NEW LIFE FOR DRY BONES!

(Preached on Sunday, May 31, 2009)

“I’ll breathe my life into you and you’ll live.”

-Ezekiel 37:14

 

Dry bones.  A valley of dry bones.  We aren’t told what valley, but I imagine it might very well have been the valley of Jezreel, in northern Israel, between Mt. Carmel and Mt. Tabor, overlooked by Megiddo in the west and Nazareth in the east.  A lush landscape fought over for millennia.  Jezreel, the sight of many of Israel’s largest battles.  It was a place of life and a place of death for the Israelites.  The Israelites were best as guerilla fighters, sticking to the hills, engaging in hit and run attacks.  Those were the tactics which worked well for them.  Whenever they were drawn out onto a plain for a large, confrontational battle, they usually lost.  A valley of dry bones speaks of a massive defeat, total destruction, for the Israelites.

 

This vision came to Ezekiel sometime after 597 BCE.  That was the year the Babylonians, the superpower of the day, conquered the nation of Israel, destroyed the city of Jerusalem, laid waste to the land, carried off the leading citizens into captivity, and left only the poorest of the poor in the land.  Thus the people of Israel, all those in captivity, felt like disconnected, dry bones.  They no longer had homes to which they could return; no longer had a nation or a city waiting for them.  The jobs they once held, the lives they once lived, had been ripped away from them. They no longer had a temple where they could worship.  It seemed God no longer cared about them.  They felt totally cut off — from their past, their future, their lives, their God.  They felt disconnected and dried up.  Wasting away and going nowhere.

 

Into that hopeless existence comes this vision of a valley of dry bones and the jarring question: “Can these bones live?”  Is there a breeze of hope that might again stir the dust of the past and waft new hope into an unknown future?  Can the Spirit of God again breathe into an inanimate object and bring it to life?  Can a situation which seems hopeless be transformed into a situation filled with life and possibility? 

 

That same situation faced the followers of Jesus on that first Pentecost.  Surely they must have felt like dried bones?  They had left everything behind — family, friends, jobs, homes, their old lives — for the sake of a dream, a vision of a new world, by following Jesus.  But that vision and hope was shattered by his death and burial.  Sure, something amazing happened with the resurrection.  But then they had to go through a new separation as Jesus left them to return to God’s side.  By the day of Pentecost their world had been totally turned topsy-turvy so that they were not quite certain what was up and what was down.

 

In such a state they were ready for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  They were now ready for God to work in them in amazing ways.  By that point they were ready to relinquish all illusions of control, get out of the way and allow the power of God free rein with their lives.

 

This is the most difficult message for us to grasp and internalize.  Too often we present the Christian life as something that we do, something that we think or feel.  We talk about our search for God, our commitment to Christ, our attempts to get close to God.  Yet, in the Bible, the story runs the other way.  Over and over again the story is about God searching for us.  From the very beginning, in the Garden of Eden, after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they hid when they heard God walking in the Garden and God called out to them, “Where are you?”  On down through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses — over and over again it is not a record of people looking for God but of God bursting into their lives and turning them upside down.  Finally, in Jesus, God breaks into our world in a most amazing way, becoming one of us, attempting to get close to us, demonstrating complete and total commitment to the human cause.  As the scripture states: “We love because God first loved us.” 

 

Ezekiel did not create this story of the valley of dry bones.  It was a vision given to him.  When God asks if these bones can live Ezekiel responds: “God, you are the one who knows.”  In other words, “I don’t have a clue.  But you have brought me here and you, God of the universe, Creator of all life, you must know the answer, so you tell me.”  Which God proceeds to do, showing Ezekiel that God will speak the bones back to wholeness and breathe God’s spirit of life back into them, restoring them to the state of living, breathing bodies.  God then informs Ezekiel this is not just some parlor trick.  No, this is all about the people of Israel, who are feeling hopeless, purposeless, despairing, at loose ends, all dried up.  God’s message for them is this: “I’ll breathe my life into you and you’ll live.”

 

That is always God’s message to God’s people.  When we are at the end of our ropes; when we feel totally lost and despairing; when we feel there is no hope for the future; when we have tried everything we can and nothing seems to work — God says, “I will breathe my life into you and you’ll live.”  The people of Israel survived their period of exile.  They returned to their land, to their holy city, Jerusalem, and they rebuilt their city, their temple, their nation, their lives.  The followers of Jesus survived his crucifixion, death, burial.  They survived his leaving them.  God’s Spirit poured out upon them, the breath of God breathed life into them at Pentecost, and they lived. 

 

We are certainly in a “valley of dry bones” time in our lives today!  The economic collapse of the past 18 months, the dramatic changes in our nation and the world, the continued growth of violence in our cities, our schools, and in the world, all leave us feeling disjointed, dry and barren, open to despair.  The promise of Pentecost, though, is that at just such a time as this, God is ready to work in amazing, abundant, powerful ways.  At such a time as this, we are most often ready for God to breathe God’s life into us so that we might live!

 

The witness of the scriptures, of the prophet Ezekiel and the valley of dry bones, of the first followers of Jesus on the Day of Pentecost, is that God is most able to work within us when we are at our weakest.  Then we are able to get out of the way and allow God’s life to take over, renew us, revive us, and empower us for life abundant.  That is what the followers of Jesus experienced on Pentecost.  And they got there with a whole lot of prayer!

 

The power of prayer, faithfully practiced, is what brings us to a point of complete openness to the presence and life-giving power of God.  When we get there, then we will always be amazed at what God unleashes and what God is able to do.  Peter and the first disciples found themselves filled with life and energy and the ability to provide a powerful witness to all the people gathered in Jerusalem from all over the world.  Ezekiel saw dry bones brought back to life and the promise of a nation restored.  What amazing things does God have in store for us here, at Christ Congregational Church?  The possibilities are endless.  Whatever they are, I know they will be extravagant and more amazing and abundant than anything we can imagine.  How do I know that?  Because that is the witness of the Bible.  Over and over and over again, God is generous with God’s power and God’s gift of life.  The creation around us is filled with an orgy of fruitfulness and abundance.  God restores an entire valley of dry bones.  God does not bring a small breeze of change into the disciples’ lives, but a mighty rushing wind that turns their world upside down.  God never acts from a place of scarcity, but from abundance.  God’s world of generosity is always growing larger and larger, including more and more, bringing every person and every nation into the reach of God’s love.