Sermon: Good News for Little Piggies

 Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Ephesians 1:15-23
Good News for Little Piggies

James Sledge                                                                           November 22, 2020

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

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

Everywhere there’s lots of piggies
Living piggie lives
You will see them out for dinner
With their piggie wives
Clutching forks and knives to eat the bacon

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 in his song. Ezekiel joins a long line of God’s prophets who speak 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 a rather remarkable run where a large middle class enjoyed the fruits of the economy, but that seems to be breaking down. Our economic system is becoming more and more skewed toward the wealthy, the well to do, 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, who’ve 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 easily smashed the cities of Judah and destroyed the capital of Jerusalem. The palace and the great Temple built by Solomon lie in ruins, all their finery 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 Babylonian gods, but Yahweh. And God 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?

Around 700 years later, a letter written by the Apostle Paul or, more likely, a disciple of Paul’s writing in his name, speaks of Jesus as sovereign. It describes Jesus as at the right hand of God and over all powers and dominions with everything under his feet. You may be familiar with language that speaks of Jesus as head of the Church, but here Jesus is called “the head over all things for the church…”

This letter is written to Gentile converts, many from the lower tiers of society, lots of little piggies if you will. It says that Jesus is over all things, over the mighty Roman Empire, for the sake of the church, for them. But why should anyone believe such a thing?

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Today is Christ the King or Reign of Christ, the final Sunday in the Christian year before a new year begins with Advent. Christ the King. That’s a rather audacious claim. Jesus, who hung out with the poor, outcasts, and those looked down on by good, religious folks. Jesus, who got himself executed for stirring up too much trouble against the powers that be. This Jesus is king? Then why are the bigger piggies still doing so well while little piggies struggle to make ends meet? If Jesus is head of all things, over all powers and dominions, why is the world still so messed up?

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. There is a lot about God I don’t understand. I would do things differently if I were God, but that’s probably not a very good for lots of reasons. There are people who claim to have neat and tidy explanations for why there is evil and why God doesn’t do more about it, but I’ve never seen one I thought totally convincing. It seems to me that a big part of the whole faith business is living with a some amount of uncertainty. As writer Anne Lamott says, “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.”

What I am a lot more sure about is that Jesus came to show us the ways of God and what life looks like when God’s will is done on earth. It is about self-giving love, love that sacrifices for the other, regardless of whether that other deserves such sacrifice and love.

And Jesus’ resurrection vindicates this way of self-giving love. More than that, Jesus’ death and resurrection break the power of sin and death, the hold that they have on us, freeing us from fears that drive us to seek security in power, wealth, possessions, and more. When by the Spirit, we are joined to Jesus’ death and resurrection, we are freed and empowered to live by the ways of God and so to be bearers of hope in the midst of a broken and hurting world.

Jesus is king, is Lord, has defeated the powers that lead the world into greed and division, into fear and hatred of those who are different, into anxieties about security that harden people’s hearts to the suffering of others. Jesus is over those powers for the church, for us, and so we are no longer captive to the ways of the world.

That means we can join Jesus and become a part of his new way, the way of God, the way of what Jesus calls the kingdom. We can become citizens of this not-quite-yet-kingdom now, part of a new day that does not come by force, but by acts of self-emptying love and kindness, by lifting up the lowly and destitute, by our transformed lives that show the world a different way, a better way.