Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday (Ezekiel 34:11-24)

Some of you likely recall the old Beatles song from The White Album entitled, “Piggies.” The four, short verses were set to a fun, bouncy little tune, but the words contain biting, social commentary. Here are the first three verses.

Have you seen the little piggies
Crawling in the dirt?
And for all the little piggies
Life is getting worse
Always having dirt to play around in

Have you seen the bigger piggies
In their starched white shirts?
You will find the bigger piggies
Stirring up the dirt
Always have clean shirts to play around in

In their styes with all their backing
They don't care what goes on around
In their eyes there's something lacking
What they need's a damn good whacking

Little piggies and bigger piggies. The prophet Ezekiel makes a very similar move, but being Jewish, he can't use pigs. Instead he speaks of lean sheep and fat sheep, offering the same sort of social commentary George Harrison did with his song. Ezekiel joins a long line of God’s prophets who speak of judgment against the wealthy who enjoy the good life at the expense of the weak and the poor.

I don’t know that the world has changed all that much from Ezekiel’s day. America has had  rather remarkable run where a large, middle class enjoyed the fruits of the economy, but many fear that this is breaking down, that our economic system is becoming more and more skewed toward the wealthy, the one percent, the bigger piggies, the fat sheep.

But Ezekiel insists that God will intervene on behalf of the lean sheep, the scattered and hungry sheep. God will seek out the lost and bring back those who have strayed and been battered and injured. And this claim is all the more remarkable given the people to whom Ezekiel speaks it, exiles in Babylon.

The notion that God will protect the sheep and bring them home is an audacious claim to make in the face of the awesome power of the Babylonian Empire. They are a great superpower that has easily smashed cities of Judah and destroyed the capital of Jerusalem. The palace and the great Temple built by Solomon lie in ruins, all the finery from both now contained in the Babylonian treasury. What possible hope can the displaced remnant of Israel have in the face of such power?

But Ezekiel insists that despite all evidence to the contrary, God is sovereign. Not King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon nor the gods of Babylon, but Yahweh. And Yahweh will rescue the sheep who now find themselves at the mercy of powers and principalities that seem to hold all the cards. But why should anyone believe such a thing?

You may have seen the recent news reports documenting how the economic doldrums we've experienced since 2008 have impacted charitable giving. Strangely, giving by the wealthiest Americans, the people who have benefited the most from the stock market rebound, has decreased. At the same time, those toward the bottom of the economic ladder, who have seen little of the "recovery" we've been in for the last five years, have increased their giving. Fat sheep and lean sheep; bigger piggies and little piggies.

I heard a pastor this week speak on church stewardship, quoting the statistics above. He said something about those with wealth having to give an account of what they have done with their riches. Not language much used in our day, but it is the same sort of language Ezekiel uses. "Thus says the Lord GOD to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep." And Ezekiel is pretty clear that God is on the side of lean sheep, of little piggies.

But why should anyone believe such a thing? Clearly, many do not. We have confined God to a narrower and narrower slice of our lives. Even many who are believers reduce that to "believing in Jesus" and therefore receiving a heavenly prize. Many more dismiss with God's power altogether. They may even "belong" to a church but their money is theirs, to do with however they see fit. No account to God for them.

Today is Christ the King Sunday. Many churches will mark this in their worship, but it won't really seem much different from any other Sunday. All that will change in the coming weeks as we draw close to Christmas. (We'll call it Advent, but often that simply means "pre-Christmas.") Attendance will swell and sanctuaries will get all decorated. We'll enjoy all the glad tidings and good cheer, but it won't really change anything. The great thing about a baby Jesus is he doesn't speak, nothing like that pesky adult Jesus who sounds a lot like Ezekiel at times.

Christ the King, our ruler, master and Lord, or so we say. Christ the King falls on the last Sunday of the Christian calendar, the culmination of the year that begin in Advent. Our king is the one who lived and preached and died and was raised. And this risen Jesus commanded his followers, us, to make disciples, "teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." I'm assuming "everything" includes all that stuff about caring for the poor, about wealth making it hard to enter the kingdom, and so on. But why should anyone believe such a thing?

I guess that is the crux of the matter. Do we dare believe such a thing? Not do we believe in God or Jesus? Not do we go to church and therefore hope God is well disposed toward us? But do we believe that Christ is Lord of all, seated above all the great powers of our day, above all the armies and technology and wealth? Do we believe that we are called to follow him and obey him, and that whether or not we do ultimately matters? Do we?