At the beginning of the book of Ezekiel, the prophet is 30 years old, and he’s a captured exile from his homeland, sitting with other captives by a river in Babylon.
Suddenly, the heavens open and he is transported into a vision. If you read Ezekiel 1, and imagine the vision of the throne room of God that Ezekiel experiences, it’s glorious, overwhelming and mysterious—and very strange! He sees four winged living creatures, with faces like a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle; he sees wheels within wheels, full of eyes, that move strangely through the air. The air is charged with lightning, wind, and fire. And then Ezekiel sees the mighty One on the throne, surrounded by the radiance of rainbows, a Being who is so bright and burning that He cannot clearly be seen. Ezekiel falls to his face, and then he hears the Voice.
What could such a Being want with a scruffy, exiled priest and prophet? The Spirit helps him to stand and then Ezekiel hears the word of the Lord for him. God calls him the Son of Man. God calls him to be the prophet to his people, the rebellious, wicked people of Israel. He tells Ezekiel that they are stubborn and they will resist his message. Then he tells Ezekiel not to be afraid, for once people have heard him, they will know that a prophet is among them. He gives Ezekiel a scroll to eat. When he eats it, it is as sweet as honey.
Why don’t people want to hear the words of a prophet? The New Yorker has always had cartoons of robed and bearded types holding up signs in the city street that say, “Repent, for the End is Near!” The minute we lay eyes on that, we scoff and resist and grin and shrug it off. But God sends prophets to give us saving words, words that help us to see the truth, words meant to turn us from evil and stop us from doing wrong. The Bible shows us over and over that prophets had terrible lives of being ridiculed and beaten and disregarded as they shared their internalized messages from God, those eaten scrolls. And the minute they die, their people piously put up plaques and revere their tombs. Jesus Himself criticizes the religious leaders in His own day in Matthew 23:29-30 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.” Jesus knew that the elite in each time of each prophet resisted, ignored and persecuted, sometimes to death, these prophets whose tombs the teachers and Pharisees now decorated.
How can we honor the prophets now? We listen to their words in Scripture, and hold them close to our hearts and minds, to see if we too need to repent and turn back to God. And we listen for God’s prophetic words, meant to save and help us, in our own times.