Ezekiel 36: 26,27a
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you..
Lectio (taking a bite): that old and crazy prophet, that eschatological expositor, Ezekiel! Ezekiel makes literal reading of his part of The Book impossible..he is a poet! He’s a crazy poet but he takes metaphors and sets them on fire! If he’d had an airplane he would have sky-written his prophecies!
Meditatio (chewing on the story): It is about transformation, from stone to flesh. It is transformation in its most definitive form- from hard to soft, from dead to alive, from cold to warm. These are Jesus words spoken long long before Jesus. This is the prophetic tradition from which Jesus would emerge 300(?) years later.
Oratio (savoring the essence): Stones can be used as natural weapons. Flesh and mind and soul and spirit must work together to become a weapon. It is obvious that the prophet here was speaking about taking the weapon out of the human, taking the cold hardness of disregard for others and all of Creation, and replacing it with a warm and embracing love for the world about which the transplanter of hearts had once said, “That’s good.” This is a Valentine of a verse, a love note passed from the Lover to the Desired One.
Contemplatio (digesting the word and allowing it to nurture the body): This is a verse to be reminded of with every beat of my heart.
A mantra:
(breathe out slowly) I will remove from you your heart of stone..
(breathe in deeply) I will give you a heart of flesh.
(pause) And I will put my Spirit in you..
Repeat, all day.
Amen.
And, we close tonight with a band that’s really been setting all kinds of records across the Atlantic..please help me welcome an up-and-coming group, the Rolling Stones, singing “Heart of Stone”..
