Sunday Sermon Manuscript for September 6
Turn, and Turn and Go
Ezekiel 33:7–11 (NRSV)
Introduction
As you may have seen on TV, what makes the flooding in Nepal so horrifying is not simply the damage from overflowing water, but the damage caused when soil and rocks and trees clump together and come rushing down — half water, half mud — at tremendous speed.
A similar kind of flood happened not long ago at the Grand Canyon. Rain fell on ground that was already soaked with rain, and in the same way the saturated earth gave way, and in an instant a massive surge of mud and debris swept down over the Grand Canyon trails at astonishing speed. Because of this, the bridges connecting the canyon were all severed, and the water lines running to the campgrounds and cabins were destroyed.
Watching this kind of devastation, it seems that even in the twenty-first century — even with all that humanity claims to know — we remain helpless before natural disasters we cannot fully know, and there are limits to what we can prevent in advance. Seeing how the power that nature reveals still outruns our reason and our experience and catches us off guard, I found myself thinking that our lives, too, are always being thrown into spaces we cannot anticipate.
At times like these, being together within the church community is a great comfort, and I found myself thinking how precious it is that we build up our faith and our belief side by side, close to one another.
The passage we read today is the word of Ezekiel, proclaimed while Israel was in captivity. Though most of us have never experienced it firsthand, the time when Israel's nation fell and its people were dragged into exile seems to have been like being swept away — carried off into captivity by an enormous historical storm that struck without warning and could not be withstood.
The time of the Babylonian exile would have been a life more difficult than we can imagine. Most of those carried into exile were from the higher classes of Israel, and according to recent archaeological discoveries, they had lost everything — home and land, loved ones, social standing, and even the temple — and were reduced to subsistence farmers in a foreign land. The indescribable desolation they faced must have filled the Israelites who had been taken captive.
In such a time, and from such a place, hearing the word of God would not have been easy. In verse 10 we read, "Our transgressions and our sins weigh upon us, and we waste away because of them; how then can we live?" It seems that everything was being pulled down into despair.
In the trauma of war, defeat, and loss, there was almost nothing they could control, and a reality unfolding the way they wished for must have felt like a distant dream. And yet, into that very place, God raised up Ezekiel as a prophet and had Ezekiel's mouth speak of restoration and a new vision — and then, in today's passage, into that very place, God says that he is appointing these captives, buried in despair, as sentinels.
God Calls Us as Sentinels (v. 7)
In verse 7 we read, "I have made you a sentinel for the house of Israel." The sentinel is the most vivid metaphor for a people who know war. It refers to the one who blows the trumpet to signal danger, or the one who stands guard over the vineyard against thieves. But here the sentinel is described as one whose warning is no longer about an approaching army or a robber, but about the wrong the community itself is committing.
The sentinel's task is only one thing — the courage to cry out boldly. Whether people listen or not is not the sentinel's portion. The work God has entrusted to the sentinel is this one thing, to cry out boldly; whether those who hear it will listen or not is not the sentinel's responsibility.
Perhaps you have had experiences like this. Perhaps you have, with great care and barely mustered courage, shared the gospel with someone. Or perhaps you have, wringing out real boldness, introduced your church and invited someone into the community of faith.
And while there are those who respond warmly, there are also plenty who reject you quite coldly. When someone listens with warmth, it feels good; but the moment someone treats you coldly, your whole body seems to freeze. And because of that memory, sharing the gospel or introducing your church can become difficult.
When I was serving as an associate minister early in my ministry, my senior pastor used to say that when you share the gospel, there are some people who respond harshly and coldly — some who treat you in a way that is downright unpleasant — while others respond quite warmly, saying, "Yes, I'll come soon!" But as time passes, it turns out that the ones who were so cold end up, at some point, sitting in the pews — while not one of those who so nicely said "I'll come soon" is to be found in a seat.
"You" (Plural): Repentance That Turns Together (vv. 8–10)
Looking at verses 8 through 10, we find the words, "that they may turn from their evil way and leave it … that they may turn from their way and turn back from it." The New Korean Translation (새번역) gives this section the heading "Individual Responsibility." Yet the Hebrew original uses the singular "you" for the sentinel as an individual, and the plural "you" (너희) for those who must turn back.
That is, to say "you are a sentinel" is spoken to one person, to each individual. In today's terms, it means that God has appointed every single one of us sitting here as a sentinel. And yet, if the sentinel's task — yours and mine — is to proclaim the gospel wherever we are, then those who hear our message extend beyond us, to wholly others, to a plurality, to the many.
This means that both our being called and those who repent through the gospel we proclaim are all bound together with that communal word — "together."
Ezekiel's concern was not to speak of the individual sins of a few people. It was to speak of the structural sin that has seeped into "the way we have always done things," into the taken-for-granted routine of daily life — the norm. And "pervasive" here does not mean that a certain proportion of people took part in it, but rather that it has come to be regarded as simply a matter of course.
Toward that community — where the wrong is taken for granted, has become pervasive, and in which the many take part — the sentinel must deliver a warning. This is not a call to threaten, nor is it about pointing out faults; it is, rather, a matter of speaking out of an earnest longing that says, as one who also bears communal responsibility from within: "let us turn back together."
We, too, today know well the culture of the community we share, the things that have grown familiar to us over time, and the things we all tend to do in similar ways.
If I were to sketch the members of Yeolin Church, roughly: we are introverted (you absolutely must not be extroverted), we are people of few words, we are nice to others, and we are a church with a certain endearing looseness — where even someone who has been a member for over a year might be asked, "Are you a new member?" This is not my own assessment; it is what you yourselves say.
