Ezekiel 37:1-14 (The Message)
God grabbed me. God’s Spirit took me up and set me down in the middle of an open plain strewn with bones. He led me around and among them—a lot of bones! There were bones all over the plain—dry bones, bleached by the sun.
He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “Master God, only you know that.” He said to me, “Prophesy over these bones: ‘Dry bones, listen to the Message of God!’”
God, the Master, told the dry bones, “Watch this: I’m bringing the breath of life to you and you’ll come to life. I’ll attach sinews to you, put meat on your bones, cover you with skin, and breathe life into you. You’ll come alive and you’ll realize that I am God!”
I prophesied just as I’d been commanded. As I prophesied, there was a sound and, oh, rustling! The bones moved and came together, bone to bone. I kept watching. Sinews formed, then muscles on the bones, then skin stretched over them. But they had no breath in them.
He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son of man. Tell the breath, ‘God, the Master, says, Come from the four winds. Come, breath. Breathe on these slain bodies. Breathe life!’”
So I prophesied, just as he commanded me. The breath entered them and they came alive! They stood up on their feet, a huge army. Then God said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Listen to what they’re saying: ‘Our bones are dried up, our hope is gone, there’s nothing left of us.’
“Therefore, prophesy. Tell them, ‘God, the Master, says: I’ll dig up your graves and bring you out alive—O my people! Then I’ll take you straight to the land of Israel. When I dig up graves and bring you out as my people, you’ll realize that I am God. I’ll breathe my life into you and you’ll live. Then I’ll lead you straight back to your land and you’ll realize that I am God. I’ve said it and I’ll do it. God’s Decree.’”
We are coming to the end of Lent. Next Sunday will be Palm Sunday, followed, the week after that, by Easter. One more week from today and we will be deep within the grief and death of Holy Week. We are heading into the darkest part of Lent, and yet … today’s readings are stories of resurrection. We just heard the Old Testament reading for today, from the prophet Ezekiel. Today’s gospel reading is the story of Jesus calling the dead and buried Lazarus out of his tomb and back into the world of the living.
But it’s Ezekiel’s story we’re going to try to look into this morning. Ezekiel was a prophet, born in Judah when the rule of the all-powerful Assyrian empire, which had governed the Near East, including Judah, for years, was finally declining and falling apart. Over the next 25 or so years of political chaos Judah kept trying to reassert its independence, but without the power to back up its desires and without the understanding that the world had changed around them and they could not go back to the way it had been, it most often ended up being nothing more than a puppet state for one foreign regime or another as wave after wave of conquest swept through.
Eventually Babylon rose to the top of the heap and became the major power player in the area, resulting in, among other things, the Babylonian exile of the Jews. Ezekiel was called to prophesy while he was living in Babylon, one of the exiles himself. He was married there and apparently settled in Babylon and scripture doesn’t tell us if he ever returned to Judah or if he lived out his life and died there, far from what had once been his home.
While Jesus’ raising of Lazarus is the story of an individual’s return to life, the Ezekiel story is a promise that an entire people – the Sons and Daughters of Abraham – will be brought back to life. Once sitting at the pinnacle of wealth and political power, David’s kingdom had fallen into something perilously close to non-existence. Politically they were powerless and even religiously the people could only fight among themselves. They had, as a people, effectively died, leaving nothing behind them but dry bones. As much as they wanted to put it all back together again, they had reached a point where they were simply not able to do it. They could not themselves bring their dead bones to life.
Ezekiel’s dry bones story is so fantastical that we can easily overlook its relevance to us in our world today. Surely, it’s a fairytale – a good story, but not terribly helpful.
And yet … how often in our lives have we felt dead and lifeless? A much cherished plan falls apart; things change in ways totally out of our control; sickness intervenes and throws everything off kilter; a future we had taken for granted disappears right in front of our eyes? It happens to us in our personal lives much too frequently. Many of us are feeling something close to this in our national life right now.
This is also the plaint I hear from mainline churches everywhere. The numbers are falling off and nothing they try seems to help. Many church-goers feel that coming back to what they recognize as life is impossibly far beyond them.
Perhaps it’s time for us to take Ezekiel’s story much more seriously. In his vision, Ezekiel is given several instructions by God. The first instruction tells him to look at the devastation around him – really see it – see and accept how hopeless it is, in human terms.
Next, he is told to speak to the devastation – speak, and then stand back and watch God work. Implicit in all this, of course, is trusting what God says. Walter Brueggemann, one of our greatest biblical scholars, puts it this way: "The promise is cast in a series of first-person, powerful verbs: I will cause breath, I will lay sinews, I will cause flesh, I will cover, I will put breath. The text gives no hint about how this happens. It is the power of God. God intends it and clearly will do it."
And God does do it. Right before Ezekiel’s eyes, sinews and flesh appear and the newly reborn bones arise – but something is still missing. They are still hopeless and helpless.
Once again Ezekiel speaks words he is given, and this time breath enters the risen bodies and they become fully alive. The word used here for ‘breath’, ruah, is also the word most often translated as “spirit.” It is not mere physical breath that comes to them here – it is God’s own Spirit that enters them and revives them.
