One of the pleasures of this season is driving around after dark looking at Christmas lights. There may be more of that this year, both the lighting and the looking, as other Christmas activities are curtailed. Not far from us on McClean Blvd., this display has lit up December nights for years. It’s definitely a bit much, but the joyful light in the darkness is still fun to drive by and take in.
Light in the Advent season before Christmas is one way we as Christians may recall the presence of God in the world, that He is here shining in the light of Jesus Christ, even in the darkest of times. Despite the often dark and bleak times and messages of the prophets, they also pointed toward that light of God’s presence breaking into the world.
The last nine chapters of Ezekiel, chapters 40-48, are weird. Of course, one might be inclined to say that about the whole book, starting in chapter 1 with the famous vision of the wheel(s) and the four-faced, many-eyed cherubim. Yet up to chapter 40, one might be able to view most Ezekiel’s prophecy, even fantastic images like the resurrection of the valley of dry bones, as pretty well-grounded in the past, present and/or near future reality of the nation of Israel and the exiles from Judah.
Much of the first part of Ezekiel is about the departure of the light, the movement of that fantastic cherubic vision away from the Temple and away from Jerusalem. The corresponding mundane fact is the destruction of that Temple and the exile of the people who worshiped there. It’s a sad, dark word indeed. But starting in chapter 40, and even before in the prophetic images of chapter 37, there is a hopeful promise of the light, the presence of God returning and renewing His people.
But when we do get to chapter 40, it also feels like the whole thing starts to “jump the shark,” a term coined from an episode of the “Happy Days” television show when Fonzie jumped over a shark on water skis. It has come to signify a story line in TV or film that adds some absurd gimmick just to keep the viewer’s interest and also signals a decline in quality of the show from that point on. It seems to fit the final chapters of Ezekiel, with his long, dull explication of the layout and dimensions of a hypothetical, never-constructed Temple pictured with the fantastical feature of a river flowing out of it.
The final bit of Ezekiel, chapter 48:30-35, goes even beyond that imaginary Temple to picture the whole city of Jerusalem reconstructed, focusing on the 12 gates to the city, to be named after the 12 tribes of Israel as designated by the original 12 sons of Jacob/Israel. If we turn to the end of Revelation, we realize that the apostle John has taken up that same image and transformed it into a scene of great light, by giving it twelve foundations adorned with twelve kinds of jewels, and making each of the gates a giant pearl (the source of our talk about the “pearly gates”). The new Jerusalem is lit up like a Christmas display, but all with reflected light shining in gem stones.
And that light gleaming off the city of God is there to assure us that He will never abandon us. As the last words of Ezekiel say, “the name of the city will be ‘The Lord is there.'” Our confident hope is that the prophet is right. There is there and here now, as we travel toward that gleaming city, catching glimpses of its light and of His presence along the way.