March 5 , 2008
| Lenten Service | Ezekiel 37: 1-14 | |
THE VALLEY OF DRY BONES
Before I read the Scripture this evening, I want to give you two tools to help attune your ears to you God’s Word in it. First, a little Hebrew lesson. The one thing from Hebrew that absolutely everyone who has had even a little Hebrew remembers is this word: ruach. Say that with me please—ruach. The word means three things at once. It means breath. It means wind. And most importantly, it means spirit—as in the living spirit of God. And in this passage from Ezekiel 37, every time you hear the words wind, or spirit, or breath—there is just one Hebrew word behind the translation—ruach.
Second, consider this brief story.
Mary was anxious as she rode the bus to school.
She was worried about the math lesson.
She wondered if the students would respond to her teaching.
It was unusual for the bus driver to teach math.
In this story, each line offers a new revelation, which makes you reinterpret what you have already heard. This process builds until the final line offers a revelation that makes sense of the whole story. The passage I am about to read from Ezekiel is similar. As I read, track of how new revelations are offered in the story that both force you to reinterpret what you have already heard, and finally how the ending offers a revelation that makes sense of the entire story.
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The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’ Then he said to me, ‘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.’
So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’ I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
Then he said to me, ‘Mortal, 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.” Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.’
Grace to you and peace, from God the Father…
As I mentioned before I read the Scripture, the place to begin with this story is with its ending, in which we learn that the whole house of Israel says, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” These words employ a linguistic idiom and a form of speech that are both foreign to us. The linguistic idiom is “our bones.” In Hebrew, this phrase was a way for people to refer poetically to their most essential selves and desires. When Genesis 2, when Adam first meets Eve he cries out, “This one at last is bone of my bones!”—meaning that in each other, Adam and Eve found the perfect match for themselves, the fulfillment of their desires. The form of speech that is foreign to us is the lament. It is not common in our culture, but the ancient Israelites would cry out in pain and complaint to God, as did Jesus on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In the psalms, this idiom and this form of speech meet several times. In Ps 31:10), the sufferer cries, "My strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away.” Likewise another sufferer complained, "My bones are shaking with terror" (Ps6:2). And still another called out, "My bones burn like a furnace" (Ps102:3). These complaints are not so much the literal cries of arthritic sufferers whose bones caused them pain as they are the symbolic complaints of those who entire lives were falling apart.
But what does it mean the “the whole house of Israel” said, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely”? They were expressing their pain, their loss of faith and hope, and their belief that as a people they were through. And they had good reason for this. Ezekiel lived during a time in Israel’s history known as the Babylonian exile. A little less than 600 years before Jesus, the Babylonians forced Jerusalem to submit and hauled off most of the people with any political power whatsoever and forced them to live in exile in Babylon. Among those carted off to Babylon in the year 596 was the young Ezekiel. Ten years later, after Jerusalem rebelled again, the Babylonians razed its wall, killed the last king, destroyed the temple, and sent off a second wave of folks into exile. The people were transplanted into a hostile and foreign land, where they could not sing the Lord’s songs or worship their God as they had been accustomed. Five years when by. Ten years when by. Then fifteen, twenty. The people despaired. They gave up on hope. They have up on home. They gave up on God. Today, if this happened to us, we might say, “Our goose is cooked.” Or, “stick a fork in us, we’re done.” Or, “Turn out the lights, the party is over.” Back then, the house of Israel said, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.”
And God heard them. God heard. Just as God had heard their cries when they were slaves in Egypt. Just as God had heard their cries when they had been oppressed in turn by the Cushites, the Moabites, the Philistines, the Canaanites, and the Midianites, God heard their complaint. And God sent Ezekiel with a promise.
And here is the beauty of the message that Ezekiel brought. He crafted his promise in the form of a parable tailored to suit the metaphor of the people’s despair. To those who had said, “Our bones are dried up,” Ezekiel said, “The spirit of the Lord set me down in the middle of a valley full of bones… and they were very dry.”
“Can these bones live?” God asked. Any sane person would have said, “Of course not. Dry bones can’t come to life.” But Ezekiel, who was only marginally sane, responded, “You tell me, boss.” And God said, “Preach to these bones. I will send my spirit into them and they will live.” In Ezekiel’s prophetic parable, skin, and tissue, and tendons come on the bones, but they aren’t yet alive. They still lack the one thing needed for life. They lack breath. So Ezekiel preaches to the wind, which gusts from the corners of the earth and blows into the bones until they breathe–until they live.
As you heard a few minutes ago in the Hebrew lesson, the wind or breath in the parable symbolizes God’s Spirit. The people are the dry bones that need breath to live—the wind is God’s Spirit, which Ezekiel promises will give them life. And just in case the people were too dense to get the message, Ezekiel connected all the dots and then paints an oil painting so they wouldn’t miss God’s point:
O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel…I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken.
Ezekiel’s message to God’s people in his day was one of restoration. The good news that even though they were separated from where they had worshiped God, they were not beyond God’s reach. The promise that even though they had been forced to put down roots in the foreign land of Babylon, God was still up to the job of transplanting them again back in their own land. The soothing message that even though they had given up faith, hope, and love in the Lord, the Lord had nevertheless heard the sound of their complaints and was moving to bring them home.
And God did so. God brought them back. And the biblical story did not dead end in Babylon’s desert, but went on. Until a child was born to a virgin who was engaged to a carpenter. Until a miracle-working teacher bore the sins of many on the cross. Until some women reported the surprising news that this miracle worker had risen. Until an oppressor named Paul became Christ’s greatest apostle. Until a German monk challenged the corrupt church of his day. Until this story became our story, and Ezekiel’s Lord became our Lord.
When God shows up, there is a predictable unpredictability, a foreign familiarity to God’s work. God’s work is unpredictable and foreign because before it happens, few or nobody knew what God was about to do. Did Sarah know God would give her a child in old age? Or Joseph, who had been betrayed by his brothers, know that he would be the one to deliver his family? Did the Israelites know that the renegade murderer Moses would lead them out of slavery? Or the exiles in Babylon know the Lord would see them safely home? Did anyone expect an empty tomb? Or Paul to become the champion of Christ?
But for all this unpredictability, after the fact, once God has acted, God’s work often seems predictable, as if it was the only way the story could have gone. Of course Sarah would be a mother, and Moses a savior, and Paul an apostle. Like a good mystery novel, you can’t figure out who done it, but once the culprit is revealed, you realize that it could not have been anyone else.