Can These Bones Live?
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series II, Cycle A
Object:
I remember, not too long ago, I was reading some history about our nation and its westward expansion. This particular book had to do with the disappearance of the buffalo on the plains. Before white settlers happened upon the scene, buffalo were so numerous that vast herds stretched literally as far as the eye could see. There were millions of buffalo. So great were there numbers that it didn't really occur to people that they could ever vanish. Well, we all know how this story went. In an astonishingly short period of time, the buffalo, for all intents and purpose, were gone. Due to a frenzied and short-sighted wholesale slaughter, the likes of which fails the imagination, these millions became but a memory. Today, small herds exist here and there, but there will never again be the huge and wondrous herds that once roamed the plains.
All the while I was reading this, I kept trying to imagine the scene. But it wasn't until I came across an ancient, grainy black and white photo that it struck me. It was a picture of countless piles of bleached bones laying out on some unnamed piece of prairie land. Where once the eye was strained by living herds, here the eye was shocked by a vista of death. Everywhere there were bones. Everywhere.
As we read Ezekiel, this type of photo comes to mind. It's one thing to witness piles of bones everywhere. It's quite another to call to mind the life that those bones once supported. In our biblical passage today, the Lord brings Ezekiel out to view the wasteland. And it is not some distant glance, but an intimate tour of the valley. "He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley; and they were very dry." It is as though the Lord needed Ezekiel to see, not just the bones, but to sense the life that was once present.
It seems to me that most everyone sitting here today can conjure up a place in their lives that feels like that valley of bones. Most of us don't need to look too far to find the wasteland in our lives, where the bones lay in piles all around, and they are very dry indeed.
Is there a friendship or intimate relationship that has been harshly ended? Does memory find a quarrel unresolved? Do the bones of a once-tender love lay bleaching in the sun? Is there a failure that restlessly sits in the memory? A failure of integrity? A lapse of judgment? A reckless indiscretion? A stupid mistake? What must the piles of bones look like in the wastelands of our lives? Each of us knows. Each of us can feel the brittle dryness that comes when life departs; when spirit withers and blows away. It is vast. It is painful and it feels overwhelming.
I mention these closely held and personal wastelands because I believe we must be in touch with these things before we move on to the big picture. I think that too often we stuff it all down and hope that life will skip on to the next chapter as we learn how to walk around our piles of bones. But no matter how we try to move on, no matter what kind of denial we try to practice, the wasteland stays with us, and with Ezekiel we are called to take an unscheduled tour.
Take a moment now -- a silent second or two -- to comprehend that place that William Butler Yeats referred to in the "Circus Animals Desertion," as the "foul rag and bone shop of the heart."
As we take stock of these spaces in our life, we need to remember that Ezekiel did not take the tour of the valley alone. We need to recall that whatever devastation has befallen us in our lives, God does not call us to awareness by ourselves. No. God walks among the piles of bones with us, and the questions came to Ezekiel and they come to us, as well.
"Can these bones live?" Can life come again into the dark and brittle places within our hearts and our lives? The answer comes back in the affirmative. Yes! These bones can live again. The skeletal remains can find life on one condition.
The condition is that we are to "prophesy." The Lord says,
Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: 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; and you shall know that I am the Lord.
-- Ezekiel 37:4-6
It seems easy enough. How does the old song go? "Now hear the word of the Lord!" The trick, though, is in the prophesying. Old Testament prophecy is not prophecy the way most of us consider it these days. Ask most of your contemporaries and you will find they think of prophecy as a prediction of the future. That's not really a piece of what we are dealing with here.
A fundamental element in prophesying has to do with truth telling. This is why so many prophets got in trouble with the king. Kings, like so many of us today, didn't want truth, they wanted their own perspectives confirmed. But truth is what is called for here. In other words, the Lord calls us to say truth to the death and hurt in our lives. We are called to survey the wastelands we have within us and without, and to address them with God's word of life. The bones can live. God can place sinew and muscle back together and call life to come forth.
But we must prophesy to the bones.
Hear the word of the Lord! Where our hearts have been brittle and dry as bones, God's Spirit can move and bring new life! Where joy has been drained away, and replaced with hardened hearts, God can cause new hope to spring forth. Where we see nothing but old bones and painful endings, God envisions a riotous explosion of life.
Sisters and brothers, this is no preacher's bromide or worn-out axiom. This is biblical truth. As we prepare together to march with Jesus into the city on Palm Sunday, we know that God's word brings life! As we leave this Lenten journey, we do not depart from a valley of bones and brittle endings, but instead we leave behind a legacy of new life in God's abundant spirit.
Prophesy to the bones!
Speak truth to the pain and emptiness. Call out in the power of God's Spirit, and watch while life knits together the brittle, broken bones of your past. Do you feel sometimes that this life is like a graveyard? Do you ever feel that hope is just a word for empty wishing? Do you ever let out that heart-wrenching sigh of soul weariness and wonder where the next step will lead?
Hear the word of the Lord!
God says I am going to open up your graves and bring you forth. Even now, we can dare to hope again. Even now, we can crack open those deep and hidden places so that vision and passion can flow again. Even now, God promises new life. Look. The bones have come together and a multitude stands before us!
We can let go of tattered, old, boneyard photos. We can release the litanies of hurt and pain. We can give over to God those ancient wounded places, and we can walk once more in the land of the living. We can lift up our eyes and open up our hearts because God has breathed the Spirit upon us. God has called us out of the desert. The voice of the holy has brought us out and promises to accompany us on the journey.
Can we be too bold? Can we shout too loud? Can we miss the blooming of new possibilities as God breathes upon us? No, we cannot.
