Ezekiel
37:1-14
1
The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the
Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led
me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were
very dry. 3 He said to me, "Mortal, can these bones live?" I
answered, "O Lord God, you know." 4 Then he said to me,
"Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of
the Lord. 5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter
you, and you shall live. 6 I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to
come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall
live; and you shall know that I am the Lord." 7 So I prophesied as I had
been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling,
and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8 I looked, and there were
sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but
there was no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the
breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come
from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may
live." 10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them,
and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. 11 Then he said to
me, "Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say,
"Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.'
12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to
open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will
bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord,
when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14 I
will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your
own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says
the Lord."
In his ancient epic, Works and Days, the Greek poet Hesiod
tells of the creation of the first woman. She was formed from the earth by the
gods on Mount Olympus as a punishment to men…I’ll give you a moment to process
that notion…and she was endowed with gifts from each of the gods: Athena
clothed her in a silvery gown; Aphrodite gave her grace and desires; Hermes
gave her a deceitful disposition and the power of speech, and he gave her a
name, Pandora, which means “all-gifted,” since she had been gifted by all the
gods of Olympus.[1]
When Pandora was sent to
Epimetheus as a bride, Zeus gave her a jar as a wedding present. She didn’t
know what was in the jar, so when her curiosity overtook her, she opened the
jar, and from it sprang all manner of cruel spirits, plagues, and demons into
the world—this was the gods’ true punishment for the insubordination of men.
Pandora sealed the jar just in time to capture one final spirit, elpis, which is hope. Hope was what
Pandora held in the box; hope remained as the singular comfort for the now
evil-plagued world. Hope remained, yet while it may have been kept quietly in
Pandora’s jar I can’t help but notice how elusive hope can be for the rest of
us, how hard it can be to find hope when we need it.
When the doctor says
malignant, aggressive, six months left…how do you find hope after that? When
you hear rumors about downsizing, budget cuts, pink slips, and start thinking
about the unemployment line…how do you find hope after that? When the arguing
seems constant, when the distance grows, there’s separation, and pretty soon
you have to sign the papers with the word “divorce” typed so clearly…how do you
find hope after that? When the attacks start, the bombs blast, war and all of
its evils rage, and the title terrorist is tossed about…how do you find hope
after that?
Of course, hope doesn’t
seem to be absent only after the great tragedies of life. Think about it: you
get the promotion, win the award, graduate at the top of the class, secure the
victory, make it to a comfortable retirement, but then the shine wears off the
apple, and the desire for more—more meaning, more purpose, more life—takes hold,
but it seems there’s nothing left for you to do, not higher rung on the ladder…how
do you find hope after that? After the battle is over, after the destruction,
the bondage, the exile and death, after settling in to the ruts determined to
be fate…how do you find hope? Where do you find hope?
We find the prophet
Ezekiel faced with that heavy question in the story before us this
morning—perhaps the most well-known story from Ezekiel. He has a vision, a
vision much like others the prophet has had, in which the hand of the Lord
takes him out to a valley, a plain, and shows him something. In this case, God
shows Ezekiel a valley filled with bones, dry, bleached-by-the-sun bones.
Ezekiel is led all around them, back-and-forth over the pile of bones, as if
he’s to inspect them, to make sure there’s nothing stirring in the great, dry
pile. Then, God asks him, "Mortal, can these bones live?"
What kind of question is that? It’d be like asking the one sitting across from
you at Cooter Brown’s after eating a full slab of dry-rubbed ribs, “Hey, do you
think that pig can oink?” “Can these bones live?" Then
again, if we consider the one who’s asking the question, maybe it isn’t so
crazy a thought, but it seems outside the realm of possibility, like it
wouldn’t make sense for the bones to live again. After all, resuscitation is
not unheard of in the Hebrew Scriptures; dead bodies have come back to life.
But bones, very dry bones…?
It’s one thing to know
that bones left to dry and dissolve in the desert can live, and it’s one thing
to know that God is God and has brought life from the dust at least once
before, but to really believe that bones can live, to really believe that the
expiration date has yet to pass on a body’s ability to be resuscitated…I don’t
know…I can understand why Ezekiel (wise prophet he was) responded to God’s
question the way he did: "O Lord God, you know." It’s
as if Ezekiel didn’t want to own up to his own doubts, his own certainties
about the metaphysical universe and the laws which governed it, so one can
almost see him shrug his shoulders, look down at the dry, parched earth as he
shuffles his feet, as he says, "O Lord God, you know."
We do that too, don’t we?
God asks us, “Do you think this can happen? Do you think it’s possible? How can
it happen?” And we look at ourselves, at the world around us, at the knowledge
we have and resources we possess, and with a mumble we say "O Lord God, you know."
We don’t want out doubts to show, our doubts that what seems impossible is just
that—impossible. We don’t want our certainties about the ways of the world, the
ways of our comfort, to be subject to the mystery and uncertainty of God. So we
just sort of hand it off to God: “You know I suppose Lord, so why don’t you
show me.” We put it on God to prove God’s self to us, to show us whether or not
the impossible really is possible, that way our anxiety can stay at a minimum,
and if God should prove to do the impossible, then we’ll really have a story to
tell. But that’s not the way God seems to operate, especially when it comes to
those of us called prophets.
Did you notice that,
after God asks Ezekiel if the bones could live and after Ezekiel responds, God
doesn’t react with any kind of “Well, stand back and watch this!”? Did you
notice that? God doesn’t strike the sands with a bolt of lightning from the
sky; there’s no divine utterance as in the book of Genesis; God doesn’t say,
“let there be life in them there bones!” and the bones spring to life like dancing
skeletons from some old black and white cartoon. There’s none of that. No, God
doesn’t command the bones to do anything—he commands the prophet to prophesy. God
tells Ezekiel, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word
of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to
enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh
to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall
live; and you shall know that I am the Lord." Then there was a
strange sound, the sound of bones shaking from the ground and coming together,
“a
rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone…and there were sinews
on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was
no breath in them.”
It appears that the dry
bones can live again as they come together and now lie on the valley floor as
cluttered corpses rather than a pile of bones. But something isn’t quite right;
something is still missing. God commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the wind, to
pray to the Spirit, to enter into these corpses, and after the prophet does so,
breath comes into the bodies. They rise to stand on their feet as a great
multitude—an army. What was once dead, decomposed, dry, now stands alive,
breathing, on its feet. A pile of bones, bleached by the sun, once hopeless,
again inhales and exhales as a great multitude. This is isn’t the reviving of a
once-sick child; this isn’t the resuscitation of a recently departed brother;
this is the impossible made possible! This is hope where there once was only
death! And though it is only a vision, a vision explained to the prophet as
what God will do for the entire house of Israel, it is a powerful vision of
what God can do.
Now, don’t misunderstand
me: I’m not saying that Ezekiel’s vision is a point-for-point testimony of
God’s ability to slap muscle, tendons, and skin on an old skeleton and make it a
living, breathing person again. No. What I’m saying is this: nothing is
impossible with God. That’s nothing new to most of us, but what might startle
us, what might strike fear into the deepest parts of our being, what will test
the simple one-liners of our faith is this: God doesn’t have to prove to us
that nothing is impossible, but faith, our faith, means proving to ourselves
that we actually believe what we say we believe. It’s one thing to say that
nothing is impossible with God, but to then look out on the valley of very dry
bones and believe they can live again, to live among an exiled people and
believe they’ll be freed, to witness a divided nation and trust it can be put
back together and made whole, to sit in an upper room and wait for something to
happen after the resurrected Lord has ascended to the Father, to stare into the
empty cupboard as your child’s stomach growls louder and believe you’ll have
dinner on the table, see someone you disagree with as a friend, to behold a
sinner as a saint, to look in the mirror and actually believe God loves
you…that’s another thing altogether isn’t it? That’s when hope becomes
palpable, when it’s fleshed out and filled with the breath of the Holy Spirit.
It’s easy to say we
believe “nothing is impossible with God,” or “God so loved the world,” or “I
can do all things through Christ,” or “God does not show partiality,” or “Jesus
loves me this I know…” But to prove it, to prove it to ourselves, that requires
bold action, selfless trust, and above all else, it requires we do something
besides shrugging our shoulders and saying, “O Lord God, you know."
It means our faith isn’t simply a list of things with which we either agree or
disagree. It means if we really believe all the things we say we believe about
God, about Jesus, about salvation, about life, about the Church, about love—if
we really believe those things, then
we ought to prove it! And let me tell you something, saying it over and over,
louder and louder, that doesn’t prove anything.
To say we trust God, that
we have hope, and yet cross our fingers, hedge our bets, and store away enough
to survive World War III…that’s not trust. To say our works don’t save us, that
our deeds and “clean living” won’t earn God’s love, and then try to find every
way we are better than someone else…that’s not faith, that’s not hope. To say
we believe that nothing can separate us from the love of God, that God loves
everybody, and then shut the door in the faces of those whom a religious
society has pushed to the margins…that’s not love, that’s not God. Like
Ezekiel, you and I are commanded to prove our faith to ourselves—God doesn’t
need to prove God’s self to us, and God doesn’t need proof from us, but we need
to prove it to ourselves and to others, so that they might have that same
faith. Like Ezekiel, we aren’t called to just believe dry bones can live again; we’re called to take part in the
power that revives them!
So I ask you today, as
we’ve gathered around the Lord’s Table on this Pentecost Sunday, as we proclaim
together our belief in the love of Jesus, as we remember the power of God to
breathe life back into dry bones and raise up a crucified Christ, as we
celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church, as we
collectively claim our faith in God, do you really believe all that you say you
believe? Well…prove it. Amen.
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