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Ezekiel 37:1-14; Colossians 3:1-4
When I read this text from Ezekiel I read it with my imagination. You can’t help but visualize it and it’s not for the weak of stomach. I can't help but picture this as an awesome, fearful, and gruesome sight. Ezekiel standing in that silent Valley, the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Who knows how he got there - The Spirit brought him - whatever that means. There lying in the valley are the dried-out bones of hundreds, maybe thousands of people. God compels him to walk around in the midst of them. And he walks. He stops, picks up a skull and says, “Alas, poor Yurich! I knew him well.” (Sorry. The moment demanded a bit of Shakespeare.) Ezekiel must have been overwhelmed. How horrible could it have been? How did all these people die? How was this valley turned into an open mass grave? Who were they - soldiers? The innocent population of a nearby town some enemy devoted to destruction? Don’t know. We just know it was a vast multitude.
Then God spoke to Ezekiel and asked a seemingly senseless question to which there was an obvious answer. The question - "Mortal - you who can die - can these bones - which are very dead - live?” Well, the answer we would expect Ezekiel to give would be, "No, these bones are very dead. They cannot live." But Ezekiel, knowing that it was God who was asking him the question, he did the Matlock thing. Y’all know the Matlock thing? Matlock was a TV series starring Andy Griffith as a southern detective. The Matlock thing is something we southern boy's do so well when we feel we might be getting tricked. We put on our best Gomer Pyle accent and play dumb so to see how a situation is going to play out so that maybe we can turn it back around on the trickster. Ole Zeke said "O Lord God, Almighty ruler of the Universe, you know ‘cause you know everything. I'm just a little ole mortal."
God starts to answer his own question. "Say to those bones: I will cover you with flesh, put breath in you, and you shall live." Well, Ole Zeke plays along and does what the Lord asks him to do. Starts talking to them bones. And low and behold…there’s the mighty sound of rattlin’ bones and it’s…"Foot bone connected to the leg bone. Leg bone connected to the hip bone…..Them bones start rattlin'. They start coming together joining together and the meat comes back on ‘em and then the skin. Lord, have mercy. Hollywood can’t touch this. There’s not just bones everywhere. Now there’s bodies everywhere, but they ain’t alive.
Then the Lord tells Ole Zeke to prophesy to the four winds to come and breath on them that they might live. Ole Zeke again does as the Lord asks and the wind comes and there in the Valley of Dry Bones stood a multitude, a vast multitude, alive. It seems them bones can live and Ole Zeke has got to be asking himself what sort of God he’s got there. Most gods back them would just as soon melt the flesh off of mortals for entertainment. Israel’s God restores them to life. What kind of God can and would give life back and why? What are we mere mortals that God should care?
God finishes up by telling Ole Zeke to prophesy to the house of Israel, who believed about themselves that they were dead. They had been taken into captivity in Babylon. Their idolatry and abuse of their own poor had gotten so evil, evil to the extent of sacrificing their own children to foreign gods, that God had to renege on his promise to their forefathers to give them the Land and make a great nation of their descendants. Well, cast off their land and no longer a great nation, they were as good as dead and their bones, figuratively speaking were bone-dry with hopelessness and feeling alone, cut off from their God. Can these bones live? The God of the living who restores life was promising to the whole house of Israel that he was going to open up their graves and bring them back to the Land of Israel where they would again live as his people knowing that he truly is God. Roughly 70 years later God did. He brought his people back from exile and they began the arduous task of rebuilding.
In the early church and in early Judaism this prophetic I don’t know what you’d call it, served as a prooftext of the resurrection of the dead. It gave hope in assuring them that God can take what is dead - as dead as dead can be - I mean laying there in the field, dried out, and disjointed and restore it anew - put breath into it so that it lives. They believed, as do we, that the day will come when God will do just what Ezekiel saw him do - Raise us from the dead and put flesh on us. Breathe new life into us. We believe that God has power over life and over death and that our God who is gracious will give life where it seems death has taken over. That’s the way God is.
