ADDICTION IN APPALACHIA, AND GOD’S PROMISE TO A HURTING PEOPLE: A SERMON ON EZEKIEL 36

For this post I have decided to edit and publish a sermon that I gave in seminary a couple years ago. For the assignment, we were asked to imagine ourselves in a specific preaching context, and to speak to the congregation there about how our chosen Biblical passage spoke to their community. I decided to imagine myself preaching to a congregation somewhere in Appalachia, or potentially the Rust Belt. Since I originally hail from a small town in a rural county in the Southern Tier of New York State, the northernmost part of Appalachia (according to the Appalachian Regional Commission), many of the issues talked about here reflect things I saw personally in my hometown (though this is not true for everything – coal was never big in my town, for instance). I hope that the sermon addresses fairly, and with some artistic and theological merit, the issues facing these communities; and I hope that it honors these communities’ beauty and strength as well.

For the sermon, I used the Book of Ezekiel, chapter 36. In general, the quotes come from the New King James Version. Click here to read Ezekiel 36 in full.

HEAR, O MOUNTAINS!

“O mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God” (Ez. 16:3)! O mountains of Appalachia, full of trees and rocks and valleys and rivers – run-down towns, reservations, barns, shacks, bars, churches, casinos!

O old and dirty cities of the Rust Belt, tattooed with graffiti, hollowed-out with empty buildings, made moribund monuments to jobs overseas; filled with factories and workers worn down, stoking flames for smokestacks reaching up like God’s own arms!

Tell me: who will love you, dear towns, and who can embrace you? Perhaps the mountains themselves will embrace you; it is well-said that they wrap like a mother’s hug. But who will give you hope? What arm shall point upward, to eternity, and tell a hopeful story?

Indeed, you need hope. Your people need hope. They have been desperate for hope for some time now. The factories in these towns have closed, leaving many out of work. Politicians have cited “the greater good,” “a globalized age,” “the inevitability of progress” in a modern world that needs, indeed requires, a citizenry removed from the land, removed from heritage, ready to do business in an ever-larger world.

Furthermore, the coal mines are closing. Coal does not pay like it used to do. The reasons for this are many: declining economy, environmental regulations, inflation, and more. And now, families are out of work. Friends, relatives are jobless. People worry about their finances. They have savings, but not much.

And these children – what will they do? People are leaving here. Population is declining. Public education – well, it’ll do for these parts, but it’s not what universities want. To them, it’s low quality. But who can afford anything else? There aren’t any scholarships for poor rural kids. The prayer is just that they’ll graduate high school, get a decent job. No pregnancies, no dropout. No drug dealing. Hard, honest work. That’s the prayer.

And if the work isn’t honest – well, then this whole congregation knows where that can lead. Meth, heroin and above all opioids have ravaged these counties. Many daughters and sons have abandoned their potential for pills or a needle. Many who just wanted to alleviate their pain, who trusted doctors misled by massive pharmaceutical companies - they are hooked, and now their life is ebbing away.

For these drugs always demand more, and consume more of people. It consumes their flesh, their livelihood. Many can hide it well; but you see them start to age faster. You watch the light leave from their eyes, and the bags circle under. Some walk through the town like they are already dead. It is hard to recognize them sometimes.

Who will wash this sin, great mountains? This evil leaves imprints; and those imprints make more addicts. Imprints of trauma, hurt, unceasing sadness – these need alleviation, and when no one else helps, the drugs do (for a time). They are a temporary answer to despair, to a guilt that can never be undone, but will always dwell inside.

EZEKIEL’S RESPONSE: GOD IS FAITHFUL TO HIS PROMISE

Ezekiel sees a similar problem in Israel’s despair, its loss; but he knows the beauty of the mountains, how they shine forth God’s glory too. And so he prophesies to the mountains of Israel - to “the hills, the rivers, the valleys, the desolate wastes, and the cities that have been forsaken, which became plunder and mockery to the rest of the nations all around” - that a day of prosperity shall come (Ezekiel 36:4).

