measure for Measure, where Isabella speaks to Claudio and utters these words: "The sense of death is most in apprehension, and the poor beetle we tread upon in corporal sufferance finds a pang as great as when a giant dies." I had a horrible feeling of emptiness as the great steel door closed behind us. But I was haunted by one particular phrase that he used as we were trying to give him some advice and guidance and spiritual support in the midst of all this. He said: "You know, you can't understand what it's like to be in this position until you've sat where I sit. "
That is exactly, I think, how Ezekiel felt at the moment of our text. Here was a moment where Ezekiel, who himself was a Jew, a man who had been brought up in Jerusalem in the priestly tradition, had seen his whole nation destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. His people had been forced into exile to live in a foreign land. They were there primarily because they had been stubborn, they had been obstinate, they had been ungodly, they had been immoral, and they had tried to find the path through pagan affluence. Now, in a moment of pathos, they sit on the other side of the river in Babylon and they seem to have no hope. Ezekiel looks at them, and as he sits with them he at first feels a sense of bitterness. He says: "I have an anger in my spirit towards you. Here I am, a prophet. What I want to tell you is that you're going to get a piece of my mind. I am sure you have all felt this way at some time in your lives when someone has done something wrong; or you have received bad service, or someone has cut you off in your traffic lane. Your first response is, If I ever get hold of that person, I'm just going to sit him down and give him a piece of my mind. Come hell or high water, no matter what he says, he is going to understand exactly how I feel. Well, that's how Ezekiel was: He was upset with his people. They had put themselves in this predicament. But a change takes place: He becomes filled with God's spirit. While he still wants to go and give them a piece of his mind, and give them some instruction and tell them what to do, God also asks him to do something else. So he crosses over to the people in The Exile, in Tel Abib, near the river of Chebar in Babylon. We read that he went to the exiles and he sat where they sat for seven days, and he was overwhelmed.
My friends, there is a profound lesson in this text from Ezekiel. It is a lesson, I believe, that teaches us very much about the very nature of God, and how God deals with humanity. But it also teaches us how we, in turn, should treat humanity as God has treated us, and how our lives must be transformed and changed in the process. But there are two great movements in this story. The first movement is the movement towards identification. Ezekiel says: "I sat where they sat." Now, the situation, as I said, was terrible. It was atrocious. Tel Abib was an area not far from the city of Nippur on the Chebar River. It is known as a little mound, for underneath it, other cities had once been built and razed to the ground. Now the silt had covered them. It's almost like a burial plot of a former city. Here sit the people of Israel. You can get the imagery. They are sitting, in fact, on a mound of death in a foreign land. Here are a people who are the cream of the crop of Israel. We read that, in The Exile, the best people were taken to Babylon: the intelligentsia, the royalty, the spiritual leaders. Behind, in Jerusalem, were left the peasants, the ill-educated and the irreligious. The very best people that Israel had to offer, then, were sitting on a mound in a foreign land, staring across a river, knowing that they were an oppressed people who could not go home and they felt this profound sense of loss and dismay.
So great was their loss and dismay that John Calvin, in his commentary, says that Ezekiel uses a word to describe how he felt at that moment: It is the word shimem. This is the word that means to feel absolutely and totally desolate. He felt that sense of emptiness; that their condition was so bad, so dreadful, that he didn't know what to say. But we are also told that Ezekiel was sent to these people. He has a vision. The vision is: that he chews the word of God in his mouth; that the law becomes part of him; that he is called by God to be a mediator. For God wants to send a message to these people and the message that he is going to send, he is sending through Ezekiel. But then there is a very important moment and a very key phrase: namely, that God understands that it is going to be hard for Ezekiel to deliver this message, for he is not going to deliver it in a foreign language. He is not delivering it to a foreign people. He is not there to speak to the Babylonians and to Nebuchadnezzar. He is there to speak to his very own people. And because he is going to his very own people, it is going to be harder to tell them the truth and to speak a language that they will understand. Jesus put it this way: A prophet hath no honour in his own home. Ezekiel knew that he would face difficulties if he tried to get the people that he loved to change.
