Week 25 – Cornbread, Buttermilk and the Volcanicane of Glory
Ezekiel Chapters 38-42
Cornbread and buttermilk are culinary wonders that feed something deep in my soul. I grew up eating cornbread weekly. Monday was beans and cornbread. I don’t know why Monday was beans and cornbread, but it was, and I loved it. I’ve often said that you can tell a lot about how a person grew up by how they respond to beans as a meal. If I say, “We’re having beans for dinner” and you say, “Like, you mean as a side dish?”, then I know that you did not grow up eating beans and cornbread. And that is ok. It’s sad, but it’s ok.
We ate pinto beans or sometimes great northern beans. We usually ate those in the winter. Again, I have no idea why. Pinto beans are named for the little streaks on them, sepia brush strokes on drift-sand skin, but of course when you cook them the colors run together like a watercolor Sunday school project left in the parking lot on a drizzly April afternoon. When we moved to Guatemala, we had a hard time finding pinto beans because there is only one bean in Guatemala: black. But that’s enough about beans.
We also could not find cornbread in the Land of Eternal Spring; millions of tons of corn are eaten there every day. Not an ounce of it is cornbread. I couldn’t even find corn meal. Well, I could, but it was chicken feed and the kind old Mayan woman in the market off 4th street would not sell it to me. So we bought popcorn and ground it into corn meal just made our own. Cornbread, made correctly, is a marvel. It has a thick, crunchy crust dark as molasses and a velvet graininess that holds firm when you slice and serve it from a cast iron skillet. My Uncle Bill, who lived out by a Kudzu forest in Mississippi, made the absolute greatest cornbread ever made my human hands. It is the gold which paves the streets of Glory. And no one can reproduce it. You cannot mimic art. It simply is. And Uncle Bill’s cornbread was art in a cast iron skillet.
Any southern house worth their salt has the final ingredient for the soul food mélange: buttermilk. I have no idea why it’s called buttermilk. I feel like my mom said it was the milk left over after making butter and that sounds right and I refuse to Google it because sometimes things just need to be left Un-Googled. After a meal, it’s a dessert. During any other time, I would put it in the snack category, but the process is the same. You take cornbread, break it up with your fingers, and sort of crumble it into chunks in a bowl. Random chunks. None larger than the smallest size you would cut for a brownie. Then you zap it in the microwave to warm it up a bit. Not hot, but really warm. Then you pour buttermilk over it and drizzle some honey or molasses and dive in with a spoon. Soul food.
I confess at this point that I have written too many words about cornbread and not enough words about Ezekiel. I have struggled to wrap my little mind around these chapters. Chapters 38 and 39 are prophecies. One commentary outlined the eight general interpretations. Eight. I love me some good commentary and I love me even more some Old Testament end-times prophetic word, but I feel like when you get to eight interpretations among conservative, orthodox Christians, maybe it’s ok if we don’t understand it all.
Chapter 38 is about Gog – the also mentioned evil ruler in Revelation 16. The connections between Ezekiel and Revelation are cables on the suspension bridge of eschatology and that is one deep dive. If you’ve ever been super confused when you read Revelation, welcome to the club. Understanding Ezekiel and Daniel are a huge help. Then again. Eight interpretations. But back to Gog. He apparently is over an area called Magog, Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal. And if you know where those are on a map you get a gold star. He gathers an army from Persia, Ethiopia, Put, Gomer, and Beth-togarmah and Dedan and Sheba and Tarshish. A lot of really smart people have tried to say where these places are on a modern map, and after looking at all 732 of them, I can tell you how to find them: Bunch all your fingers up into a point like you were making your hand into a chatty puppet and put the fingertips on the map of Isreal, and then spread your handout flat. All the places that your fingers point, it’s those places.
A coalition of nations form an army to destroy God’s people. And God responds with this:
On that day, when Gog invades the land of Israel, declares the sovereign LORD, my rage will mount up in my anger. In my zeal, in the fire of my fury, I declare that on that day there will be a great earthquake in the land of Israel. (38:18-19)
Then God goes on to say that He will attack with rain, hailstones, fire, and brimstone. Basically, He will hit them with a hurricane and a volcano. A Volcanicane! Or a Hurricano! The most cataclysmic events of water and fire will be brought down upon the armies who threaten the people of God.
And I will exalt and magnify Myself, I will reveal Myself before many nations. Then they will know that I am the LORD.
That last phrase is all over Ezekiel. The Lord wants Isreal and the entire world to know that He is the LORD God, the I AM who spoke to Moses from the burning bush. He is the unquestioned and inarguable King of the Universe. And as broken as Israel has been in Ezekiel (and goodness they are broken) God will not forget them nor will He forget His covenant with them. And sometime in the future when just about every country on the map forms an army to attack Israel, God comes to fight for them. I don’t know when that happens. I know it will happen. But I’m not sure when. When God gets so angry that the fire of His fury burns, it’s going to be a good idea to be behind Him, like Moses in the cleft of the rock, shielded from His wrath in the wake of His glory.
Ezekiel then sees a vision of a man who I think is probably an angel measuring out in almost excruciating detail a temple that has never ever been constructed. It’s huge. 850 feet on a side. Almost 17 acres. That’s a big building. But it’s not just any building. It’s a Temple. A place where God is. A place where God is worshipped.
After all the sin that God had revealed in Ezekiel, all the horror, all the unspeakable abominations committed by people who were supposed to know better, God does not leave them forever. And when their enemies come to destroy them, God fights for them and then has them build a place where they can hang out with Him.
I realize that there is more to this than that. And I am certain that a more theologically astute person or anyone with a lot of post nominal letters after their name would remind me that I am missing much of the richness of the text, but when I start by writing about cornbread and buttermilk I think I set myself up for a humble approach. God fights for people. He fights for Israel. Not because they are good. But because He has identified with them and He has called them by name to Himself. He fights for them not because they are glorious or good but because HE IS. And He fights for me too. Even a guy who spends most of his days doing it all wrong. Even a guy who likes cornbread and buttermilk.
Maybe you have a lot of questions when you read Ezekiel. I think that’s good. Questions mean you’re thinking. Questions mean you’re engaged. God does not seem interested in answering all our questions. But He does answer a few.
Is God in control of history, even right now in this giant mess? Yes.
Is God glorious, good, holy and just? Yes.
Does God ignore sin? No.
Will the world eventually hold hands in a big circle and sing Amazing Grace? Sadly, devastatingly, no. But some will. Many will.
Does God have a plan? Yes. A very specific plan. Down to the last detail. And He calls out to all who inhabit our broken world to repent and turn to Him and be saved from the zealous fire of His fury. He calls out “Live!” to the dead and breathes them back to life. He seeks the lost. He binds up the brokenhearted. And He fights for us when we cannot fight for ourselves. He is a good Father. And we can trust Him.
So today, do that. Whatever comes at you, trust Him. In all your questions, trust. In your doubts, trust. One day faith and hope will pass away and only love will remain. I’ll see you that day. And while we wait, eat something that brings joy to your soul.
