Original Nakedness

Today’s reading from Ezekiel is a bit provocative (16:1-15, 60, 63).  Actually, it’s quite provocative and a bit reminiscent of the 1990 movie Pretty Woman starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts.  Julia is a prostitute who is transformed by wealthy businessman Gere who eventually falls in love with her, and she with him.  It’s a sort of Cinderella story.   

Ezekiel has God (playing Gere) find a young woman (Roberts) born in Canaan of an Amorite father and Hittite mother.  God finds her “stark naked” and “old enough to love.”  God (Gere) covers her nakedness with a cloak and later bathes and anoints her; then clothes her with a gown, sandals, a sash, and robes.  That’s followed by jewelry and gold and silver.

But then we depart from the Pretty Woman plot.  Instead of falling in love with God (Gere), she becomes impressed with her beauty and becomes a “harlot lavishing her harlotry on every passer-by.” 

Is there a lesson for us?   As babies we were baptized after God found us “stark naked” meaning we were not yet clothed with pride, distrust, and unforgiving natures.  God blessed us with love and freedom.  For many of us that blessing eventually afforded riches and opportunities for pleasure and self-centeredness unfortunately leading to God being an after-thought, if thought of at all.  

Many, perhaps most of us, become “captivated” by earthly pleasures and “by our own beauty” (or handsomeness) leading to self-serving pride, mistrust of those around us, and unforgiving, me-first behavior.   Few are immune to these pitfalls.

But there is a way back to recapture our original “nakedness.”   It’s a purposeful striptease removing the trappings that have shamed us before God.  It involves recognizing that God will “pardon us for all we have done” when we fall back in love with God.

So that’s the real lesson:  With all our hearts, minds and souls we must love our God.  A Pretty Woman-like happy ending may not be the result.  But there will be pardon and peace.

Deacon David Pierce