It’s been a long, cold winter in Manitoba,
and we’re longing for spring.
We grow weary of this Lenten road that
we’ve been traveling, and we yearn for the fasting to end and the feasting to
begin.
We hurt for friends and neighbours battling
serious illness, aching with grief, wrestling with anxious thoughts and dark moods,
and struggling to find hope enough to make it through another day, another
night.
We look around us at a world in which
refugees risk their lives to find asylum, in which violent assaults are daily
headlines in places not far from home, in which armed conflicts continue to
simmer up and boil over with alarming frequency.
We look around us, and like Ezekiel, we
recognize a valley of dry bones, and we sense deep within us a voice that is
murmuring, “Can these bones live?” And we hear our spirits responding,
“Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
“Can these bones live?” is a legitimate
question, and like Ezekiel, we would do well not to jump too quickly to a pat
response—a hearty ‘of course’ in the face of the evidence of encroaching death.
We would do well to look around us from time to time, to dare with the prophet
to notice the valley full of bones, to say together with the psalmist, “Out of
the depths I cry to you, Lord; Lord, hear my voice.”
Because the truth is, not every valley
leads to a meadow filled with wildflowers. A friend recently lost her job, suddenly
and unexpectedly, right at the time when she should have been looking forward
to retirement in a few years. Now, suddenly, she finds herself wondering what
employer might want to hire someone at her stage of life, and worrying about
what the future might look like. Can these bones live?
The gap between the amount allowed a single
adult on Income Assistance for housing costs, and the cost of safe and
affordable housing on the open market in Winnipeg continues to grow, and it’s
an uphill battle for many of my friends to find appropriate places to live,
where their basic needs for food and shelter can be met so that they can focus
their energy on addressing needs for community, for meaningful work, for
self-esteem. Can these bones live?
Ezekiel was a prophet in the first half of
the sixth century B.C., during the Babylonian Exile. In 597 B.C., the armies of
the Babylonian Empire had conquered the city of Jerusalem and forced the Judean
king and many of its leaders into exile. By 587 B.C., the Babylonians had
destroyed the Temple and deported another wave of leaders, including the
prophet himself. Living in Babylon, far from the Promised Land, knowing that
all that they had loved and held dear lay in ruins, the people of God faced a
kind of suffering that is not unfamiliar to displaced people today—not only the
loss of physical security and comfort, but the threat of loss of their communal
identity and a crisis of faith. Had their God been defeated by the gods of the
Babylonian Empire? Could Yahweh truly be God, even after the Davidic dynasty
and the temple and the city of Jerusalem had all been lost? Can these bones
live?
It’s out of this context of exile, of big
doubts and bigger questions, of the loss of all that was familiar and safe,
that Ezekiel finds himself deposited by the Spirit of the Lord in this valley
filled with bones. Many, many bones. Dry bones. Bones that had not lived for
quite some time. As Ezekiel gazes at the valley filled with white bones,
bleached and dried by the heat of the sun, he hears the voice of God, “Son of
man, can these bones live?”
Ezekiel is wise enough to defer to God on
that question: “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
Then God asks Ezekiel to do something
that’s hard for me, as a preacher, to wrap my mind around: preach to those very
same dry bones. And this is the message that he’s to give them: “This is what
the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you and you
will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you
and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life.
Then you will know that I am the Lord.”
And, when in an act of stunning obedience
Ezekiel does what the Lord has asked, dem dry bones come together, toe bone
connected to foot bone, foot bone connected to ankle bone, ankle bone connected
to leg bone, and on and on until the neck bone has connected to the head bone.
And as he watches, dem dry bones become less dry, and then tendons and flesh
appear on them, and skin covers them. And Ezekiel watches in wonder as the
unlikely takes shape right before his very eyes: Can these bones actually
live?!
The bones standing before him may now be
covered in flesh, but they don’t yet have the breath of life in them, so
Ezekiel prophesies once more as the Lord commands him: “Come, breath, from the
four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.” And, lo and
behold, breath enters the bones, and suddenly a vast army stands before
Ezekiel.
In the midst of this vast army of living,
enfleshed bones, God tells him the meaning of the vision. These bones are the
answer to the question of the people of Israel: Yes, this weary nation of
exiles can still have hope. Yes, God is still God, even in the face of great
losses like the loss of their homeland, the loss of the Temple, the loss of the
great Davidic dynasty. Yes, these bones can live. They will live!
“Yes, I am going to open up your graves and
bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel…Yes, I will
put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land,
and you will know that I am the Lord.” Yes, these bones can live.
In the weariness that we feel as we reach
the end of this season of Lent, in the hurt of those we love who are wrestling
with the darkness of grief or illness or anxiety, in the longing of refugees
for a place to settle and make a home, in the headlines of another young
Aboriginal woman who has been violently killed, and in the pain and destruction
of conflict and war, God’s answer to us is still the same: Yes, these bones can
live.
For the good news of the gospel, the good
news that resounds throughout the Bible, the good news that fairly bursts out
of each of today’s lectionary readings, is this: God has never given up on his
people. God is serious about his project to make all things new, to restore his
beloved world to its intended glory, to bring about the healing of the nations.
“I am the resurrection and the life,”
declares Jesus. “The one who believes in me will live, even though they die;
and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.”
If there is a lesson in Ezekiel’s vision of
dry bones, if the story of Lazarus tells us anything, it’s that we don’t dare
reduce the good news of Jesus to the promise of resurrection on the last day,
although we can certainly proclaim that hope. But the fact that Lazarus walks
out from the tomb after four days, out of the stench of death, has everything
to do with the fact that the good news of the Christian gospel is that the
Kingdom of God has come near to us even now, even here—that we need not wait
until the last day.
Sometimes, when we look around us and all
we can see is dry bones, it’s hard to see with eyes of faith the unfolding of
the Kingdom of God in the present time.
We live in a world that is all too familiar
with the appearance of a valley of dry bones. But in the midst of a valley of
dry bones, our Scriptures today invite us to live as resurrection people in the
here and now. We are invited to speak over the valley of dry bones a different
message—the message that our God is in the business of bringing life to the
dry, dead places in the world. We’re invited to live in the hope that God is
among us, even meeting us in the unlikeliest of places like a stinky, sealed
tomb where a man has been lying dead for four days. Like a valley filled with
dry bones, bleached by the sun. Like in a manger in a stable in the quiet little
town of Bethlehem. Like on a cross, between two criminals, condemned to death.
Spring is a good time to keep our eyes
peeled for signs of life, for new green shoots emerging from the soil of decay,
for the first crocus blooms and the first robin’s song, for the love embodied
by friends and neighbours, for grace and forgiveness when we least deserve it,
for the freedom to be vulnerable and to be loved nonetheless.
Dem dry bones are real, and we dare not
ignore them. But can these bones live? Our answer is a resounding ‘yes!’
Amen.
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