In the days when record players were more common, there was nothing more frustrating than a scratched record. First, you would notice the incessant repetition of one or two seconds of music, playing over and over again. Then your ear would be drawn to the irritating scratch of the needle stuck in the offending groove.
With no remote controls in sight or even in mind, you would have to get up from your comfortable seat and lift the needle on the record player, finding a smooth part of the record’s surface. And the music could play on, and all would be well.
What is it about the broken record that so grates on one’s nerves? Is it the knowledge that a priceless record is now defaced? Is it the abrupt disruption of an anticipated stretch of time devoted to musical bliss?
Or is it the sense of stuckness? By this, I mean the insistent sound of musical repetition with no clear trajectory in sight. It’s almost as if the music itself is scolding you: Get up, now, and save me from this rut. Because if you don’t, I will annoy you until you do.
There is something about being stuck—whether it’s a broken record or emotionally in our own lives—that is frustrating, even demoralizing. If we imagine our most downhearted moments, we might recall a feeling of intractability, of being unable to move backwards or forwards. Psychologists tell us that for those of us with obsessive thinking habits, the most constructive way of dealing with them is to disrupt the sense of stuckness. As painful as it may be, you must lift yourself out of the hole you’re in. It’s rather like lifting the needle on the broken record and skipping ahead to the place on the record’s surface that is unadulterated by scratches.
Practitioners of contemplative prayer tell us something similar. When meditation is plagued with unwanted thoughts, the practice of gently letting them go is a means of lifting the needle on the record player, in some sense, starting afresh. The intrusive thoughts are scratches on the record, and they get us stuck.
In the Book of Ezekiel, we hear today of God’s beloved people grappling with a sense of being stuck. You might easily overlook this amid God’s admonishments, calling out the wickedness and recalcitrance of the people, a state of being that can only lead to death.
We hear such warnings all over Scripture: turn from your wicked ways, because if you don’t, things will turn our very badly for you. But hidden in the midst of this language, in these five verses from Ezekiel, is a glimpse into the emotional and spiritual morass of God’s people.
God is speaking to the prophet Ezekiel and commanding him what to say to the house of Israel. He is God’s appointed watchman for the people, to announce their need for repentance. God tells Ezekiel how he shall describe to the house of Israel their current situation: “Thus you have said: “Our transgressions and our sins weigh upon us, and we waste away because of them; how then can we live?” These words are what God’s people have been repeating over and over again, whether aloud or in their hearts. They have been groaning in a feedback loop of the oppressive burden of their sins and transgressions.
And if we put these five verses in the context of the whole scope of the Book of Ezekiel, this sense of stuckness stands out in an even more pronounced way. For thirty-three chapters, Ezekiel has heard God’s convicting words towards a people gone astray. The scope of these words extends beyond the house of Israel to other nations, those historically at enmity with Israel. And finally at chapter 33, we are on the precipice of a turning point in the Book of Ezekiel. It’s like Moses standing on Mount Nebo and getting a first glimpse of the Promised Land.
Now, just as we are about to enter into a redeemed future, crowned with the glories of the New Jerusalem, once again, the transgressions of God’s people are revisited. They are rehashed. In the particular historical context of Ezekiel, God’s people are dealing with the trauma of the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, and the catastrophe is seen as retribution for their behavior. The record is scratched, and they are stuck in the feedback loop. And the record scratches, and scratches, and scratches. . .
We have, in fact, all along throughout Ezekiel, been getting little promises of hope. These promises have balanced out the woes and condemnations. But for this hope to come to fruition, something is needed, and we hear of this today. God’s people must turn: turn back from their evil ways, the ways that lead only to death.
This posture of turning is not just some thing of the past. God indeed commands this of us as God’s people. It’s what Jesus constantly commanded. At Holy Baptism, we make a spiritual about-face from death to life, from sin to repentance, and historically in the Church, people enacted this by turning from west to east during the Baptismal rite. This is metanoia, repentance: turning back to face God.
We are familiar with this language, and yet, we may still get lost in the imagery of wickedness, death, and shame and forget what’s on the other side when we turn. We erroneously imagine a wrathful God who demands the impossible. We hear only vengeance waiting for us.
Truth be told, even when we get to the point of recognizing our need to turn back to God, sometimes we still remain stuck. Do you feel any resonance with God’s people in the Book of Ezekiel? They are stymied by their past misdoings and sinfulness. This fraught past weighs heavily upon them, and they perceive that they are wasting away. All seems to be sheer hopelessness.
Think for a minute of the things that weigh you down. Whether it’s systemic sin that we’ve inherited by virtue of our shared humanity or our individual faults, do you ever think you’re in a feedback loop and stuck? In the middle of a pandemic, do you hear the record scratching again and again because we’ve dug ourselves into a biological and spiritual hole of selfishness leading up to this time? Recurring reports about the fragility of our environment constantly remind us that we could be past the point of no return. Or do you, as an individual, ever imagine that you have finally committed the unforgivable sin, or just one too many sins, to ever be able to move forwards? Do you doubt whether you are worthy of being unstuck from your past? All of this can make us hear the record scratching again and again with no one in sight to lift the needle and move us forward to new music.
But there is an even more peculiar spiritual danger lying beneath the surface of the broken record. It may be that those of us who are most inclined to embrace God’s words of repentance are the most vulnerable to a certain kind of sin. I speak here of the especially pious and religious. Those of us who are all too ready to aspire to holiness are in danger of getting stuck.
There is a kind of perverse satisfaction in being in the feedback loop. Ostensibly, someone in the loop wants to be rescued and for someone else to lift the needle on the record and move them forward to new music. But interiorly, the person in question might relish being stuck in the scratch on the record’s surface.
Here in the groove of the scratched record lies a peculiar comfort, a comfort that is ensconced in immobility. Paradoxically, the obsession with repentance becomes a cover for not wanting to do the hard work of true repentance. Because Ezekiel tells us exactly what that work is in today’s reading. This work is being open to the possibility of a new, redeemed future. But in order to experience this future, one cannot be too proud to receive God’s generous gift of forgiveness.
There is no question that God calls each and every one of us to turn back from our evil ways to God. We will hear this call in just a few minutes as we confess our sins. But after we turn, we have to be willing to receive the gift of new life.
This is because God’s new future is a glorious road that leads all the way to the New Jerusalem. And when we allow God’s grace to permeate every crevice of our lives, the vision of a new kingdom is seen to cover every corner of this earth, not just our own little fiefdoms. Every place where economic justice reigns is affected by God’s recalibration. Every pocket of this planet where the lowly are stomped on by the feet of those more powerful is readjusted to the balancing point of God’s justice. In Ezekiel, we see the great vision of God defending the holiness that belongs, by right, to God. And by agreeing to turn back from our evil ways, God draws us into that recalibration.
We are told in no uncertain terms today what’s on the other side of that great act of turning: it’s life itself. There’s no life in the grooves of despair scratched into the surface of the record. God does not desire for us to stay in those ruts, licking our wounds and taking pride in our self-flagellation. God has no desire in the death of the wicked. God wants only one thing: for us to turn back to God and live. And if we will allow it, God is always poised, over the record player of life, ready to lift the needle on the player when we are stuck in the feedback loop. And we are placed into a new future, where the song of the new Jerusalem plays on and on.
A Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
September 6, 2020
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost