Year A, Lent 5, March 9, 2008

This morning, we hear two remarkable stories about God’s power and about His willingness to unleash that force on our behalf. We hear how God, our omnipotent Creator, has the interest and the capacity to stay connected to humankind and to care deeply about our wellbeing. In our Old Testament lesson, the commanding prophet Ezekiel describes a divine vision. God sends into his mind a dramatic and compelling message that he wants delivered to a lost, despairing people. Six hundred and thirty-four years later the message is repeated at a tomb outside the town of Bethany. One thousand sixty-five years after that, we hear the two accounts and are reminded that the eternal God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. How God loved the ancient Israelites, how he loved their descendants at the time He sent his Son to earth is exactly how he loves us this morning, in this place and in every corner and aspect of our lives. We are reminded, and, if we allow God’s amazing message to settle into our minds and make a home in our hearts, then how we navigate through the desert times in our lives will change forever. 

To bring this good news to life in our lives we open up Ezekiel’s surprising story. 

Almost six centuries before the birth of Christ, God’s chosen people, the children of Abraham, the followers of Moses, were driven out of their homeland. They have been forced back into captivity this time by the Babylonians. Jewish leaders have been dispersed, their influence diminished, their communication disrupted. The Babylonian ruler, King Nebuchadnezzar, is politically savvy. He wants his hostages weak and disunified, so he organizes a “brain drain” in the region around Jerusalem. The best minds, the cutting edge inventors, the most articulate political voices are silenced and driven into the hinder lands of Babylon. The Israelites lose their center. 

But, Ezekiel, a Judean priest, one of the intellectual elite of his day, finds his voice in those dark days. A way is made for him to speak again to his people. And one day the word God sends him is this fascinating metaphor. Ezekiel tells his people, the Lord came to me and his Spirit took me to a valley full of dry, dry, dead bones. There was no life in this place – no life, no energy, no hope. It was a silent, deserted, forgotten place. There, the Lord told me to speak to these bones, to speak to them with the truth and power I know about our God. He told me to stand and say with absolute conviction – this dry, dead place is no match for God. These dry, dead bones are not the last word. God who brought all things to life, God who made gardens and seas, mountains and plains, all the planets, out of nothing, God who tamed chaos and created order can change these dry bones into living vessels. By his word, bones will come together, muscle and flesh will cover them, breath will enter them and they will live again. They will be reanimated. They will be renewed, refreshed and reinvigorated. The once dry, dead, dead bones will have a new perspective and another chance. They will walk upright in the world ready for new adventures, deeper relationships, and exciting, important missions. The dry spell will end. The time for life and living will spring forth again. God sends these words to be delivered to the people he loves in their time of despair and disillusionment. Ezekiel gives them the Lord’s promise. “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!’

Now mortal, you tell them, “Thus says the Lord God, I will bring you back! I will put breath within you and you shall live! And then you shall know that I am the Lord.”

God hears the cry of his beleaguered people. God recognizes that through their own poor choices, through the brokenness of this world, through sad, hard things that just happen in the kingdom of Man, his people are in pain. They are suffering from a dryness in their spirit. They are at a loss. His children, the adult ones and the little ones, feel disconnected. To their very bones, they feel disjointed. They long to be whole again, healthy and vibrant again. God understands their dryness, their desert feeling and he is ready and he is able to restore them.

The Israelites living in forced exile can turn in any direction and see a literal disconnection. They are physically, as well as emotionally, cut off from the life they expected. Their discomfort and depression has a known, clear source. But we don’t have to be overrun by a foreign aggressor, locked up in chains and forced out of our homeland to become dry and disillusioned. We don’t have to lose everything to fall into dis-ease, disappointment and a desert-like emptiness. It seems part of the human condition that there are times in our lives when we find ourselves stuck in deep sand. We lose our way, our joy and confidence, our big vision, our sense of purpose and our hope. It seems a common truth that none of us escapes the valley of dry bones. 

The barren phases of life come upon us unexpectedly and catch us unprepared. There we are, living our lives with good intent, happy in the choices we’ve made, centered on doing the necessary, responsible things of life when slowly we become aware that something is amiss. We wake one morning and another morning and a morning after that with a slight ache. The ache is in our heads or our hearts or in our animas – our life-giving energy. We aren’t excited. We aren’t joy-filled. We can wait to get out of bed, in fact, we wonder if there’s a way to stay there all day. Maybe there is real grief to be avoided. Maybe something tragic, some great loss has recently descended upon us. But, equally likely, our dryness comes to us in a series of subconscious disappointments. At any age, in any life, we can find ourselves out of touch with our hopes. Maybe the work we studied for and dreamed of is no longer as engaging as we assumed it would always be. Maybe the people we work with seem so bogged down in their own problems and projects that we feel creatively and personally isolated. Maybe the acclaim or the rewards of work well done is passing us by and we don’t know what to do to stem the tide. 

Perhaps the ideal of staying at home and being a loving, consistent presence to our family is turning out to be redundant and (shhh, don’t say it aloud) – boring!!! Could we be feeling dry because the spark, the fire, the heart beating faster when we first met one another, has slowed considerably through familiarity and countless interactions or just the pressures of getting the tasks checked off? Am I in the desert because middle school is not the best time of my life? Somebody lied! High school is not always that great either. Where do I fit? Why is finding who I am and who I want to be so hard? Why is everything a crisis? Everyday someone is having a meltdown about something and it’s exhausting. I don’t know if he still likes her. I don’t know if she really said that or what she really meant by it if she did. Whatever!

Sadly, the dry times don’t end with age or wisdom. We find ourselves in the valley again and again. We think we’ve learned how to navigate through them only to come over a ridge and find ourselves on an arid plane of doubt and dissatisfaction. If we live long enough, we’ll lose folk we love and we’ll become lonely. Our bodies will trouble us and we’ll wonder is this all I have to look forward to? Our enthusiasm wanes, our joyful outlook lessens and there we are – standing in the middle of bones, bones of weariness, bones of uncertainty, bones of frustration – dryness all about us.

Life in this world carries us to the valley of dry bones. From whence shall come our hope? How will we be saved from this lifelessness? What is the way back to hope and health and fullness? 

“Mortal, can these bones live?” “O, Lord God, you know.” Indeed, the Lord God does know and he tells us just as he told Ezekiel, just as his Son told Lazarus, “Come out!” 

Come out of the valley, you dry bones. Come out of the tomb, my friend. Do not stay away! Do not remain disconnected, fragmented, and dead to the life I offer. Come to me! Call on me. Though you feel dead to the world, don’t let that feeling be the last word. Don’t stay stuck in that barren, dry place. Turn to me and let me make you whole again. Let me, the Lord who knows and loves you, to put you together again. Turn back to me and ask me to fill you up, to lead beside the still waters and into green pastures. Let me help you find your way back into joy and purpose and a happy sense of self.

Mortal, dry bones cannot reconnect themselves try as they might. Dry bones cannot rejuvenate themselves into healthy, life-affirming, life-participating bodies. 

Mortal, the dead-in-spirit do not walk out of their tombs of despair by their own power.

I will put my spirit within you and you shall LIVE!