Enliven Dry Bones

Ezekiel 37: 1-14

March 13, 2005

Enliven Dry Bones

In one panel of the comic strip Family Circus little Billy walks into his house carrying one shoe, scratched up, and with clothes in tatters. He looks like he's been in two fights and was then run over by a garbage truck. As he enters the door, he asks, "Do guardian angels take days off?"

A boxer was in the emergency room telling his girlfriend about the match he had earlier in the night. "First, he threw a right cross," he said. "Then he threw a left cross." "What came next?" his girlfriend asked. "I don't remember," he said. But somebody said it was the Red Cross."

There are times, aren't there, when events in life suggest that guardian angels do take days off, or weeks off, or even sometime guardian angels take six-month sabbaticals. There are times, aren't there, when, bloodied and bruised, we look seemingly in vain for the Red Cross to show up. It's good if we can look back and find humor there, but you and I both know that, at the time, it is anything but funny.

Many of you know exactly what it feels like, and some of you are feeling it right now. Every day you wonder what or who next will kick you in the pit of your stomach. You dread getting out of bed in the morning, not because you're tired, but because you don't know how you're going to face another day. The simplest of activities and decisions take the greatest of efforts. You feel like that cartoon character that walks around with a perpetual cloud over his head, and while others enjoy happiness and sunshine you know only sadness and gloom.

The causes are many: a bad report from the doctor, a sick child or a dying parent, failure in job or vocation, a deteriorating marriage, difficulties in parenting, financial woes. Nor do only adults know this trouble. The teenage suicide rate has more than tripled in the last four decades from a 3.6% rate in 1960 to an 11.2% rate in 2000 as young people experience the pressure for good grades, peer approval, and unrealistic and unrelenting demands on their time and energy, while an increasing number of them must cope with and adapt to a disintegrating family life. Whether it is adolescent, older teen, or adult, there are many who feel life being sucked out of them leaving the appearance of life without the substance of life.

That is not unknown in Scripture. It is particularly present in the lesson from Ezekiel this morning, the famous "dry bones" passage. These are not literally dry bones but it represent the people of Israel who have been taken by force from the promised land to exile in the land of Babylon. These dry bones speak out of their complaint and despair and they cry out: "Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, we are cut off completely." They, too, feel that life has been sucked out of them leaving the appearance of life without the substance of life.

It was, for them, a theological issue, a question about God. Hope was identified with God. The psalmist writes in Ps. 39:7, "And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in thee." Jeremiah twice addressed the Lord as “the hope of ". When Israel then, says, "our hope is lost", they are admitting a fear that either God cannot or will not help. God had either lost interest or lost power.

Bob Considine tells of the time he accompanied an infant Vietnamese orphan to the U.S. so she could be adopted after the Vietnam War. On the long flight to the U.S. the baby's eyes overflowed with tears, but she made absolutely no sound. Considine found a stewardess and asked her what the problem was. The stewardess had seen war orphans before, and was quick to tell Considine that this was normal. As she said, "the reason they don't make noise when they cry is because they learned a long time ago that nobody will come."

There may be many today who feel as dried up and hopeless and completely cut off as did those dry bones of Israel in the valley to which God took Ezekiel - men, women and children who cry in silence because they believe that even if they cry aloud, even if their pain is exposed, nobody will come.

But in the story of Ezekiel and the valley of dry bones there is hope, because these dry bones lived. This is not a story of resurrection from the dead to which the lesson from Romans alludes this morning. Nor is it a resuscitation of physical life to one who has died, as was the case with Lazarus. This is a story of resurrection from sadness and, sadness and despair that make life feel like death.

What brings these bones to life in Ezekiel? The word of the Lord brings these bones to life. God says to Ezekiel, "Prophesy to these bones (i.e. speak my word to these bones), and say to them: 0 dry bones, hear the word of the Lord." And what will happen when Ezekiel so says. God continues: "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..." Here is God's assurance that he has neither lost interest nor suffers from weakness. Like His spirit that moved over the waters of creation in Gen. 1:2 he would breathe into them and restore them to life. By His word he can do the same today.

God would touch us with His word. He wills to breathe into our shattered and torn lives that very same breath that gave life to dry bones. When people and events suck the life from you and me God, by His word, would breathe His life back in. Our only task is to be available to Him, to be around when and where that spirit Word is spoken.

That spirit word that resurrects dry bones and breathes life into troubled souls is spoken in the Bible, through Sunday worship, and in prayer. Sadly, these are often the first neglected activities when life turns sour. Bibles are rarely read anyway, Sunday worship becomes less frequent, and the art of prayer is forgotten. But combined, the reading of Scripture, the activity of worship, and the discipline of prayer puts us in touch with that Word of the Lord that gives life.

Some years ago a speedboat driver was near top speed when his boat veered slightly and hit a wave at a dangerous angle. The combined force of his speed and the size and angle of the wave sent the boat spinning crazily into the air. He was thrown from his seat and propelled deeply into the water-so deep, in fact, that he had no idea which direction the surface was. He had to remain calm and wait for the buoyancy of his life vest to begin pulling him up. Once he discovered which way was up, he could swim for the surface.

Worship is that time in the week when we wait calmly so that we can re-discover which way is up. In worship we hear the Bible read and hear His word spoken, and we are led in prayer. Particularly this is important when we are a heap of jumbled dry bones in some valley.

Garfield the cat is lying flat on his back thinking: "Boy, am I bored!" Jon, his owner, comes along and says, "Hey, Garfield! Let's go to the store and try on socks." Garfield thinks, "Every time I think I've hit bottom, somebody throws me a shovel."

When we hit bottom God doesn't throw us a shovel, he lowers a lifeline. By His word he promises to be our hope when we have lost hope. By His word he breathes his life into us when our lives feel like death. By His word he loves us through every crisis.

Perhaps the difficult lesson to accept in all this, however, is that there might be some time on the bone pile. We may have to live with our troubles for a while. Israel waited for decades before the promise in Ezekiel's vision was fulfilled. But they could wait in confidence, their despair softened because of the sign in the vision, the sign of God's love and power, the sign of things to come.

We have such a sign; we share such a hope in the Sacrament of Holy Communion we celebrate this morning. It does not take away our trouble, just as Ezekiel's vision did not immediately restore Israel's fortunes. What this sacrament does, however, is put us in contact with one who loves us, as his body is broken for us and blood shed for us, and one who is the power of the Son of God. It may not remove the troubles that throw us on the bone heap, but it sustains us until that time when God will do so.

There does come a time for deliverance from the trials and troubles of life, and we earnestly pray for that time. But there is also a time for patiently waiting and confidently enduring the trials and troubles of life sustained only by a promise for the future. In Holy Communion we are so sustained and given a hope in which we live. Amen.

May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.