This reminds me of a story that I heard from the great Tony Campolo. Tony Campolo was visited by a man who came to him for pastoral advice. The man said: "You know, Dr. Campolo, I feel that I am losing all the love in my marriage. My marriage has gone stale and I need to do something to change things. What do you suggest I do?" So Tony Campolo said: "Well, I think that you need to re-ignite the spark of romance. You need to make a few changes in your life. If you do, I think you will be able to win your wife back to you and, in so doing, you will find your romance rekindled." So the man did exactly as Tony Campolo had suggested. After it was all over, he wrote him a letter explaining the problem. He said: "Dr. Campolo, I want to tell you that I followed your advice. You see, there was a time when I didn't shower in the morning. I went to work and I worked hard. I came home dirty and went into my home via the back door. I went to a refrigerator and got out a case of beer and sat in front of the television until my wife had prepared supper. I ate the supper. I had a post supper nap and then I went to bed." He says: "Now, on the basis of the advice that you gave me, one day I made a profound change in my life. I showered and shaved before I went to work. On my way home from work, I decided to buy my wife a bouquet of flowers and some gorgeous, rich chocolates. Rather than going in the back door, I knocked on the front door. When I did, she greeted me, but she was in tears, and she said: I have had the worst day imaginable. I found that Johnny went to school and broke his leg. Now little Johnny has his leg in plaster. I have just had a phone call from your mother. She is coming to stay with us for three weeks. I have just done the washing and now there is a leak all over the basement floor. To top it all off, you come home drunk." It's so hard to get a message across, when people know you well, isn't it? Even though you try to change, even though you try to put it in the right words, sometimes it just doesn't land.
God knew that Ezekiel would face that very problem, and so Ezekiel had to change himself. Rather than just having a prophetic word, rather than just letting them have it from the hip, we are told that Ezekiel was silent. For seven days, a classic Jewish period of mourning, he sat with his people. He experienced their pain. He knew what they were going through. He sat where they sat. And in the process of being silent, in the process of sitting with the people at the point of their need, we are told that he had compassion for them. Even though he still had to deliver a strong message, even though he had to take responsibility for how they were going to respond to the message that he was bringing, nevertheless, Ezekiel risked it all and sat where they sat.
It seems to me, my friends that there is a common theme that runs throughout the whole of the Bible when it comes to this: namely, that God indeed desires to sit where we sit. He either sends a mediator, such as Ezekiel, or as is the case in the story of the feeding of the five thousand in Mark Chapter VI. There we read that Jesus and his disciples were trying to get away from the crowd. They sail to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, only to find that the people, who are desperate in their need, follow them. Then Jesus sits down with the people and realizes their plight and their hunger. There is a wonderful phrase in the Gospel of Mark which says: "and he sat down with them and he had compassion for them." Then, the five loaves and the two fishes are broken and distributed, and the people are fed. Now this to me is a symbol. It's a sign of the incarnation. It is a sign of God sitting down and identifying with people at the point of their need. And, having compassion for them, he desires to feed them, then to save them and to give them His grace.That is exactly the case with Ezekiel. It is rooted in the fact that God identifies with humanity at the point of its need. But it goes beyond that. It's not only identification, that's one thing; but there is also a profound sense, in this text from Ezekiel and in the Gospel of Mark, of God's transformation of the situation.
