Unfaithful

[Barrett Young]

I posted this a year ago on another blog, but thought I'd post it here because of some conversations I've been having over Ezekial 16:




One of the lines for Derek Webb’s song “Wedding Dress” says,

I am so easily satisfied
by the call of lovers less wild,
that I would take a little cash
over your very flesh and blood

These lines speak directly to the heart of an honest Christian. I am so easily satisfied by the things I have in this world that I am constantly settling for them, opposed to the lover of all lovers. Becoming a Christian is not becoming tame! Desiring money is tame. Desiring fame is tame. Desiring sex is tame. This things are like grape juice compared to the wine of drinking in all that Christ is for me. Yet, so easily, do I want the grape juice. Why is that?

Ezekiel 16 is perhaps one of the most graphic stories I’ve ever read. It talks about Jerusalem, and how they’ve rejected their God. It talks about me, and how I reject my God. The girl (me) was born to Pagans, and thrown into a field, naked and still covered in my afterbirth. I was abhorred by my parents (the world?) the day I was born. Christ found me wallowing in my blood in the field, and said to me “LIVE!” He made me flourish like a plant and I grew tall and beautiful and very desireable, yet I was still naked. Then Christ came, and covered me with His garment (His Righteousness) and entered into covenant with me. He washed me and anointed me and clothed me with fine cloth and leather, linen and silk. He continued to shower His blessings with jewelry and a crown, and my beauty (good deeds?) spread throughout the nations.

Then, I trust in this beauty and begin to play the whore and whore with anyone that would pass by. I take the garments My Christ had given me and I cover my shrines with them, and whore with other lovers on the Righteousness of Christ! I take the blessings He gives me and melt them down into false idols, men, that I pleasure myself with. I take the bread, fine flour and oil and honey, that Christ feeds me with, and give it to my lovers. I take the children that have been born to me, Christ’s children, and sacrifice them for food. And in all this, I don’t remember my youth, when Christ found me in blood, naked, and said to me “LIVE!”

And after all this wickedness, I rent a place in the street, offering my beauty, the gifts of Christ, to the pleasure of men. I whore with Egypt and I’m not satisfied. I whore with Assyria and I’m not satisfied. I whore with Chaldea and I’m still not satisfied. Yet, I am worse than a prostitute, because I don’t want payment! I pay my Sin to come in to me. My whoring makes my sister Sodom look Righteous. So, in jealous anger, Christ will bring all of my lovers against me. If that is what I want, it is what I’ll get. Christ, my jealous husband, will uncover my nakedness before my adulterers and let them beat me and rape me and spit on me, until once again I am naked, in a pool of blood like He found me.

Yet, as with every warning in the Bible, the last two verses are the most precious promises of God. “I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the LORD, that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord GOD.” God, help me to remember now! Don’t let me go so far.

How gracious is the Lord, my God, who loves a whore like me,
and one day will restore his bride, from all idolatry.

Now how do we teach this in Sunday School?