As I looked, I saw a wheel on the earth beside the living creatures, one for each of them; they moved in any of the four directions. There was something like a throne, and seated above the likeness of a throne was something that seemed like a human form. – Excerpts of Ezekiel 1 (NRSV)
Ezekiel’s people are in exile: defeated, defiled, and deported to a far land. The Jerusalem Temple, God’s home on earth, is destroyed. Everything has collapsed; everything is just about as terrible as it gets. And here comes Ezekiel, yelling to everybody that he’s just seen God. Not in the Temple. On a throne, on a platform, on wings, on angels, on wheels, peeling out through the middle of a storm. The people had gotten used to thinking of God as sedentary, sitting around in the deepest part of the Temple all day. Some had begun wondering what would happen to a stay-at-home God now that the home was destroyed.
And here comes God zooming through this foreign land on a … what? Wheelchair? Quad bike? Car? God is as mobile as mobile gets, mobile all the way to Babylon, mobile with the coolest mobility aid there ever was. A revelation. Hope.
And I looked, and I saw something like a window, and through it I saw God surrounded by a great multitude in rectangles. And round about God’s head was a glory of light because they always insist on sitting right in front of a window and it messes with the camera. And God said, “Omigosh, O mortal! Is that your cat? Hold her up so we can see!”
And verily, God came Zooming in again.
Prayer
Every time it all falls apart, you prove that you’re committed to showing up just where we need you. Thank you. Amen.