For Israel, having been now twice conquered, plundered, slaughtered and deported by Babylon – a due consequence, according to Ezekiel, for their sin – this Israel has become an object of derision among the nations, and God shall not stand for it.

“Behold,” says the Lord, “I have spoken in My jealousy and My open fury, because you have borne the shame of the nations… I have raised My hand in an oath that surely the nations that are around you shall bear their own shame. But you, O mountains of Israel, you shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to My people in Israel, for they are about to come” (Ez. 36:6-8).

The Lord shall not stand for His land to be derided, His people scorned. Nor, mark my words, shall He stand for the scorn heaped upon the lowly of these lands. For is the poverty, the lack of education, the hardship of this people not scorned, derided, laughed at?

Washington, Wall Street, the Ivy League – you cannot depend on these forces. They exist, in part, to distinguish the enlightened from the lowly. Whether you be the “offscouring” of Jamestown or “white trash” of today, the message has always been clear: you are less than, the refuse, the backwards of the world.

But if we have God’s promises, and if this text may speak to us anew today, then we may say that such a promise applies to you as well. God will not stand for the derision of those whom He loves. He shall have His fury upon them, by giving grace to you. He shall command these mountains and these valleys and these rivers and these broken-down cities to bear a home for people of God, for He has promised them this land.

And yet – God did not promise us this land. This was the land of Native Americans. Surely, they did war amongst themselves over this land, but it still was not ours to take. If we live here, it is by force without divine command, and thereby not promised. And indeed, how could we expect such a promise anyway, when our sins run so deep?

I don’t mean the sins elites condemn in you – I mean those sins we know well enough ourselves: the sins of greed, arrogance, anger, despair, betrayal, all of which are bound with our various battles with hopelessness, anxiety, addiction.

Appalachia and the Rust Belt are places of cyclical sin – of victims who become perpetrators, and victims again. And these sins cause carnage throughout the landscape – spreading quickly from one person to another, until the whole cascade of hurt becomes irreparable. What, then, could make us deserve any promise?

The answer is: we do not deserve this promise. Indeed, Ezekiel made this clear to Israel: God would prosper Israel solely for His name’s sake – not because of any sort of merit on their part. For “Thus says the Lord God: “I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for My holy name’s sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went” (Ez. 36:22).

God will do this for God’s name – and what is this name? It is the name above every name, “I am that I am,” “I am Who I will be” – the Ground and Source of all that was, is, and ever shall be; the future of the nations and the eternity resting on aged trees, the whisper of omnipotence blowing through broken sidewalks, old laundromats, fifties diners, nigh-empty churches, packed Wal-Marts – this name of God is the name of the One who created all of it, and dwells within it.

His name is Love, Justice, Mercy, Righteousness; His name is Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer of Heaven and of Earth – all this He honors with His holy name, calling it good, and thereby making it so. Therefore God, the Fount of all Goodness, shall always hold us accountable for these sins, always hate this destruction, this selfishness, this violence; but God will always love us for Who He is – because He is loving and merciful, and can be nothing else.

Both Creation and creature are good because God is good – and God shall make them good, even though they fall away. For Ezekiel prophecies to the land: God shall make you fruitful. But he also prophecies to Israel: “I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean… I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you… I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes” (Ez. 36: 24-7).

The whole nation shall be gathered, then; they shall be cleansed from the filthiness of their evil; they shall repent and hate the awful things that they have done; and they shall have good hearts, and do the good of God.

GOD’S PROMISES: WERE THEY FULFILLED IN PART, OR IN FULL?

But this did not entirely happen for Israel. Part of the prophecy did indeed seem fulfilled at the edict of Cyrus; the Israelites were permitted to return to their homeland, and a number did so. They returned from Diaspora, rebuilt the Temple of Jerusalem, and attempted to reinstate the ancient laws of Israel. In many ways, the prophecies of Ezekiel came to pass in a literal way.

