More than justice
“Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun in history lie like bones, each one.” ― W.H. Auden
Segment of Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart), 1983 (© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York.)
My friend shared an article from The Atlantic showing the difficulty the art world has in combatting racism despite its efforts. It centers around a powerful painting of lament called, “Defacement” (or “The death of Michael Stewart”) by Jean-Michel Basquait. However, the efforts to share this painting, and others like it, revealed turmoil in the art world—injustices done trying to correct injustice. My friend quoted this poetry from W.H. Auden in summary. Auden’s image is convicting to all of us: imagine history’s pile of injustices, lying unburied in the sun, tripping us. It seems we are surrounded by bones of injustice: the mass graves in the Ukraine, the rubble in Turkey and Syria, the latest American shooting of civilians by civilians, the murder of Tyre Nichols in Memphis… the list goes on. Their bones cry for justice. History shows we fail in giving it.
We need more than justice. Auden’s poetic bones remind me of the blood of Abel. In Genesis 4, Cain kills his brother Abel. Cain denies it to the Lord when asked. Then the Lord convicts Cain of his murder saying, “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground” (Genesis 4:10). Nothing is hidden from God – no injustice. He will bring an end to all evil and right its wrongs. This is “the day” of final judgement promised in Ezekiel 7, Revelation 20, Luke 21:25-28, and Joel 2. The problem is, we all have left bones of injustice – things we have done and have left undone. The day of final judgement would not be good news for any of us were it not for Jesus.
Auden’s pile of guilty bones takes me to Ezekiel 37 and 38-39 where we see two valleys of guilty bones. One forgiven and resurrected. One eaten by vultures or buried. I am going to spend the next few blogs looking at Ezekiel’s bones and the hope they give for our bone-filled world. The first, Ezekiel 37, acknowledges the devastation of sin but promises redemption and new life that far surpasses it. The second, Ezekiel 38-39 shows the enemies of God’s newly resurrected people. They are Gog and Magog, the unidentified violent horde that bands together to attack and kill them. In fact, God summons them to do so! He does so in order to show the absolute power of his protective love for his own. The bones of Gog and Magog reassure God’s people that there is justice and you have been spared it.
Now to the first pile of bones. Ezekiel 37 begins with dead people. Ezekiel looks out onto a valley and sees dry skeletons. He sees people who were already dead in their sins. People who had tripped over and caused others to trip on their many acts of injustice. These are God’s precious people: dead ones! Guilty ones!
“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” (Ephesians 2:4-5)
Although Ezekiel wrote long before Jesus was born, he saw the same thing about our human nature that Jesus did: we start life spiritually dead in our sins. This is why Jesus entered into our dusty world and went all the way down into death for us. He alone is without sin. He alone can atone for it. He alone rose from the dead. He alone can raise us from it too. The first pile of bones says you are dead and you cannot raise yourself. You must be raised. That is just what Jesus did. When God breathes faith in his Son Jesus into us, like breath entered the bones in Ezekiel 37, we come alive.
The army of dry bones was dead in their sin, but they had also been killed by the God who would raise them! How surprising! They were supposed to be a light to the nations around them but instead they worshipped idols and hurt one another and thought God didn’t care (Ezekiel 8). God comes as a divine warrior to fight against his people (Ezekiel 9). He sent some of them off to exile in Babylon (like Ezekiel) and some he left in Jerusalem (with Jeremiah). This exile was a punishment – a tough love moment by our Steadfastly Loving Heavenly Father. It’s like a parent who lets her drug addict daughter go to jail for a time to help her sober up and see her toxic relationships, or a cheated wife who said no more to her wayward husband. There is a scene in the Lego Batman Movie where Batman says, no, to his accidentally adopted orphan son, Dick. Dick squeals happily, “I’m being parented!”
parenting moment in the Lego Batman Movie
Although we usually hate it, it ultimately feels good to have someone care for you enough to fight for you. As a parent, I often lack the wisdom or the emotional maturity to do this well. I react or overreact instead of being curious, loving, steady, and untriggered. I say sorry a lot. However, God is securely attached to us. He is slow to anger, always just, and absolutely loving to us in all his ways… even in the awful things. Ezekiel shows it. Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson says, “He [God] is a lover and therefore jealous, for there cannot be an actual lover who is not jealous…our only hope is God’s personal stake in the good he wills for us” (Jenson, Ezekiel, 63). God loved his people enough that he entered in and killed their sin. Romans 7:21 describes that all sin ends in death: gossip, pride, gluttony, lust, that glance of our eyes, the lack of forgiveness, the idolatry—all of it kills us. There is no better or worse sin. It all ends in death. And all of us have it. The killing, the gossip, the neglect is awful. They seem directed at one another or ourselves. Ultimately, they are directed at God himself – we reject Him and erect our own god instead. Except our own god makes us a slave.
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge.
Surely, I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me. (Psalm 51:3-6)
God kills sin to save you.
In the Old Testament, God’s punishment for sin was partial and pointing forward to a fuller end for sin. The exile and various punishments were ways God showed his holiness and his love for us - as Lego Batman’s son said, “I’m being parented!” No this isn’t good for you, you are being unfair to the poor, do not sacrifice your children to other gods, the stove is hot don’t touch it... there is no other god besides me. The whole Old Testament leaves us wanting more. This system of command and warning (blessings and curses for obeying the 10 Commandments and civil and purity laws) did not change our hearts. The Commands were not supposed to. They were supposed to help us see our need for a Savior. The Apostle Paul explained Jesus this way to the Jews in Antioch: “I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:39). The law of Moses exposed our pile of bones but left them unburied, crying out guilty! from the ground.
In Jesus, God took the full blow of his anger against our injustice upon himself. Paul, who called himself the chief of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15), described Jesus’ sacrifice for us. He explains that the good things God commands us to do only showed us that we could not do them. Our injustices betray us; we all leave bones. Even the most socially just amongst us are often making themselves god instead of their Creator. Jesus did not come to condemn us for this. He came to save us.
“For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:3,4).
What do you do when you love the people dearly who are sick with sin? You could unleash your anger at sin and destroy them all. But God doesn’t want to destroy you or me (Ezekiel 18:23, God takes no pleasure in the death of anyone). He loves us and saves us from destroying ourselves. So how do you destroy the sin yet save the sinner? Jesus let God’s just judgment rain down upon him, not us. He received the full blow for all our bloody crimes, rose from the grave and said, “I forgive you. I will not leave you because I love you.” When you hear that for the first time, it resurrects your heart from the spiritual death you were living in. A Christian hears it over and over since our life with sin will not end until Jesus comes again. We are the valley of dead, dry skeletons in Ezekiel 37 – dead in our sins, and dead under the failure to love the way God told us to. But the Spirit of God gives life, breath, and faith to dead, dry bones raising them to new life that cannot be taken away. That is Ezekiel’s first picture of bones: like Auden’s, they are guilty ones, dead in our sins. It’s not the other guy’s sins, but our sins, yours and mine. In God’s upside-down kingdom, our sins qualify us for His grace. We are the target for his love and mercy. In his securely-attached-always-for-your-freedom-never-fed-up love for you, he will wrestle you down, nail your sin to his cross, and give you a new heart, his.
“Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 37:13, 14).
The first pile of bones shows a Word from outside you. It has killed your sin. Mercy won. It called you to life in Jesus’ love. The next pile of bones says, it won’t be taken away.
Works Cited
Jensen, Robert W. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible: Ezekiel. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009.
Wright, Christopher. The Message of Ezekiel: A New Heart and a New Spirit. Downers Grove: IVP, 2001
Moore, Erika. OT 636: The Book of Ezekiel Online Class. January-May 2016. Trinity School for Ministry, Ambridge, PA.