Hope Amidst Dry Bones

Ezekiel 37:1-14

In the year 586 b.c., Jerusalem was in trouble, big trouble.  The Babylonians had laid siege to Judea and Jerusalem and t he tiny realm was crumbling, both physically and metaphorically.  Babylon, the big power of the time, had come to town and they were taking over.  As part of their conquering strategy, they took in exile all the elite of the city:  the thinkers, and doers, the cream of the crop, including religious leaders.  There were waves of exile and in the very first wave was a priest and a prophet by the name of Ezekiel.

We know little about Ezekiel beyond that he was a priest and a prophet at the time of the exile to Babylon.  But he was a prophet of his time, called to speak a new word to a weary and shocked nation.

In their capturing of Judea, Babylon had leveled Jerusalem and in particular destroyed the Temple.  To the Jews of that era, the Temple was where God lived; it was God’s abode and without it God was essentially homeless.  And how does one worship a homeless God?  How does one properly venerate the One who is no longer there? 

Yes, Judea was in a state; a state of confusion and depression and downright chaos.  It’s capital was leveled, its leaders were carried off and its God no longer had a home.  It was as close to being a dead country as you can be.  They knew it and God knew it.

Ezekiel, off in Babylon, knew it too.  Those in exile were no doubt in as much shock as those left behind.  Judaism was at a crux point; if something weren’t done, it would likely die out completely…forgotten totally except in some dusty old history books.

So God brought forth Ezekiel, the priest, as a prophet and gave him words to speak to a wondering people.  And what an image God gave Ezekiel, the image you heard this morning of resurrection and life anew.

Ezekiel saw a valley of bones; human bones that had been long dead.  These bones had lost all their connective tissue and muscle and skin and had in fact been bleached white by the sun.  They were bones that hadn’t flexed or jumped or walked or done anything a body would do for a very long time.

And Ezekiel was called to prophesy to them; he was called to speak God’s words of truth and love to these dry, dusty bones.  And as he did, a miraculous thing happened: the bones began to move.  They began to connect up once again with each other.  And they developed sinews and tendons.  And muscles formed on them and skin formed over them. 

But there was something missing:  their spirit was missing.  So God had Ezekiel prophesy to the breath of God and call it forth.  In Hebrew the same word, ruach, means wind or breath or spirit.  So the wind blew and God’s breath flowed and into these once dry bones came the spirit that they had been lacking.  They lived again, as alive as you and me sitting here today.

If ever there were a people who needed to hear that dry bones could live it would be those in Judea during this time.  They needed to hear the word of God in a new way.  They needed to know that their God still lived and hadn’t been destroyed along with their Temple and city.  God knew it and said as much to Ezekiel:  “Mortal,” God says, “these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.'”  God knew the state that God’s people were in.  Their hope was gone and the land that had been theirs since the time of Joshua, hundreds of years prior,  and promised to ancestors even further back, was overrun. 

The thing to remember, too, is that for a priest, such as Ezekiel, being in a place of dead bodies is impure.  Priests avoided contact with the dead.  We can’t begin to imagine how much this prophesy offended and affronted both Ezekiel and his hearers.  And yet, this is where God was found speaking to Ezekiel.  This is where the word was coming through.  So this is a time of contrasts:  the pure and the impure; the holy and the profane; God absent and God present.

So out of those contrasts comes the hope that is to give life again to a battered and shattered nation.  From the midst of chaos and confusion comes the hope of resurrection, not on a personal level, but on a national level. 

This is a new way of thinking.  This is completely foreign to the Hebrew people.  Because God resided in the Temple, they always assumed that the Temple was safe; protected from harm.   But God, Ezekiel’s prophesy is saying, lives outside the bounds of the Temple, outside the borders of Jerusalem; even beyond the boundary of Judea.  God lives on whether the Temple exists or not.  God lives through chaos and destruction.  God lives on through hopelessness and despair. 

Where is our hopelessness and despair today?  Do you think God lives through it or do you feel an absence of God in the midst of it?  Do you believe in resurrection; that dry, dusty, old bones can live again?  Or does your imagination prevent you from adding sinews and muscles and skin to the bones that inhabit our world?

There is, without a doubt, much reason for hopelessness and despair these days:  from a personal level as we continue to consider the future of a congregation that has meant so much to each of us here today to a global level as we see hatred grow and ongoing war become the norm.  Those, and everything in between, are our dry bones today.  That is our valley of death that we must wander through.

Hopeless and despairing?  Perhaps, but do you believe that God still lives and still practices resurrection?  If you don’t, then Ezekiel’s prophesy was just a rambling vision of a desperate priest two and a half millennia ago.  And I don’t know what you’re going to do in a couple of weeks when we celebrate Easter.

But if you do believe that it is God’s breath which breathes new life into situations of despondency and desolation, then you have reason to hope.  Your work is cut out for you though.  For you are called to be the breath of God, breathing life where there is no life; hope where there is no hope.