But were they entirely fulfilled? Were they really gathered from all countries? Was a new heart, and the Spirit of God, truly placed in all of them? Indeed, it seems rather that this prophecy was partially fulfilled for ancient Israel – not totally. But God would fill His promise entirely – to Israel and, it turns out, to every nation.

For the promise made to Ezekiel is simply this: “I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries” – a promise made to Israelites specifically (Ez. 36:12). But we know that implicit in this promise, and revealed later, is the fact that all the nations, all countries, would gather together as Israel – as those grafted in through the One in Whom all prophecy was fulfilled, Christ Jesus.

This is the promise inherent in Jesus Christ, according to Paul. Just as Christ has been resurrected bodily, so shall we be resurrected bodily; just as we have been grafted into Israel, so we shall partake of Israel’s promise; and just as we are one body in Christ, so shall we be gathered in our resurrection.

Therefore, friends, this is our promise too. But it is not the same promise that ancient Israel received. For when we look to Jesus, we understand that this is not a promise of material wealth. It is not a promise that our land will be abundant; that coal will become profitable again; that all our factories will be reopened; that drugs will leave our streets.

For Jesus Himself, the fulfillment of all Divine promise, was born to a rural satellite village, lived in relative poverty, and ministered among the rural poor until his fateful entrance at Jerusalem – and He had neither riches, nor safety, nor ease. What He did have, however, was the very fullness of the Godhead, and from this fullness He gives us grace.

This grace is a new Spirit, a new heart. It is eyes which see things in the light of eternity, a mind which thinks with the mind of Christ. It is the ability to see, not what the world sees – the poverty, the dilapidation, the insecurity, the lack of opportunity – nor to see what we hate in ourselves – our compromise, the hurt of our loved ones, the pain we cause, the ways we let ourselves down – but to see, rather, what God sees: the Goodness in us, which is the Goodness of God in us. We need to see what God sees, and what the world strips from us: deep value, in spite of it all – and this, in God’s Son. Only then shall we walk in God’s ways.

Let us therefore learn to cultivate the grace-filled and the valuable in our communities. There is much that is good here, even if it is humble. Our traditions are beautiful; let us promote them, without becoming traditionalists. Our land is beautiful; let us revere it. Let us participate in our local government; for we have an advantage here, in that we know personally those who our policies will affect. Let us petition for right treatment, and for trade policies that benefit the whole country, not just Wall Street and Washington. And let us support those who battle big pharmaceutical companies, who have done so much in their greed to hurt those whom we love.

And let us remember, first, that we are a community, and must hold one another up; therefore we must work together, especially as a church, to create shelters, soup kitchens, rehab centers… and above all, local policies that help to give everyone here hope; for hope is the only way to stem the great tide of drug addiction.

And, finally, let us not forget that, if all nations have been grafted into Israel, and if all bear God’s image, then all deserve that God’s goodness be seen in them. It has been too tempting to treat immigrants, Muslims, and others with suspicion and contempt. We meet the nasty disdain of elites with our own disdain for hurting people.

Instead listen to them, hear them out. Welcome some to dinner. Start interacting with them. Start speaking with Native American communities; we share this land with them, and our debt to them is real, and shameful – therefore let us learn to work together more often.

These, and many more things may be done. But they will not be done until you understand this: God has made you in all your troubles worthy, and righteous, for God’s own sake. When we see this, and when we see it in others, we may begin to rebuild. Let us listen to God, not the nations; therein lay our chance for life. Amen.

DAN TATE is a writer and blogger at Christ & Cosmos. A former atheist, he’s been surprised and amazed by the God of all things, and he’s passionate about sharing the gospel in ways that respond to contemporary concerns about theology, philosophy, spiritual practice, science, art, and more. A lifelong writer hailing from Upstate New York, he has a B.A. from Allegheny College, an M.A. from Syracuse University, and an M. Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary.