Roger Ray, pastor
April 10, 2011 Lent 5
Ezekiel 37:1-14
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. 2He led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3He said to me, 'Mortal, can these bones live?' I answered, 'O Lord God, you know.' 4Then he said to me, 'Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6I 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. 8I 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. 9Then 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.' 10I 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." 12Therefore 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. 13And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14I 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 a couple of weeks, our sanctuary will be full. Easter will bring out most of our members and, if this year is like other years, we'll have quite a few visitors as well. Which is great. We're always looking for new visitors. But I know that Easter brings out a particular kind of church goer.
The occasional church goer, the nominally religious person, comes out on Easter to hear the story of how Jesus was dead and buried and was discovered, a couple of days later, to have risen from the dead. And, with the appearance of the revived Jesus comes the message that none of the rest of us will stay dead either and that those of us who know the secret formula and the secret handshake, have a reasonable expectation of living forever above the clouds in eternal reward.
And those occasional church visitors, the nominally religious, will walk back out to their cars thinking..... "How can anyone really know? I wonder if any of it is true...." Of course, they have good reason to wonder. No one knows anything about life after death. Anyone who tries to tell you that they know anything about it is either lying or they would not be able to reliably pass a psych review.
It reminds me of that fabulous passage in Lewis Carol's "Through the Looking Glass" in which Alice tells the obviously quite mad White Queen that she can't believe impossible things and the animated chess piece replies, "of course you can, why I often believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Many of us where brought up to believe that faith meant, exactly that, convincing yourself to believe entirely impossible things when, in fact, believing impossible things has nothing to do with faith. Believing impossible things is, with all due respect to the White Queen, insanity.
God is not impressed by anyone's willingness to impersonate schizophrenia.
Now, two weeks before Easter, we have this reading from Ezekiel which gives a chance to think about resurrection as a metaphor rather than a promise of eternal life. Ezekiel describes a vision, and a vision, like a dream, is not supposed to be understood literally.
In his vision, the Lord takes Ezekiel to a valley filled with dry bones. The valley is not identified. Given the time and circumstances of Ezekiel, it is tempting to think that he has been taken to the scene of Judah's last battle where the Babylonian armies slew the armies of Judah and the survivors were carried into captivity.
You can think of that plain in Israel, around the fortified city of Megiddo but you could think of a lot of other battles as well....such as the Battle of Culloden when Bonnie Prince Charles led his Scottish kin into a battle for freedom which resulted in a bloody massacre... Charles, himself, being one of the only survivors and he survived by dressing as a woman and running away. The British army was ordered to run through Scotland and kill every man who was strong enough to lift a sword. One of the most tragic instances of ethnic cleansing in British history.
You could think of the Battle at Little Big Horn. General Custer had written to a friend, "There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry." Even Custer did not survive that massacre.
But, of course, we use military language to describe more than military history. We talk about "crossing the Rubicon" or "going to our Waterloo," not because we are literally marching with Napoleon or Caesar.
There is no one here who has led such a charmed life that when you read Ezekiel's vision, that God took the prophet out into a valley scattered with the dry bones of personal tragedy, defeat, hopeless circumstances and God asks the ultimate question: "Son of man, can these bones live?" And Ezekiel gives him the answer that we've heard echoing around in our own hearts for so long...... "I don't know."
Here, my friends, is the issue of faith. Faith is not a matter of trying to fake insanity while you are in Sunday School and returning to normal behavior by the time you get home. Faith is a question of hope in the face of defeat. Can these bones live?
Resurrection isn't about what happens after you die. It is about what happens when you feel like your life is over.... When you have been fired... or incarcerated.... Or diagnosed.... Or abandoned. Can these bones live again? And, for the most part, we reply, "I just don't know."
The NAACP is starting a billboard campaign around the country. The billboard reads: Welcome to America. Home to 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prisoners.
I've done a lot of visiting with prisoners in city, county, state and federal prisons and I can tell you that almost everyone there has worked out a perfectly plausible story for why they don't deserve to be there. And, based on the fundamental difference between America's incarceration record and, say for example, the incarceration rate in Communist China, you might be inclined to think that most of them are telling the truth.
But, fact is, most of the people in prison are guilty of committing some crime, whether or not it deserved incarceration. But, even still, guilty or innocent, what do we want the future of these people to be? If we are not going to wholesale slaughter them, then why won't we let them get job training, education, rehabilitation? It is as if our society wants to drop people in the valley of dry bones and make sure that they never ever get out.
I come from one of those salt of the earth families in middle America.... We were a family of worker bees. My dad didn't join a labor union. We didn't protest the Vietnam War. My folks got up, went to lower middle class jobs. They came home, cut the grass, mopped the kitchen floor and paid their bills. My parents lived their lives right in the middle of their lane, never straying over the white lines or the middle line.
I never had a DNA test done, but my life bears no similarity to theirs at all. I have not just crossed the white lines on the edge of the highway, I have spent most of my life bouncing from sidewalk to sidewalk. I've had times of great ebullience and success and I've had times of humiliation and failure without much time in between. I have lived my life at the extremes.
In both my personal life and my professional life, I've found myself in the middle of this metaphorical valley of dry bones, and if not God then the entire universe has asked, "Son of man, shall these bones live?" And I've had to honestly reply, "It's not looking very good..... I don't think so.... I don't see how.... There is no way out of this valley of death."
And if you've ever been there, the universe begins to ask other questions..... "do you want these bones to live again?" And sometimes the answer is, "No." "No, I've had enough. Defeat looks like a gift.... Like a chance to lay down my sword and shield and just lie down with my ancestors."
I think that the real matter of faith begins when God asks, "Do you even want to want these bones to live again?"
I've been doing weddings for more than 30 years now. I don't give warranties, I just say blessings. But sometimes people get confused about that. People I married decades ago have had children and become grandparents and sometimes they still call to see if the warrantee is in effect. "I just wanted to call and tell you that I just found out that when Robert was away for a few months, working in another state, that he had an affair..... what should I do?"
And I said, "What do you want to do?" And she said, "I don't know."
It starts slowly..... you have to want it. You have to connect the little things.... You have to remember the good times.... You have to believe the good times are not over.... You have to forgive... you have to rebuild trust and that is not a quick or easy thing. You connect a little part to a little part, and then little parts to bigger parts:
The toe bone's connected to the heel bone.... The heel bone's connected to the foot bone... the foot bone's connected to the leg bone.
Do you remember that time we went to the Brown Hotel for New Year's Eve? Do you remember when Sam tried to set up a brewery in his garage? Do you remember when little Robert got back from the Persian Gulf?
The leg bone's connect to the hip bone.... The hip bone's connected to the back bone.
"Son of man, can these bones live?" And I said, "You know." And the Lord commanded me, "prophesy to the bones." Tell the bones to forgive. Tell the bones to have hope. Tell the bones that they should connect to the back bone and find their faith because God is a God of resurrection and not of defeat.
I don't think we should go into prisons and try to baptize prisoners so that they will go to heaven when they die. I think we should go and baptize prisons so that they will let my people go.
The vision of Ezekiel is not about life after death. Oh men and women, do not waste your time wondering if you will live after you die. If you must worry, worry that you may never start to live.
Can these bones live? You bet they can. Just add faith and stand back and watch.
