Children's time: Ezekiel 2-3; prop: tortillas with Hebrew letters written in frosting
Ezekiel was a prophet who had to do a hard thing. He had to tell people to shape up, stop sinning, and get ready for a restored kingdom. When he told people what he wanted, he talked about his visions. God wanted him to warn the Israelites, even though he knew they wouldn't listen, but he had to give them a chance anyway. Once, he talks abut creatures with four heads and four wings, and of God appearing with a rainbow. God wanted Ezekiel to listen to his words and obey him, even though it was hard for Ezekiel. So he handed Ezekiel a scroll that had writing on the front and the back. Can you guess how Ezekiel was supposed to show God that he would listen and obey? Yes, he had to eat the scroll. I have these little scrolls here. Do you want to try eating one? When Ezekiel at the scroll, he said it tasted as sweet as honey. What do you think?
Let's pray.
One way to explain Revelation is to say the book is riddled with allusions to the old testament. The world riddle can mean “to pierce with many holes, like a sieve” or “to sift through, like a screen,” or it can also be “a question or statement designed to exercise one's ingenuity or a conundrum; a puzzle; a dark saying or speech.” I think the book of Revelation fits all those definitions: it is full of holes, or at least it's missing bits of information we'd like to have; it is written to help us sort out God's priorities from the world's demands, and it is also a question for us to puzzle out.
Here's a few clues to help with the tenth chapter: The rainbow is a sign of God's covenant with creation; remember the bow that stretched across the heavens, reminding God never again to send a flood to destroy the living things on earth. A cloud is a symbol of heavenly divinity; a pillar of fire recalls the pillar of protection that followed the Israelites by day and night during the exodus. When an angel has a foot on the sea and a foot on the land, it means that angel has authority over not just the land or not just the earth, but both. The scroll is as symbol of judgment and redemption. The sixth trumpet has been blown; chapter ten is an interlude before the seventh trumpet is blown in chapter 11.
Listen for the word of God as it is found in Revelation 10:1-11.
(NRSV) And I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head; his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. 2 He held a little scroll open in his hand. Setting his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, 3 he gave a great shout, like a lion roaring. And when he shouted, the seven thunders sounded. 4 And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down.”
5 Then the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and the land raised his right hand to heaven 6 and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, and the sea and what is in it: “There will be no more delay, 7 but in the days when the seventh angel is to blow his trumpet, the mystery of God will be fulfilled, as he announced to his servants the prophets.” 8 Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, “Go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.” 9 So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll; and he said to me, “Take it, and eat; it will be bitter to your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth.” 10 So I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it; it was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter. 11 Then they said to me, “You must prophesy again about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.”
This ends our reading from God's word.
Revelation is not about scaring the unconverted gentiles, but about encouraging believers to hold fast, to stay faithful even while the Roman government was persecuting the churches. I appreciated reading this contemporary way of looking at Revelation: “People with crummy lives want [redemption] to happen now. If you are a Christian in sub-Saharan Africa today, you don't yawn when somebody mentions the return of Jesus Christ. When the AIDS epidemic has devastated whole populations, you want your redeemer. You want the one who has healing in his wings. Passionate Christians want the return of the Lord. And so do compassionate ones. When our own life is sweet, we can look across the world to lives that aren't sweet. We can raise our heads and our hopes for those lives. We can weep with those who weep and hope with those who hope. ...” (1)I have been following reports of the Presbyterian News Service in Indonesia .
Two weeks ago four attackers overpowered a lone security guard at Effata Christian Church in Palu , Indonesia , and fired from the front door of the church, killing the Rev. Susianty Tinulele, who had just finished her sermon. She was 26. Four others were injured. Since last November, Muslim “jihadists” have been systematically assassinating Christian leaders in central Sulawesi and attacking Christian worshippers during church services. Tinulele, who had just been ordained as a minister in the Central Sulawesi Christian Church (GKST), was a prominent supporter of the Rev. Rinaldy Damanik. , a GKST leader now serving a three-year prison sentence... She had taken food to Damanik in a Palu prison on Friday. ... Damanik was a key figure in peace negotiations between the Christian and Muslim communities.
Violence erupted in November 1999 when a pamphlet was circulated in both cities calling on Christians -- a minority in the area -- to rise up in a holy war against “ignorant” Muslims. The pamphlet ostensibly was signed by the Titaley, then chairman of the Protestant GPM. He and the church both disavowed any connection with the provocative document, and it was soon identified as a fake. By then, however, dozens of people were dead, hundreds of others were out for revenge, and 15,000 Christians and ethnic Chinese (most of them also Christians) had been forced to flee to Manado in North Sulawesi .
