Time to Drive

This is what the Sovereign Lord says: No foreigner uncircumcised in heart and flesh is to enter my sanctuary, not even the foreigners who live among the Israelites.
Ezekiel 44:9 (NIV)

I was driving with our daughter Taylor in the car. It was a gorgeous, quiet day late in the afternoon. She was around eleven or twelve years old at the time. About a block from our house was this giant parking lot that sat completely empty. I pulled into the parking lot and Taylor was wondering what was going on. I told her we were switching seats and that I was going to give her an opportunity to drive the car.

Taylor was completely freaked out by this, and that first driving lesson didn’t last very long, but she did it. She learned the basics of an accelerator and brake pedal, about shifting the car into gear, and she performed some basic turns with the steering wheel.

I not only had the joy of taking her completely by surprise, but I was also wanting to plant a seed in her soul. She was on the cusp of a new phase in life when she will find herself capable and responsible for things that were once forbidden to her. And while she was still a few years from having legal permission to drive a car, the truth is that she was already far more capable than she even knew – she’d never even thought about it.

In today’s chapter, Ezekiel’s vision continues and he is reminded of all the rules of the priests in the Temple that were established back in the book of Leviticus. In a previous post, I talked about God being a God who makes distinctions. And in today’s chapter, we are reminded that in that day there were distinctions between priests and non-priests, even between Jews and non-Jews. By the time Jesus appeared on the scene, the distinction had morphed into outright prejudice and religiously sanctioned racism.

But humanity grows and matures the way my daughter does. There was a time when the distinction was made “You are not to drive. Only daddy or mommy drives. That’s your seat. This one is mine.” But there comes a time when the distinction is removed. Jesus came to remove the distinctions and do something completely new.

Paul, who was himself a Jewish religious and legal scholar who became a disciple and apostle of Jesus, explained the removal of the distinction Ezekiel shares in today’s chapter between Jewish Levitical priests and “uncircumcised foreigners” to the believers in Ephesus:

(I know this is a long passage, but imagine yourself being one of the “uncircumcised foreigners” who was never allowed into the Temple and had been treated like a second-class citizen your whole life reading this for the first time.)

The Messiah has made things up between us so that we’re now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance. He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.

Christ brought us together through his death on the cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.

That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.
Ephesians 2:14-22 (MSG) emphases added

Jesus came to usher in a new age of humanity in which the Temple is no longer a bricks-and-mortar building but a flesh-and-blood organism. Everyone who is in Christ is a brick of the living, breathing Temple, and everyone who is in Christ is a priest of that Temple. We’re all included, we’re all a part of it.

In the quiet this morning, I am grieving the fact that for two thousand years the Institutional church has largely succeeded in putting the old distinctions back in place in which professional clergy are the only holy priests and the people in the pews are the unholy commoners. But that’s not what Jesus taught or intended. You and I, my friend, are a brick in the Temple and we’re Priests in this world to show others by our lives, our words, and our example the love and way of Jesus.

Jesus came to tell all of us “Get over here in the drivers seat, my child. It’s time to learn to drive.”