The early church also believed that this prophetic experience that Ezekiel had there in that Valley of Dry bones was in a way but not fully fulfilled when God poured out his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, upon the church on the Day of Pentecost. Though God has not yet literally raised his people from their graves, we are raised with Christ. We participate in his resurrection by baptism and by God breathing his Spirit into those who follow Jesus as Lord and Savior.
Well, I know it’s Lent and we should probably be doing some old school Bible-thumping on how we are hopeless, dried-up bones living in captivity to sin and we got some repenting to do, but…why? Why walk among the bones when we have the opportunity to breathe the fresh air of the new life in Christ from the Holy Spirit? As Paul says in our reading from Colossians, we have been raised with Christ and our life is hidden with him in God. We live. We live. We are alive. God has breathed his life into us, the Holy Spirit. What’s the evidence of that? Quite frankly, it’s the basic fact that we are here right now and not somewhere else. Going to church is no longer a cultural expectation where people are shamed for not attending. Those of us who still come to worship particularly in small congregations come for the simple fact that we know we live in Christ and he lives in us and the loving fellowship we have at church is an important part of what it is to live.
As a congregation we may feel like scattered, dried-up old bones, but we live. We may ask how? We’re quite aged and don’t have the energy to do the things we used to do as a congregation that made us look and feel alive and vibrant. That is certainly true and it’s ok. It is ok. Aging and it’s effects are a fact of life in everything that lives. There’s no need to feel like we’re failing God. You see, the new life in Christ is not found so much in what we do as it is in our relationship with God and with one another and with others.
Here’s what I think new life in Christ looks like. A woman came up to me last Sunday at lunch after church and got down close to may face to speak candidly to me. She and her husband are what we call a bit up in years. His health is a major concern and most of her time and energy goes towards helping him. That’s beauty of love among the aging. She said, “I just want you to know I pray for you. I pray for you. I pray for these churches. At night when I can’t sleep, I lay there and I pray for you, for this ministry. We don’t have the energy or the health to do much, but I pray for you.” I couldn’t say much more than “Thank you” as I was getting a bit choked up and didn’t what to get weepy at the table.
Praying is at the heart of what it is to be raised in new life with Christ and seeking the things that are above. Prayer. Praying to God. Praying for one another. It is in and through the helpless, desperate, humble, and so often tearful task of prayer that we live the new life in Christ who is seated at the right hand of God the Father. Prayer is the ultimate act of dying to ourselves; of relinquishing control of our lives and submitting to the will and care of the God who has loved us all our lives and proved himself faithful time and again. Prayer is letting God be God so that we don’t have to be God ourselves. It is in and through prayer that the bone-rattlin’ God who gives life rattles them bones, enfleshes us, and breathes the life of his Spirit into us. Prayer teaches us patience for rarely does God answer our prayers right now in the way we want especially those prayers that involve relationships and the hearts and lives of others. Some prayers take a lifetime and simply serve to teach the painful lesson of endurance.
Prayer is how we take off the clothes of the old life and clothe ourselves with the new clothes of the new life in Christ. Paul writes later in Chapter three of Colossians telling us to clothe ourselves were certain qualities of character that are indicative of those who are alive in Christ. He writes: “Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:12-17).
Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another, forgiveness, thankfulness, and most of all, love – unconditional, unselfish, sacrificial love; these are the marks and ways of the new life in Christ that God breathes into us with and by his Spirit while we pray. I’ve been with you folks nearly nine years now (and I can say this about all four of my churches and the two I served previously), you are very much alive with the new life in Christ. You bear the marks of the new life in Christ richly. Who knows what the future holds for us four churches and this cooperative arrangement, but as long as we are praying, we are alive. Seek the One who is above, humbly trust in God’s will and care. Our God is the Bone Rattlin’ God who gives life anew. Pray! What more can I say? Amen.