One month before, the largely Christian inhabitants of Kao, on North Halmahera , had burned down 16 villages belonging to the neighboring (Muslim) district of Malifut. That dispute began when gold was discovered and the Christians of Kao saw that the Muslims of Malifut were doing well as laborers at the mine, which is owned by an Australian-Indonesian partnership. Titaley acknowledged during a 2001 Synod meeting that Ambonese Christians share in responsibility for the violence. “Sincerity of faith among the Protestants has often been replaced by explosions of emotion and craving for wrath, which displayed itself in words and acts very contrary to Christian doctrine,” he said in a call to repentance. “For many people, faith in Christ the Savior all but vanished and was replaced by brutal craving for revenge, expressed by numerous acts of violence like killing, burning and destroying other people's property.” (2)
In Manado Indonesia, Dian Pattiasina told her story for the first time to a journalist for the Presbyterian News Service. She hadn't been able to speak of her husband's killing for four years. She said “It was on a Saturday morning, in our village on the island of Lata-Lata , that my husband, pastor Jusuf Pattiasina, was killed.” During the attack on the village by Muslim jihadists, 44 people, all Christians, were killed. The centuries-old village, including Pattiasina's Akedabo Christian Church, was burned to the ground. “They hid in the jungle; the chief of our village came to get her husband the pastor, saying order was restored. But when he came out, they blindfolded him and took him away. “I want very much to get him back, even if it's only his bones, and to make a funeral. So I prayed, ‘Please, husband, I know you are dead, but I want you buried at my home.'
According to the stories the people told me, he was first taken blindfolded to a mosque and ordered to convert, to become a Muslim, but he would not. At the mosque he was harassed before he was killed, and shown to the crowd. Once again he asked permission to pray. They say he was stabbed while he was praying. Still, I thought to myself for a long time, in my heart, ‘Maybe my husband is still alive.' But I knew he wasn't. All I have of him now is his Bible.”
The minister had escaped to the jungle with the clothing he had on, the Bible and the family savings of about 2 million rupiah (about $200 US). The exiled Christians had stayed in the jungle for more than two weeks. This was very hard on the old people and the children. Many came down with malaria, and several died. Two women gave birth in the jungle. The Christians had little water and no food. Eventually their chief, Isaac Garera, realized that they had to give themselves up. Dian, like the other villagers, was told to choose for herself and her family between death and conversion to Islam. She chose Islam.
Then for several months, she and her children were schooled in Muslim practice and made to memorize passages from the Koran. She wore the Muslim head covering, the jilbab. And like the other Christians-turned-Muslims, she suffered daily “harassment” at the hands of their conquerors. “We pretended to be Muslim,” she says. “In our hearts, of course, we were still worshipping Jesus.” And planning an escape. After months of conspiring, Dian used her husband's legacy to buy passage for herself and her children on a small Navy boat (commanded by a Christian sailor) to refuge on the island of Ternate . From there she made her way to Manado, where tens of thousands of other Indonesian Christians already lived in squalid government-provided camps and barracks built for “internally displaced persons” (IDPs).
These people, refugees in their own country, would be Dian Pattiasina's extended family. “I became a servant; I took in washing; I washed people's clothes,” Dian says softly. “For this I was paid a limited amount-- although I do appreciate even a small income, if only for school fees and pencil money for [my son] Rambo. Although I keep telling him the reality: I say: ‘Rambo, you are only with your mama now. Please love your mama, even though she's only a laundry girl.'”
Dian is not just a washerwoman. She is also a health and nutrition cadre trained and employed by Church World Service (CWS), an ecumenical humanitarian organization that tries to meet the most urgent needs of the IDP families. CWS, a partner of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and a frequent collaborator with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, provides services ranging from emergency housing to agricultural consulting to trauma counseling. Dian is one of a group that sees to the health and nutritional needs of the IDPs and especially their children.
She admits that she is very homesick for the coconut and clove plantation she left behind. An American would not use such a grand word as “plantation” for the little patch of dirt she worked, by hand, on Lata-Lata. But it was her patch of dirt, and her trees, and in her eyes it was grand. Now it's 250 miles away and gone forever. She says she tries not to harbor feelings of bitterness towards “whoever will take the fruits of those plants” she left behind. “I have told my son that I will do my best to get him through school, but just the other day he asked me, ‘Will you be able to support me?'” she says. “He worries about when he will go to junior high school (and fees are higher). I tell him, ‘You know your mama is illiterate, and only does laundry, but she also believes in God, and always she keeps praying that we will get a way out.' ... My faith is very strong.”
She stands in a house that was abandoned until she and another IDP discovered it, moved in and fixed it up. Now that it's fit for habitation, the owner is putting it up for rent. Dian and her friend and their children will have to move, because they have virtually no income and couldn't pay the rent. “I would be grateful,” she says, “if my story could be told.” (3)
And sometimes, that is all we can do, is tell our stories and listen to the stories other people tell. Our stories are not the only ones that matter. When things are going well for us, it is important for us to listen to others who have different stories and different lives. The book of Revelation is good news to people like the Christians in Indonesia , who are surviving as refugees in their own country. It lets them know that God cares and that God's justice will prevail in the end. We, like Ezekiel and John, have to internalize the words of God so that they become part of our bodies. Those words will nourish us so that we can bear to listen to sad stories, and continue to hope in God, and in the salvation of Jesus Christ.
(1)Plantinga, Cornelius Jr. “Between two advents: in the interim,” Christian Century , De. 5, 2000, p. 271+.
(2)Filiatreau. John, “Indonesian pastor murdered in pulpit: Masked men escape after disrupting service with machine gun fire” Presbyterian News Service 04330, July 21, 2004.and Filiatreau, John. “Old grievances: Moluccan violence is Christian-Muslim, but that's not all it is, “PNS, 04314, July 14, 2004
(3)Filiatreau, John, “Witness: Widow of pastor killed in jihad breaks her long silence, “PNS 04311, July 14, 2004 .
|
First Presbyterian Church