Ezekiel 37:1-14
March 29, 2020
Our son Graham’s girlfriend has
spent the last year working for an archaeological firm. She started off on site
at the dig near Chattanooga. She told us that within the first days of the dig,
they struck archaeological gold. They not only found remnants of a people:
shards of pottery, tools, etc., they found remains. Bones. Human bones. And the
testing on these bones found that they date back thousands and thousands of
years. The archaeologists are learning and will continue to learn about these
ancient people through the study of these bones.
Bones tell a story. Bones can tell
how tall or how short a person might have been. They tell of any diseases or
accidents the person might have had. They tell the story of that person’s
nutrition or lack thereof. Bones can give clues as to whether a person was a
hunter or a gatherer; if they belonged to a group of people who stayed put and
farmed, or lived a nomadic life, perhaps following herds of animals. Bones
cannot tell the whole story of a person’s life, but they can lift up details
that might otherwise be missed. Bones tell a story.
What is the story being told by the
bones in this valley the prophet Ezekiel saw? What is the story being told by
these bones?
Ezekiel had a vision. The hand of
the Lord came upon Ezekiel, and then through the spirit of Lord, led him to a
valley that was littered with bones. Ezekiel was brought to the middle of that
valley. And he didn’t just stand there and take a cursory look at the shocking
and even a little grisly site before him. No, God led Ezekiel all around the
valley to look at these bones. What we have translated as led all around
is correct, but we lose the ongoing sense of it. God led Ezekiel around and
around and around this valley of dry bones. God wanted Ezekiel to see them. God
wanted Ezekiel to see how dry they were, to see how bleached they were, to see
that there was absolutely no life left in them. They were dead bones. They were
dry bones. They were nothing but the bones.
Then God asked Ezekiel what has to
be the most astonishing, and dare I say nutty, question ever,
“Mortal, can these bones live?”
Can these bones live?! Can they
live?! This is an entire valley filled with dry, dead bones. There is no life
left in these bones. There is no life here in this valley at all. These are
nothing more than the remnants of lives that once were. Can remnants live? Can
bits and pieces be brought back together again into life? God, did you really
just ask if these bones can live?
But if Ezekiel had any of these
thoughts, he did not express them. He answered God’s question with one simple,
brief sentence.
“Oh Lord God, you know.”
Oh Lord God, you and only you know
if these bones can live. If they are to live again, then only you can
accomplish that. If these bones can live, God, then they will live because of
you.
So God told Ezekiel to prophesy to
the bones. Prophesy to them to hear the word of the Lord. Ezekiel did as the
Lord commanded. He prophesied to the bones. And with his prophesying, the bones
came together: foot to ankle, ankle to leg, fingers to hand, hand to arm,
vertebra to vertebra. The bones came together with a great rattling sound.
Imagine the noise of that moment. Imagine the terrible sound of so many dry
bones rising up from the dust of the valley floor and reconnecting, bone by
bone by dry bone.
Ezekiel looked and saw that not only
had the bones reknit themselves, one to the other, they were also covered with
sinew and flesh. But although they looked more like the beings they once were,
there was still no life in them.
God told Ezekiel,
“Prophesy to the breath, 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.”
Ezekiel did what God commanded and
prophesied to the breath. And the breath of the Lord, the breath of life,
filled them and they stood up, alive, a vast multitude. Than God told Ezekiel
the story of these bones.
God told Ezekiel that these once dry bones
were the whole house of Israel, exiled from their homeland, exiled from the
land God have given them. These bones were the whole of Israel whose lives had
been stripped down to nothing, whose hope had dried up; hope as dry as the dry,
dead bones. But God told them that God would bring them up out of their graves,
God would restore them to their own soil. God would breathe life into them
again. God would put God’s spirit within them, and they would once more live.
Can these bones live?
I said before that this has to be the
nuttiest question ever. But you know, I’m not so sure that’s true anymore. I
realized in my study of this passage this week – a passage that I love and that
I have studied and preached on before; in fact the conference I attended last
fall in Montreat was focused on this passage – but this week I came to realize
that the question for me is NOT can these bones live, but for what will they
live now that they are actually alive again? Let me amend that, for whom will
they live now that they are alive once more?
Can these bones live? Yes, God, if you
want them to live, to come together again, bone upon bone, sinew upon sinew,
they will. If you breathe your spirit of life into them, they will live. They
will walk and talk and think and feel and hurt and love and live. But for what
purpose will they live? For whom will they live?
We are all talking about when things get
back to normal; what we will do, where we will go. But I think that just live
other major events in our lives, we will mark this time as before the pandemic
and after. There was life before September 11, 2001 and there was life after.
Not everything that seemed normal before this pandemic will be normal anymore.
We are going to have to figure out a new normal. But I hope with all my heart
that the new normal will look and be better than the old. When some semblance
of normalcy – whatever that may look like – returns after this pandemic, when
the bones are once again alive, what will we living for? Who will we be living
for?
I’ve been seeing a story about
anthropologist Margaret Mead circulating on social media these last weeks. I
don’t know if this is true or anecdotal, but it is a good story, nonetheless.
According to the quote, she was asked once what marked the beginning of a
civilization. It was assumed that her answer would be when learning or art or
literature began. Instead she said that the beginning of a civilization could
be found in the bones. When someone found a bone that had been mended, that was
the beginning. Too often, broken bones were a death sentence. Someone could not
walk or use their hands or arms, they died. But a civilization began when
someone else worked to mend the bone of another person. That was the beginning
of civilization, of community.
I hope our bones will one day tell the
story that we tried to mend one another, that we cared for one another, that we
realized that being made alive again was not about living for ourselves but for
the One who made us, who created us, who loves us, who brought us back from the
valley of dry bones. I hope our bones tell the story that we tried to mend one
another because God first mended us.
Amen and amen.
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