Sisters and brothers, this is not the end of the Lenten season. It is the day we have walked together out of the valley of the bones. This is not just a break in the church calendar while we decorate for Palm Sunday. We have journeyed together in a wilderness of our own making, only to stumble upon the beauty of God's life-giving Spirit. There is literally nothing that cannot be touched by it.
So hear the word of the Lord, the word of life, the word of hope, the word of new beginnings. A prelude, if you will, for what is to come.
In Jesus' name. Amen.
All the while I was reading this, I kept trying to imagine the scene. But it wasn't until I came across an ancient, grainy black and white photo that it struck me. It was a picture of countless piles of bleached bones laying out on some unnamed piece of prairie land. Where once the eye was strained by living herds, here the eye was shocked by a vista of death. Everywhere there were bones. Everywhere.
As we read Ezekiel, this type of photo comes to mind. It's one thing to witness piles of bones everywhere. It's quite another to call to mind the life that those bones once supported. In our biblical passage today, the Lord brings Ezekiel out to view the wasteland. And it is not some distant glance, but an intimate tour of the valley. "He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley; and they were very dry." It is as though the Lord needed Ezekiel to see, not just the bones, but to sense the life that was once present.
It seems to me that most everyone sitting here today can conjure up a place in their lives that feels like that valley of bones. Most of us don't need to look too far to find the wasteland in our lives, where the bones lay in piles all around, and they are very dry indeed.
Is there a friendship or intimate relationship that has been harshly ended? Does memory find a quarrel unresolved? Do the bones of a once-tender love lay bleaching in the sun? Is there a failure that restlessly sits in the memory? A failure of integrity? A lapse of judgment? A reckless indiscretion? A stupid mistake? What must the piles of bones look like in the wastelands of our lives? Each of us knows. Each of us can feel the brittle dryness that comes when life departs; when spirit withers and blows away. It is vast. It is painful and it feels overwhelming.
I mention these closely held and personal wastelands because I believe we must be in touch with these things before we move on to the big picture. I think that too often we stuff it all down and hope that life will skip on to the next chapter as we learn how to walk around our piles of bones. But no matter how we try to move on, no matter what kind of denial we try to practice, the wasteland stays with us, and with Ezekiel we are called to take an unscheduled tour.
Take a moment now -- a silent second or two -- to comprehend that place that William Butler Yeats referred to in the "Circus Animals Desertion," as the "foul rag and bone shop of the heart."
As we take stock of these spaces in our life, we need to remember that Ezekiel did not take the tour of the valley alone. We need to recall that whatever devastation has befallen us in our lives, God does not call us to awareness by ourselves. No. God walks among the piles of bones with us, and the questions came to Ezekiel and they come to us, as well.
"Can these bones live?" Can life come again into the dark and brittle places within our hearts and our lives? The answer comes back in the affirmative. Yes! These bones can live again. The skeletal remains can find life on one condition.
The condition is that we are to "prophesy." The Lord says,
Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: 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; and you shall know that I am the Lord.
-- Ezekiel 37:4-6
It seems easy enough. How does the old song go? "Now hear the word of the Lord!" The trick, though, is in the prophesying. Old Testament prophecy is not prophecy the way most of us consider it these days. Ask most of your contemporaries and you will find they think of prophecy as a prediction of the future. That's not really a piece of what we are dealing with here.
A fundamental element in prophesying has to do with truth telling. This is why so many prophets got in trouble with the king. Kings, like so many of us today, didn't want truth, they wanted their own perspectives confirmed. But truth is what is called for here. In other words, the Lord calls us to say truth to the death and hurt in our lives. We are called to survey the wastelands we have within us and without, and to address them with God's word of life. The bones can live. God can place sinew and muscle back together and call life to come forth.
But we must prophesy to the bones.
Hear the word of the Lord! Where our hearts have been brittle and dry as bones, God's Spirit can move and bring new life! Where joy has been drained away, and replaced with hardened hearts, God can cause new hope to spring forth. Where we see nothing but old bones and painful endings, God envisions a riotous explosion of life.
Sisters and brothers, this is no preacher's bromide or worn-out axiom. This is biblical truth. As we prepare together to march with Jesus into the city on Palm Sunday, we know that God's word brings life! As we leave this Lenten journey, we do not depart from a valley of bones and brittle endings, but instead we leave behind a legacy of new life in God's abundant spirit.
Prophesy to the bones!
Speak truth to the pain and emptiness. Call out in the power of God's Spirit, and watch while life knits together the brittle, broken bones of your past. Do you feel sometimes that this life is like a graveyard? Do you ever feel that hope is just a word for empty wishing? Do you ever let out that heart-wrenching sigh of soul weariness and wonder where the next step will lead?
Hear the word of the Lord!
God says I am going to open up your graves and bring you forth. Even now, we can dare to hope again. Even now, we can crack open those deep and hidden places so that vision and passion can flow again. Even now, God promises new life. Look. The bones have come together and a multitude stands before us!
We can let go of tattered, old, boneyard photos. We can release the litanies of hurt and pain. We can give over to God those ancient wounded places, and we can walk once more in the land of the living. We can lift up our eyes and open up our hearts because God has breathed the Spirit upon us. God has called us out of the desert. The voice of the holy has brought us out and promises to accompany us on the journey.
Can we be too bold? Can we shout too loud? Can we miss the blooming of new possibilities as God breathes upon us? No, we cannot.
Sisters and brothers, this is not the end of the Lenten season. It is the day we have walked together out of the valley of the bones. This is not just a break in the church calendar while we decorate for Palm Sunday. We have journeyed together in a wilderness of our own making, only to stumble upon the beauty of God's life-giving Spirit. There is literally nothing that cannot be touched by it.
So hear the word of the Lord, the word of life, the word of hope, the word of new beginnings. A prelude, if you will, for what is to come.
In Jesus' name. Amen.