Now, I am loathe to use the word transformation in our current milieu, because it is so overused and so banal it is almost impossible to roll it off my tongue. Everyone talks about transformation. I don't know why I was doing this, but one afternoon recently, at around four o'clock, I was watching the Oprah show. It was entitled: Transformations. I thought: Oh, I want to see this. This might have some bearing on my upcoming sermon on Ezekiel. So I sat, and I watched the programme. Well, I suppose it had some bearing on Ezekiel. It was a show about make-overs. Here was this swarthy, greasy-haired, overweight woman, with exceedingly thick glasses, transformed within half-an-hour into a Mona Lisa-like beauty. She was gorgeous. There was also (and I am pleased to say this, gentlemen) a man who was similarly transformed on this programme. Here was clearly a beer-drinking, belching type, wearing jeans, again with ill-fitting glasses, and a baseball cap. He was put into an Armani suit, new hair-cut, new glasses, a beautiful Gucci watch. He looked absolutely fantastic. Guys, there's hope for all of us yet, you know. And on and on the show went with all these different people being transformed before our very eyes. It's like one of those books. You know - Men are from Mars, Women from Venus books. I don't know if you have read any of those. They're okay, not bad, but you know, I'm not sure. I don't seem to live with a Venus, and I don't seem to be a Mars, but that's just me. These books say that you can completely and totally transform yourselves, and your marriage, and your whole life, if you will just understand these basic principles. It all sounds so nice. It's like the man in Campolo's story who puts on a new suit and brings some flowers home as if somehow, from that moment on, his marriage is going to be transformed because of such things. It is trivial and it is trite.So, when I use the word transformation in the culture in which we live, I want to be very careful because the biblical concept of transformation is not so banal. It is based rather on the profound sense that God's identification with us changes us once and for all;, that God sitting where we sit makes a profound difference in our lives.
I was recently reading a wonderful book by Angus MacQueen, entitled Memory is my Diary. .. It is in two volumes here in our church library. This is a book that I recommend. It was published by my former publisher who told me, before it was even printed, that it was a gem and it really is. In it, Angus MacQueen talks about the church and about parish ministers, but it really applies to all of us. He says the following, and he's absolutely right. He says: "You know, the parish ministry must relate the Christian faith to people's total world, where men, women and children live and die, work and play, love and hate, succeed and fail, as well as where they pray and take holy communion. This means that the Gospel preached must be relevant to the social, as well as the personal aspects of human life. It will have to do with war, and slums, and housing, and poverty, and unemployment, and the whole gamut of human misery and degradation, as well as with joy and worship, spiritual nurture and moral instruction," and then the key words "because, it is God's world, and human beings are not disembodied spirits, and Christ is lord of all of life. The parish minister's sermons and the activities of the church, may sometimes be disturbing and unpopular, but they are exceedingly meaningful." And then he goes on to quote someone else who says: "The reason for this is, that the Church is not simply an ideal people of God, the Church is the people of God who believe in something." You see, here Angus understands something that is the truth of our faith: namely, that God through Jesus Christ both identifies, and understands and knows the point of human need and interaction; that this God is incarnate very present with us, but is also incarnate and present with us in a compassionate way as well.
This past week I received a telephone call from Ottawa. It was from a man who was, quite frankly, desperate. His sister, who was living here in Toronto had been evicted from her house. She wasn't well, she hadn't paid the rent in months and she had nowhere to live and no money. She had been selling things on the street but people hadn't bought what she was selling. So she had nowhere to go and she was homeless and desolate. He was wondering what to do. I sat down and I gave him some instructions. I gave him some ideas of things that he might do, for it seemed to me that, that very night, there was a woman who was either going to be living on the street, or in a shelter. A woman who wasn't caring and couldn't care for herself; a woman who, it seemed, had no idea of what she was going to do, or where she was going to go. But what impressed me about all of this was that, not only that this was a desolate situation, (and all too common, I might add) but that this man decided that he was going to come to Toronto. He would not stay in Ottawa and just call me and ask for help, but, he said that he must be with her at the point of her need. He had no idea what he was going to face. He had no idea if he would be on the streets with her that night. He had no idea if he would be in a shelter with her. He had no idea if he would be able to get some money to be in a hotel with her. The one thing he did know was that whatever happened, out of compassion, he had to be with her at the point of her need.
The great transformation of Ezekiel, the way in which he was able to address his nation, was when he had reached that point where he sat where the people sat; when he was able to identify with them in their difficulties, rather than to just pass a word of judgement from on high. He was willing to take responsibility for his people, but to do so, he had to sit where they sat.
