Sermon on Ezekiel 37:1-14
There are vast areas of knowledge that I don’t have the first clue about. Everyone has things they know about and other things they don’t. I don’t feel I’m lacking anything by not knowing anything about cars, for instance. My grandfather, who maintained a garden the size of my house and built almost every piece of furniture he owned, who could repair a light switch or a dishwasher, didn’t have a clue when it came to cars, either.
As I shared in my first sermon, I tend to be quite skeptical, but when it comes to these areas that I know nothing about, I trust implicitly anyone I perceive as an authority. I really need an honest mechanic, because a dishonest one could tell me just about anything, and I’d believe it. “Well, the bad news is that the air in your tires is kind of low, but the good news we’re having a special, and we can fill them up for you for only a couple hundred bucks.” Maybe I’m not quite that bad, but I’m pretty close.
One thing that I have recently been amazed to learn how little I know about it is medicine. I’ve always thought of myself as pretty well informed about science and medicine for a layperson, but I don’t really know anything about how the body works. All of the things that have happened to my body since last October were a mystery to me, each explanation from a doctor bringing more questions and, in some cases, horror at the horrible things one’s body is capable of doing, seemingly just out of spite.
So, you would think, since I admittedly know nothing about medicine, I would trust the expert and follow his instructions. Well, when the doctor tells me not to lift anything over five or ten pounds, and Misty needs help bringing in the groceries, I listen to the doctor. But when he told me to increase my fiber and start exercising, I pretend I didn’t hear him.
There’s something about us that makes us crave authority, only to ignore it. Sometimes we debate what makes the biblical characters extraordinary. What is it about Samuel that made him exceptional? Why was God able to do great things though Moses? How was Ezekiel able to raise human bodies from dry bones? Maybe there was nothing strange abut them, nothing unusual, except that, at some point, the did what God told them to.
Samuel finally said, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Moses argued with God at first, telling him every excuse he could think of, from “I’m too short” to “I can’t speak in public,” but he eventually simply did as God asked.
I can’t imagine how ridiculous Ezekiel must have felt in today’s reading. God asks him question after question, to which Ezekiel can only reply, “Well, you know more about that than I do. You are the expert, after all.” Here he was, set down in the middle of a field full of dry bones, and he was being asked to speak to them. To speak to the bones. To say words to things without ears, without sinew, without flesh. But he believed in God, and as such was willing to do the ridiculous, even the insane. God told him what to do, and he did it. He trusted in God’s authority.
God promises new life can come from anything. Ezekiel found bones. Not just bones like you might see in a horror movie or in a tv crime scene. These were not assembled bones, bones that kept the shape of a human. These were old bones, dried out and brittle, bleached by the sun, scratched and worn from the wind. There was no life anywhere near these bones. But God said to speak to them, and suddenly they were a living, breathing multitude, confused, but alive.
How did this miracle happen? Because Ezekiel did what God commanded. It sounds so simple, to do what God asks, but time and again we fail to do it. God commands us to forgive each other, and we fail. God commands us to take care of the poor, and we think instead of ourselves. God commands us to love, and we blame and fault and reject. We know what God expects of us, but we think to ourselves, “That’s simply not how things work in the real world. I can’t honestly be expected to forgive that. I can’t honestly be expected to love him.” I can certainly imagine most Christians saying that God doesn’t really mean for me to speak to these bones. It must be a metaphor for something else.
Maybe what Samuel, Moses, and Ezekiel did is a little more exceptional than it seems. In doing what God asked, in allowing God to have control of their lives, they did something we still celebrate today because so few people have ever done it. That’s the key–allowing God control of our lives. When God said to do something, Ezekiel did it.
Perhaps now we have the excuse that God does not speak directly to us, using words, addressing us by name. Although God called me into ministry, I never heard the words,
“Josh, I want you to be a pastor.” But in the life of Jesus Christ we have the final word of God, the word made flesh, and eternal statement to all about what God wants us to do.
Ezekiel wrote from within the Babylonian exile. The people Israel had lost their life in their land, and had been taken from their holy land. Their temple and their homes were destroyed. They had been removed from their homes and dragged into a foreign land. Their hope to return to being God’s people was a dry as the bones that Ezekiel encountered. But because of prophets like Ezekiel, people who did the seemingly simple task of doing what God asked, their hope lived. The desert of their despair brought forth life, the sands becoming fertile soils, flowers and tress sprouting from the formerly dead earth.
When people are faithful to God, life springs up abundantly. This does not mean that faithful people get good things and unfaithful people get bad. I cannot think of a less biblical concept than that. It does mean, however, that when people are faithful to God, God brings forth life. When a community lives, it suffers tragedies, natural disasters, crimes, it mourns the death of children and adults, it is consumed by famine and disease, it cries. All these things happen to a living community, along with the celebrations, the laughter, the joy.
A dead community is dead. The Israelites risked losing their identity. They were dangerously close to becoming Babylonians themselves. There were losing their identity as God’s people. Dead communities fade away. They lose themselves to the dominant culture, surrendering their commandments of love and compassion in a culture of greed and consumption.
If God promises life, though, how can a community die? God’s promises are infallible. If they are not coming to fruition, we have to look to the other side of the equation. If there is no life in the promised land, we have to examine the faithfulness of those who were offered the promise.
We can look around us and see lots of what seem to us to be signs of death. Children are leaving, businesses are closing, friends and family moving away to find work. But none of these things are strong enough to kill God’s promise. Despair is tempting. When it feels like we are surrounded by death, whether it’s loss and pain or a culture consumed with death-giving greed, it becomes so easy to fall into despair. But commands us to prophesy to the dry bones and command them to live.
The life that God promises will not be the vibrant history we remember. We will never go back to the old days, however glorious they were. If we try to connect our identity with the old days, then we commit idolatry. If we cannot picture life any differently than that, we deny the ability of God to grant life. The new life God offers us will be different.
Although it doesn’t say this in the story, I imagine the bones did not come back to life as the people they once were, or even possible in the bodies they once had. These new people were a new people, strangers offering new experiences and new outlooks. They became a new source of friendship and change, not remnants of a comfortable past.
Death is changeless. The only guarantee of life is change. God offers us a new life, a life that will be different from our old one. The choice is ours: do we stay wedded to an unattainable but comfortable past, or do we risk the challenging and frightening work of prophesying to bones and bringing new life to God’s people? For the grace to make a holy choice, thanks be to God. Amen.