4-6-14: Dry Bones

Dry Bones

 

Ezekiel 37: 1-14 (NRSV)

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. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” Then he said to me, “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.”

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. 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. 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.” I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

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.’ 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. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 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.

John 11: 1-45 (The Message by Eugene Peterson)

A man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. This was the same Mary who massaged the Lord’s feet with aromatic oils and then wiped them with her hair. It was her brother Lazarus who was sick. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Master, the one you love so very much is sick.”

When Jesus got the message, he said, “This sickness is not fatal. It will become an occasion to show God’s glory by glorifying God’s Son.”

Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, but oddly, when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed on where he was for two more days. After the two days, he said to his disciples, “Let’s go back to Judea.”

They said, “Rabbi, you can’t do that. The Jews are out to kill you, and you’re going back?”

Jesus replied, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in daylight doesn’t stumble because there’s plenty of light from the sun. Walking at night, he might very well stumble because he can’t see where he’s going.”

He said these things, and then announced, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. I’m going to wake him up.”

The disciples said, “Master, if he’s gone to sleep, he’ll get a good rest and wake up feeling fine.” Jesus was talking about death, while his disciples thought he was talking about taking a nap.

Then Jesus became explicit: “Lazarus died. And I am glad for your sakes that I wasn’t there. You’re about to be given new grounds for believing. Now let’s go to him.”

That’s when Thomas, the one called the Twin, said to his companions, “Come along. We might as well die with him.”

When Jesus finally got there, he found Lazarus already four days dead. Bethany was near Jerusalem, only a couple of miles away, and many of the Jews were visiting Martha and Mary, sympathizing with them over their brother. Martha heard Jesus was coming and went out to meet him. Mary remained in the house.

Martha said, “Master, if you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. Even now, I know that whatever you ask God he will give you.”

Jesus said, “Your brother will be raised up.”

Martha replied, “I know that he will be raised up in the resurrection at the end of time.”

“You don’t have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. Do you believe this?”

“Yes, Master. All along I have believed that you are the Messiah, the Son of God who comes into the world.”

After saying this, she went to her sister Mary and whispered in her ear, “The Teacher is here and is asking for you.”

The moment she heard that, she jumped up and ran out to him. Jesus had not yet entered the town but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When her sympathizing Jewish friends saw Mary run off, they followed her, thinking she was on her way to the tomb to weep there. Mary came to where Jesus was waiting and fell at his feet, saying, “Master, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her sobbing and the Jews with her sobbing, a deep anger welled up within him. He said, “Where did you put him?”

“Master, come and see,” they said. Now Jesus wept.

The Jews said, “Look how deeply he loved him.”

Others among them said, “Well, if he loved him so much, why didn’t he do something to keep him from dying? After all, he opened the eyes of a blind man.”

Then Jesus, the anger again welling up within him, arrived at the tomb. It was a simple cave in the hillside with a slab of stone laid against it. Jesus said, “Remove the stone.”

The sister of the dead man, Martha, said, “Master, by this time there’s a stench. He’s been dead four days!”

Jesus looked her in the eye. “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”

Then, to the others, “Go ahead, take away the stone.”

They removed the stone. Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and prayed, “Father, I’m grateful that you have listened to me. I know you always do listen, but on account of this crowd standing here I’ve spoken so that they might believe that you sent me.”

Then he shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” And he came out, a cadaver, wrapped from head to toe, and with a kerchief over his face.

Jesus told them, “Unwrap him and let him loose.”

That was a turnaround for many of the Jews who were with Mary. They saw what Jesus did, and believed in him.

 

I told our Tuesday Bible Study group that I really think it might be fun if this morning’s Old Testament lesson, from the prophet Ezekiel—the story about the dry, dead bones coming to life—came up in the lectionary sometime a little closer to Halloween. But the truth is, the closer we get to the season of Easter, the more appropriate it is to hear words like the ones the prophet Ezekiel shares with us, and like the ones we hear in this morning’s Gospel story, from John.

And, really, no matter what time of year it is, there is no bad time for us, the disciples of God, to hear these two stories. In fact, it’s as if every day of our lives we need to hear these two stories just a little bit more.

And that’s because once you get past the vivid, and, admittedly, bizarre images Ezekiel and John share with us this morning, what we hear from them are two stories about hope.

But before we can get to those messages of hope, you need to know a little bit about our story tellers. We, as a congregation, already know a bit about our Evangelist, John—we know why he wrote, and we know what his goal was in telling a story like the one about Mary, Martha, and Lazarus: so that we would know the Good News of Christ. Of course, I can expound on all of that, but I’m feeling like that’s a sermon for another Sunday.

The story teller I’m more curious about today, and was more curious about this week, while I was working on penning this sermon, is this morning’s Old Testament author, Ezekiel.

Why did I find Ezekiel so interesting? For this reason—how often do we see Ezekiel’s writings show up in our revised common lectionary? Even less often than we see the writings of John.

What do we know about Ezekiel? Who was this man? As is true of most of our biblical authors, Ezekiel didn’t leave a name, date, and location on his writings, but, by carefully reading over the text, we’ve figured out a lot about this man.

Ezekiel came from a family of priests. His father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather, as far back as anyone could recall, were all priests. Ezekiel grew up knowing he was going to follow in his forefathers’ footsteps, and embraced that future. He went through all the training a Jewish man of his time would have needed to to become a priest, and became one, and spent a considerable amount of time in his younger adult years serving his home, the Southern Kingdom of Israel, as a priest.

What brought him out of the priesthood, and compelled him to become a prophet, is that he could see the writing on the wall. He began making prophesies to his friends and neighbors only a few years before King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon conquered Jerusalem. After the fall of Jerusalem, Ezekiel was one of many Judahites who was taken away from his homeland and forced to live in exile in Babylon.

Ezekiel simply couldn’t ignore his call to the prophesy any longer, knowing that the future of his people could be in his hands. And it’s clear from the way Ezekiel wrote that, even as a prophet, he still saw himself first as a priest, and even as a pastor, a leader of the flock. He took personal responsibility for steering those who suffered alongside him in the right direction.

Ezekiel didn’t just believe that his neighbors and friends had experienced something truly horrible in watching the brutal devastation of the homeland. He also believed that they were going through this horrible experience of homelessness, loss, and exile at least in part because God was punishing them for their actions. In Ezekiel’s opinion, it was their own bad decisions that landed them in Babylon.

And it wasn’t just Ezekiel that believed that. His own neighbors, the Judahites living in exile with him, believed that they had forever ruined their home, as well as their relationship with God. They lived in utter despair, believing they had lost everything that was ever dear to them, and that their people had no future. They had no hope.

I’ve used the word “compassion” a few times from the pulpit this year, and I’m going to use it again, because our brother Ezekiel perfectly embodies it: he is suffering with his neighbors. Their loss was his loss, and their pain is his pain.

The difference, though, between Ezekiel and his neighbors was that Ezekiel had just enough clarity to still be a leader, even in exile. More importantly, he had just enough faith in God to believe that he and his people may still have a future. He had enough faith to believe, even in the face of death, that there could be a resurrection.

We’re about 2600 years removed from Ezekiel and his neighbors. We practice a different religion, we live in a totally different society, and we have never known utter devastation at the hands of King Nebuchadnezzar—at least not in a literal sense.

Yet, Ezekiel’s words are just as much for us as they were for his own neighbors. It wasn’t just Ezekiel and his people that felt like they were reduced to nothing but a field of dry bones. In our contemporary lives, and especially in our twenty-first-century church, sometimes we can’t help but feel like dry, lifeless bones.

And that’s because it’s rough being a person of faith. It’s a hard life, and it’s one where we see all kinds of loss. Right about now, all of us United Methodist clergy are getting ready for Annual Conference—our yearly, three-day summit where we discuss all the important business of our Church. This year, just like last year, and just like the year before that, our Conferences will vote to close churches. This is a truly solemn moment at Conference, because we all know too well that for each church that we close, there’s someone out there that just lost their Temple—their sacred place. God’s home, in their eyes.

This year, churches that once had a full-time pastor will be reduced to a part-time charge. This year, churches will decide it’s time to shut down their Sunday School programs. This year, churches will struggle just to stay financially viable. And this year, people of faith will look upon what is, and remember the way things once were, and ask themselves, Can these dry bones live? Does our Church have a future, or is worshipping Jesus a thing of the past?

It’s okay to grieve our losses as they happen. Ezekiel didn’t dismiss the pain of his neighbors any more than Jesus dismissed the anguish of Mary and Martha at the tomb of their brother, Lazarus—he wept right alongside them.

And it’s awfully tempting, when we face so much loss here in our churches, to wonder if Jesus is really with us. It’s awfully tempting to challenge Jesus just like Mary and Martha did, and cry out to him, Lord, if only you were here, our churches would not be dying.

But the advantage we have over our sisters in the faith, Mary and Martha, is that we know that Jesus is always here. And, unlike Mary and Martha, we know the Good News. We know that our God is one who opens the sealed tomb and makes the dead live. We know that our God is a God who puts flesh on the dry bones, and makes them breathe again. And we know, no matter how bleak things may seem, no matter how much loss we may see, that we can always have hope. Because we know that wherever there is death, there is always a resurrection awaiting us.

Amen.