I can’t remember who it was, maybe Larry Niven, but I recall an essay by a science fiction writer discussing the possibilities of low tech, very simple ways to preserve masses of information. The writer talked about someone else’s suggestion that something like the Library of Congress could be carried upon just two “sticks” of precise length. The ratio between the two lengths would a non-repeating decimal number in which all that information was encoded. The writer also noted the additional suggestion that you wouldn’t even need two sticks, just one with a mark on it in the right place, indicating the ratio between the two parts.
I think more information would be necessary in order to “read” those sticks, such as the measurement system employed or at least the base of the number system. But that image of masses of data saved in such a simple format stuck with me. I remembered it when I read the text I selected from our reading this week in Immerse: Prophets, page 378, Ezekiel 37:15-28. There God tells Ezekiel to take two sticks, mark them with the names of the divided kingdoms of Israel, and then hold them together as if they were one piece of wood. That prophetic image of the two sticks is used to convey a huge vision of God’s plans for both Israel and the world. Most of the remaining chapters of Ezekiel are devoted to fleshing it out (in yet another image of an imaginary temple which was never built).
The big promise in the text is that God will gather His people from the two parts of Israel, the completely defunct and dispersed northern kingdom, and the exiled remnant of the southern kingdom. “I will bring them home to their own land from the places where they have been scattered. I will unify them into one nation on the mountains of Israel.” As any student of Bible history knows well, that prophecy was not fulfilled. Yes, exiles, or at least descendants of exiles from Judah returned to the land. But there was never any real return of those from the tribes in the north.
Yet the prophecy is strangely echoed by our Gospel text from Mark 13:24-37, for the first Sunday in Advent. There Jesus predicts in verse27 that at the time of His return, He will “send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of earth to the ends of the heavens.” So there is a gathering and reunifying of God’s people yet to come. It’s not a literal rejoining of the tribes of Israel, but it is a hope for the bringing together of people from all over the world, from all over creation.
In Ezekiel, the agent of that unification is “My servant David,” who “will be their king, and they will have only one shepherd.” Again it is not a literal promise, not a return of the dead king, but instead a reference to the Messiah who comes from the lineage of David, as we also remember in Advent. That Davidic servant, who Christians know to be Jesus, will “be their prince forever. And I will make a covenant of peace with them, an everlasting covenant.”
In a divided nation in a divided world, that promise of a coming day of unity and peace is particularly sweet. Yet the fulfillment is probably as hard to picture as was the reunification and gathering even of “lost” tribes was for those who first saw and heard Ezekiel display those two sticks and proclaim the rejoining of the people. Yet there it is, across the centuries, from Ezekiel to Jesus, the hope that God will bring together the cracked and broken human race and make us one in Him. That’s a lot of information, an incredibly huge picture there in just two sticks.
And since that unity is the future toward which God’s plan for us is headed, we do well to seek it in whatever ways we can, whether in humble attempts to reach across political or racial divides, or in even the seeking of peace between nations. The Gospel lesson ends with Jesus’ admonition to stay awake and alert, not to sleep away the time of waiting for His return. As He says there, we each have work to do, the work of bridging the divides, seeking out His lost sheep and bringing them home. Yes, it will take His return to complete that work, but it was meant to begin long ago. Why else keep reminding us down through the ages that such is the goal? Let us be about the work of peace. Let’s keep putting the sticks together.