And this is the key to understanding Ezekiel’s vision. This is the ‘breath’ we need when we feel almost dead and destroyed … when we have given up … when we have admitted we cannot raise ourselves up. When the burdens of life are just too heavy, but we have to find the means to pick them up anyway. When the puzzle before us is just too complicated … in our personal lives, in our work, in our communities, in our churches, this is the spirit-breath we need to revive us. If we attempt to rise up without having God’s own Spirit in our rising, we will fail. We will remain the lifeless bones of what we once were, what we yet again could be.
God’s Spirit of love and of caring; God’s passion for justice and truth for all God’s children; God’s spirit of humility and service. Without this Spirit, whatever we seek, whatever life we attempt to restore will wither and fail. With it, there is nothing we cannot bring to life.
In the words of the prayer from today’s meditation reading: O God of resurrection power, summon the winds that I may breathe the breath of life and rise to meet the challenge of repairing the ruins and rebuilding. Amen.
But it’s Ezekiel’s story we’re going to try to look into this morning. Ezekiel was a prophet, born in Judah when the rule of the all-powerful Assyrian empire, which had governed the Near East, including Judah, for years, was finally declining and falling apart. Over the next 25 or so years of political chaos Judah kept trying to reassert its independence, but without the power to back up its desires and without the understanding that the world had changed around them and they could not go back to the way it had been, it most often ended up being nothing more than a puppet state for one foreign regime or another as wave after wave of conquest swept through.
Eventually Babylon rose to the top of the heap and became the major power player in the area, resulting in, among other things, the Babylonian exile of the Jews. Ezekiel was called to prophesy while he was living in Babylon, one of the exiles himself. He was married there and apparently settled in Babylon and scripture doesn’t tell us if he ever returned to Judah or if he lived out his life and died there, far from what had once been his home.
While Jesus’ raising of Lazarus is the story of an individual’s return to life, the Ezekiel story is a promise that an entire people – the Sons and Daughters of Abraham – will be brought back to life. Once sitting at the pinnacle of wealth and political power, David’s kingdom had fallen into something perilously close to non-existence. Politically they were powerless and even religiously the people could only fight among themselves. They had, as a people, effectively died, leaving nothing behind them but dry bones. As much as they wanted to put it all back together again, they had reached a point where they were simply not able to do it. They could not themselves bring their dead bones to life.
Ezekiel’s dry bones story is so fantastical that we can easily overlook its relevance to us in our world today. Surely, it’s a fairytale – a good story, but not terribly helpful.
And yet … how often in our lives have we felt dead and lifeless? A much cherished plan falls apart; things change in ways totally out of our control; sickness intervenes and throws everything off kilter; a future we had taken for granted disappears right in front of our eyes? It happens to us in our personal lives much too frequently. Many of us are feeling something close to this in our national life right now.
This is also the plaint I hear from mainline churches everywhere. The numbers are falling off and nothing they try seems to help. Many church-goers feel that coming back to what they recognize as life is impossibly far beyond them.
Perhaps it’s time for us to take Ezekiel’s story much more seriously. In his vision, Ezekiel is given several instructions by God. The first instruction tells him to look at the devastation around him – really see it – see and accept how hopeless it is, in human terms.
Next, he is told to speak to the devastation – speak, and then stand back and watch God work. Implicit in all this, of course, is trusting what God says. Walter Brueggemann, one of our greatest biblical scholars, puts it this way: "The promise is cast in a series of first-person, powerful verbs: I will cause breath, I will lay sinews, I will cause flesh, I will cover, I will put breath. The text gives no hint about how this happens. It is the power of God. God intends it and clearly will do it."
And God does do it. Right before Ezekiel’s eyes, sinews and flesh appear and the newly reborn bones arise – but something is still missing. They are still hopeless and helpless.
Once again Ezekiel speaks words he is given, and this time breath enters the risen bodies and they become fully alive. The word used here for ‘breath’, ruah, is also the word most often translated as “spirit.” It is not mere physical breath that comes to them here – it is God’s own Spirit that enters them and revives them.
And this is the key to understanding Ezekiel’s vision. This is the ‘breath’ we need when we feel almost dead and destroyed … when we have given up … when we have admitted we cannot raise ourselves up. When the burdens of life are just too heavy, but we have to find the means to pick them up anyway. When the puzzle before us is just too complicated … in our personal lives, in our work, in our communities, in our churches, this is the spirit-breath we need to revive us. If we attempt to rise up without having God’s own Spirit in our rising, we will fail. We will remain the lifeless bones of what we once were, what we yet again could be.
God’s Spirit of love and of caring; God’s passion for justice and truth for all God’s children; God’s spirit of humility and service. Without this Spirit, whatever we seek, whatever life we attempt to restore will wither and fail. With it, there is nothing we cannot bring to life.
In the words of the prayer from today’s meditation reading: O God of resurrection power, summon the winds that I may breathe the breath of life and rise to meet the challenge of repairing the ruins and rebuilding. Amen.
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