If we apply the message Ezekiel proclaims today to ourselves, then for each and every one of us to carry out well the role of "sentinel" given to us, it means wrestling with how we might turn our ways of relating to God and to one another back toward God — walking with God, drawing near, turning back to God together. We cannot control one another's behavior — and in truth, this is not that kind of age; it is no longer an age when the church moves in perfect lockstep toward a single goal, as it once did.
Still, as those who live in this age holding fast to the mission and responsibility given to us and to the gospel of Jesus, we need to lend our ears to Ezekiel's prophecy of the sentinel. This responsibility of the sentinel is given to each and every one; this responsibility is directed toward everyone on this earth. And it is through this responsibility that the church is built up.
The God Who Delights Not in Death but in Life (v. 11)
In verse 11 we read, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live … O house of Israel, why will you die?"
The sentinel's warning may sound like the threat of judgment, but underneath it we can feel the heart of God. We can recognize it as the love that desires no one to die, the love of God that comes to us first, even before we turn. The understanding of "prevenient grace" — the grace God bestows first — that Rev. John Wesley spoke of can be read here too, within Ezekiel's proclamation today.
There are two verbs worth noting in this verse: "turn," and "turn and go" (re-turn). This is the classic language of repentance, and it carries the true meaning of repentance. Repentance is turning and then going — that is, it means restoration, or homecoming.
For the exile to turn and return to his own land, to finish the time of captivity and go back to the Jerusalem he came from — this is deeply symbolic. But to put it in our own words, it means returning to those days when we worshiped with zeal, to that heart; it means turning back to the time when we first devoted ourselves to the church with our first fervor.
We must remember that the question "Why will you die?" is not the sentence of a judge but the anguished lament of a father. Our being loved and being saved was accomplished through this lament, and we must remember that God's making us sentinels to proclaim to others is also God's anguished lament for those very people.
It is a delicate time to speak of church growth. Not long ago, in a report on the fastest-growing churches in America, a Korean church in Atlanta was named as one of the growing churches and drew attention — the first time a Korean church had been selected among all the growing churches in America.
This church had been planted only nine years ago. Over the past year, more than three hundred new members registered, and so it came to be known, deservedly, as a growing church. Three hundred in a single year — impressive, isn't it? And yet, behind that number, rather than "growth," it raises a number of questions about whether the church's revival came through the horizontal transfer of believers.
Half in jest, there's a saying that the one who endures wins: if a church simply stays peaceful and quiet, without any particular trouble, then when the churches nearby run into problems, their people move over to it.
When my daughter went off to college, she had a hard time finding a church, but recently she was introduced to a good church and is doing well in her faith. And yet, that church has grown rapidly over the last few years — and the reason is that as the churches around it ran into trouble, people moved over.
In such a time, speaking of growth cannot help but be delicate. Personally, I think that pursuing growth for its own sake is a direction that harms the church. And yet, without speaking of growth at all, it makes no sense to prepare for the next ministry, the next generation, the future.
Growth means, precisely, that life is alive. Setting aside the life of the flesh, which has a lifespan and declines — if we remember that the growth of life we hope for carries the calling and the mission given to us to build up the eternal kingdom of God, then we must speak of growth with a deeper wrestling.
There are people who come to me with this idea and that, hoping for and asking after the growth of the church. Their ideas are reasonable, they are good plans, and I find myself thinking, "yes, that could work." But more than that, I believe the way to move in the direction of growth God desires is not to look to someone else's responsibility or to some triggering event, but to remember that the calling of the "sentinel," given through Ezekiel today, has been given to every single member of Yeolin Church, one by one.
There are many churches, and among them ours is the best church. Everyone thinks so. This is something every church can say in just the same way. But what should make us different is not merely hoping to grow larger by adding more people; it is to dream of a growth that hopes for the practice and the fruit that reveal God's anguished heart — the fruit that comes when we fully live out the calling of "the sentinel given to us."
We proclaim, "Believe in Jesus." And yet there are many people in Yeolin Church with a maturity that says not "Come to our church," but "Go find a good church near you!" And here a question remains: while you tell someone to believe in Jesus, why do you not introduce your own church?
I, too, mostly mistook this attitude toward sharing the gospel as the healthy one. But for Yeolin Church to become truly open — an open church in the deepest sense — I believe we must have a confession in which we take honest pride in who we are. I dream of the members of Yeolin Church, one by one, taking up the role of the sentinel — grasping God's anguished heart, and longing to carry it to others.
Conclusion: Converging on the Refrain
Up to now we have spoken of being called as sentinels, of repentance that turns together, and of the God who delights in life. If we bind these into a single sentence, it can be said this way: "Turn (돌이켜라) — and turn and go (re-turn)."
Both are verbs, but most of the time we stop at "turn." Once we have turned, we must go. We must set out on the very road on which God, with an anguished heart, has entrusted his work to us. Perhaps the reason Christianity today struggles as it never did before is that we have spoken much about turning, but have not spoken about turning and going.
Yeolin Church — by another name, a community of the sentinels whom God has called. My desire is that we would become one another's sentinels, turn back together, and go one step further as a community of life. Let us not hesitate; let us take heart and walk that road together.
Not "someone else will do it" — but this: each and every one of us has been called a sentinel, and the sentinel must be one who proclaims "turn" and shares the gospel. And just as one turns and then goes, may you and I no longer stop at proclaiming, but become those who spend themselves, concretely, in carrying God's anguished heart to the world.
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