Enfleshing Hope

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Ezekiel 37:1-14

One of my favourite pastimes is watching a show called Startalk on YouTube.  The host of the show is the one, the only Neil deGrasse Tyson.  He’s a very popular astrophysicist and author and has a real gift for making very complicated topics in science accessible and exciting.  I was watching an episode of Startalk on death.  It was entitled: Why do We Die?  The guest was the world’s foremost expert on the science of dying/aging, Venki Ramakrishnan.  There was nothing spiritual about the episode.  It was mostly about the science of aging and anti-aging.  When they did talk about Death, they presented it in such a way as to say if you take death out of the equation life goes stagnant.  You put off until tomorrow what you could do today and so you sit and do nothing.  But once you get it that you know you are going to die, life becomes more special.  You want to live every moment realizing time is short.  

deGrasse Tyson summed it up at the end of the show with his Cosmic Perspective.  He said: “I, at this stage in my life, value the knowledge that I will die because that gives meaning to every day that I’m alive; knowing that there’s one fewer days left in my future to love, to have new ideas, to make discoveries, to embrace all that it is to be alive in this world.  …If the knowledge of death is what brings meaning to being alive, then to live forever is to live a life with no meaning at all if you can just put off to tomorrow what you could’ve done today…for now, knowing that I’m going to die is what’s keeping me going.”  

When I first heard that, at first blush, it sounded quite wise.  Live every moment to its fullest for you never know what a day may bring.  I’ve done some hospital chaplaincy work inclusive of EMERG and I know without a doubt that there is a place called left field and things do come flying out of it.  So, yeah, don’t put off until tomorrow or the next day or the next to do what needs to be done or would be good to do.  But I have a problem with saying “the knowledge of death is what brings meaning to life.”  That’s something that people with means and privilege say.  

Here's something along that line from the more churchy side of things.  Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s it became fashionable to tell young university age people that God’s calling could be found is where their greatest passion and the world’s greatest need meet up.  That sounds really wise but...who’s going to clean the filters at the sewage treatment or pick the apples?  It takes a certain amount of means and privilege for me to be able to do what I believe will make my life meaningful.  At least 90% of the world’s population does not have the means or privilege to pursue their dreams.

As far as I see it, death is not what drives our pursuit for meaning.  I rather think that death is the capstone on the monument of futility that this disease we call Sin has made of human existence.  Sin robs life of its beauty and meaning and purpose and the fact that we die just makes it all the more futile.  If death does anything, it ends the futility.  That philosophy of “live fully because you’re going to die”, it’s good advice but it totally ignores human nature and how we are affected by Sin.  

For most people, knowing you’re going to die doesn’t change much.  A study was done a couple of decades ago on humans and our seeming inability to change.  I wish I had the time this past week to dig through my books on why churches don’t change even when faced by imminent death to make sure I got it right, but… in the study people were told by their doctor that if they continue on living the way they are living – the lack of exercise and poor diet – they will be dead in less than five years.  Did they change?  80% of the study participants did nothing to change their habits.  Some tried and gave up.  A handful succeeded.  Such are we.  So, knowing we are going to die doesn’t change much about how we live.

deGrasse Tyson would place himself in the category of being an atheist.  Unlike some of the more popular atheists today, he is not belligerent towards people of faith unless those people of faith are using their religion to violate the rights and dignity of others as often is the case.  As a scientist, he is quick to point out that faith can be a bias that keeps one from seeing what’s really there.  The same can be said in reverse, that a lack of faith can be a bias that keeps one from seeing how this unimaginably immense Creation everywhere glorifies its Maker.  God created this universe and called it very good.  What God created and called very good, God will not resign to the futility of Sin and Death.  Death is not the last word in God’s very good Creation.  Jesus Christ and him raised from death is God’s final word that heals everything.  As it went with him, so will it go with us.

Well, I don’t want to give you an Easter sermon just yet, so I’m going to hold off on the topic of Resurrection and go back to the topic of meaning. Knowing that I’m going to die doesn’t compel me to do the things I find meaningful.  The fact that they are meaningful compels me.  In the struggle to find meaningful life in the face of the futility caused by sin and death, I think it is important to consider purpose.  Life will be meaningful if it serves a purpose so what is my purpose.  

As Christians, when we talk about purpose and meaning our thoughts will likely be undergirded or at least informed by and maybe even formed around three theological thoughts: one, God created us; two, God created us to live full and meaningful lives, three, on God’s terms.  The one who made us knows what will make life meaningful for us and give us joy so seek out what God wants.  In searching for what this is I find the first question in the Westminster Larger Catechism of the Christian Faith helpful.  It asks: “What is the chief and highest end of man?”  It answers: “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.”  Let me give this a paragraph or two.

When we talk about glorifying God, we are not talking about a Great Leader Cabinet meeting in front of the press where you go around the table and everyone shamelessly grovels and lies about the great things the Great Leader has supposedly done.  The biblical concept of glory is like a solar eclipse, when the moon passes in front of the sun.  There comes a moment when the moon perfectly overlaps the sun and all you see is a black circle encircled by a crown of pure light – the glory.  To glorify God is for us to live our lives such that the glory of God shines around us.  It is to live lives of compassion, kindness, humility, and patience.  It is to bear with one another, forgiving one another.  It is to dress ourselves in love and thankfulness.  Love is patient and kind.  It doesn’t envy nor is it boastful and arrogant, rude, and self-seeking, or irritable keeping a record of wrongs.  Love rejoices in the truth!  Be filled with the Holy Spirit.  People will know the Spirit of God lives in us when they see the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I’ve left out one word thus far – hope.  Our God is the God who raises the dead.  This world is rapidly filling with darkness, yet again.  Wars, lies, cover-ups, sinking economy, climate disaster.  I could go on.  God has not absconded.  God is being eclipsed by the vainglorious misdeeds of men who think they are gods.  But just like in the midst of a solar eclipse the crown of glory of the sun encircles the moon and the darkness then starts to fade so are we who live in by the Spirit in the image of Christ.  Friends, breathe the Spirit of God and be enfleshed with hope.  The glory of God shines through us into this dark world.  Glorify God and you will know what it is to enjoy him and this world will glimpse its one hope – Jesus Christ.  Amen.

 

The Bone Rattlin' God

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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.