This brings me to the last part. Not only does God identify our need, not only does God have compassion for us, but in sitting where we sit, God changes our lives.
I was given a book this past week. You know how things just land on your lap sometimes. This was a book written by none other than David A. MacLennan, a former minister here at Timothy Eaton. The book is entitled No Coward's Soul. I haven't been able to put this book down all week. I am just absolutely riveted by it. I am riveted by it because, when I read it, I am absolutely in awe of the fact that people like that were in this pulpit. He talks about the question as to whether or not God cares for human beings. He writes these words, and I am always going to remember them: "Does God care? We Christians give the affirmative answer, not only or chiefly because of deductions we have made from observable facts and personal experience, we believe that God cares for each member of his human family because of his self-disclosure and self-giving in the historic person of Jesus Christ. God is love, wrote the Apostle John. In this the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world. Little by little, and in varied ways, the mind and goodness behind all life revealed himself as intimately and inextricably involved in the highest development of his human creatures. God who disclosed something of his nature and intention to men and women, and, through men's responsiveness to his spirit, at last made the fully satisfying disclosure in the one who embodied his character as no other has done. God so loved the world that he gave of Himself."
My friends, therein lies the point of transformation. Not only does God identify with us, but God identifies with us in person and in that person, sitting where we sit, identifying with us in the fullness of humanity, our lives are forever changed.
There is a wonderful story of Marian Preminger, who was born in Hungary in 1913, a woman who had been brought up in the wealthiest of all Hungarian families, who had sat and dined with royalty. Whenever she traveled, her maid would always make sure that her own sheets were on any bed in which we slept. This woman grew up and moved for schooling in Vienna where she met a doctor whom she married at the age of eighteen. After a while, having lived in the lap of luxury with this doctor, she decided that her marriage was no longer worth saving, and the two of them divorced. A few years later she met a young German movie-maker, called Otto. Otto Preminger and she married. She moved to Hollywood, looking for the good life, keeping the standard to which she had been accustomed. There she met all the great movie stars. She lived a life of profligacy and immorality, so much so that in her search, in her quest to fulfil herself and to rise to the top, Otto Preminger heard of her exploits and decided to divorce her. In 1948, Marian went to Paris. There she decided that she again wanted to live the good life amongst the socialites, amongst the authors, amongst the avant-garde and she once again began to live a life of seduction and profligacy, until one day she went to a concert. The concert was of the music of the great Johann Sebastian Bach. There, playing the organ was a man about whom she had heard quite a lot, a man called Albert Schweitzer. Afterwards she decided that she wanted to talk to Albert Schweitzer and so she went to him. They sat down and they talked. For the next week, she followed him around as if she were a groupie. She heard what Albert Schweitzer had to say and what Albert Schweitzer believed. At the end of it all, he challenged her: She had been seeking the good life. She had tried to get everything that she had wanted through illicit means. Albert Schweitzer introduced her to the source of his own faith. She had to make a decision: Was she going to continue to go with Schweitzer? If so, she would have to go to Lambaréné in Africa. After having met the one who had been the inspiration for Albert Schweitzer, she decided to go. For the next thirty years, Marian Preminger worked with Albert Schweitzer. She changed nappies and diapers. She removed bandages from wounds. Rather than having the sheets from her own bed, she had to sleep beside those that were the poorest, the naked and the diseased. At the end of her life, she wrote a book entitled All I ever wanted was everything. Albert Schweitzer had said to her: "The only way that you will get everything is if, first of all, you give everything." In her encounter with Jesus Christ, you see, Marian Preminger was forever changed. Through Albert Schweitzer, who had sat down and talked to her, at the moment of her need, she saw someone else there with her. As a result of that, she decided to sit where others sit, at the point of their need. My friends, that is transformation, and that is based on God's identification with us. God sits where we sit. We should sit where others sit. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.