Reflections from Vacation Bible Schoole Massanetta Middle School Conference and the Montreat Youth Conference
August 21, 2016God’s Welcoming Covenant in the Sky
September 11, 201628
Aug.
2016
Can These Bones Live?
“Can These Bones Live?”
One night a week ago I was at a place of real sleeplessness. I had had a particularly hard work-out that day. My bones were sore and kept me up. More than that, in the middle of the night I was up thinking. My mind was racing with an issue grappling with at work, trying to figure out next steps. I was up making some notes at 3am. I wrote my notes and was just getting back to sleep, when I heard a scream from another room from one of our daughters. She couldn’t find her Lovey and that sent her reeling. I woke up, my mind was racing. My bones were sore. I was tired. My spirit was dry. I needed a new replenishment. That morning I read over the passage from Ezekiel 37 which Jeanne read this morning. It gave me a new strength for the day.
In it, God came to Ezekiel and gave him a vision of the valley of the dry bones. God told him that there was hope for the Israel. As we begin our sermon series on Good News from the Old Testament, and perhaps we need a change of some kind, we too can claim the promise of God for a new spirit and hope. Let us pray.
In the 37th chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel helps Israel remember its identity in exile.
In the year six hundred before the birth of Christ, the Babylonians captured Jerusalem, the city of David, destroyed the Jewish temple of Solomon and took around 10,000 Israelites back to Babylon.
Things just weren’t the same in Babylon. They missed their city. They missed worshipping in the Temple. They missed the gates and the valleys around Jerusalem.
Ezekiel had lost his spirit. He was on the edge of hopelessness. Yet God delivered for Ezekiel a vision of hope.
Ironically, Ezekiel had spent his ministry prophesying about Israel’s lack of faith. After the destruction of Jerusalem, Ezekiel became a prophet of restoration and hope, for in a vision God took Ezekiel to a valley full of dry bones. And God asked him, “Mortal, can these bones live?
God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones and say to them, “O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord…I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live…. I will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live.”
God walks Ezekiel through the steps in which bones gain joints, sinews and cartilage. Then they gain skin and then they gain the breath of God and the bones come alive, foreshadowing the restoration of the Israelites to come as they would return to Jerusalem.
I was counseling an engaged couple recently who had a disagreement about whether to go visit elephants. The bride to be loves elephants and wants to visit them frequently. The groom does not like elephants plus doesn’t want to travel much anyway. So I learned a few things about elephants.
One of the interesting things to me about elephants is how they manage to support 10,000 pounds of weight on their bones. The bones and joints of elephants line up in architecturally sound columns to support their enormous weight. Elephants also have elastic pads on their feet which expand when weight is put on them and contract when they relax.
Elephants can drink 50 gallons of water per day in order to support those bones. Without the water, the bones and pads dry out. Elephants aren’t born knowing how to draw in all that water however. They are too tall and they struggle bending down to drink from ponds, so a young elephant must learn to draw water up its trunk like a straw and pour it into its mouth. A young calf has to watch its parents to learn how to draw in what it needs for life. Once they learn though, they never forget. Of all animals, they say that elephants have the best memories. In our passage God was reminding Ezekiel of where he might find life for his dry bones.
The Hebrew in Ezekiel 37 contrasts dryness with life. In the desserts of the arid Middle East before modern irrigation, drought was often as good as death. But then in what is called Second- Isaiah, written around the same time in history as Ezekiel, we read that people worshipped a God who poured water on the thirsty land, poured streams on dry ground and poured spirit on Israel’s future. The people associated water and spirit with life and hope.
In that context, the metaphor of dry bones made sense to exiled people who were losing hope for the spiritual life they had back in Israel. Ezekiel was trying to help them remember and reclaim that spirit.
Near the beginning of the Indian Jones movie, The Last Crusade, Harrison Ford’s title character is brought in by an artifact-chasing mogul to read a sandstone tablet that contains part of John chapter 4 where Jesus proclaims, “Whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Later in John chapter 7 Jesus says, “He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.'”
Through Christ we have eternal life. Yet that life can begin now. Wherever we have grown cold or given up or been filled with hopelessness, the waters of God can flow to us, fill us with spirit and call us to come alive. This is one reason why we need God. For we have dry bones too.
“Can these bones live?” A pastor friend of mine said that when he graduated from Princeton seminary in the 70’s his graduation speaker told the graduates, “Congratulations, you are ministering to a dying church.” We are told the numbers of denominational decline over the decades and they are daunting. Can these bones live?
I had dinner last weekend with a friend from another church marveling at Bradley Hills’ growth, in comparison to their own losses. Can these bones live?
I received an email this week from a pastor at another church, asking if BHPC would be interested in helping mentor their church as they enter their next life stage. Can these bones live?
I sat with members of the church this week at a place of real despair wondering what comes next. Can these bones live?
We may be at the place in life’s journey where every step we take our bones hurt. Can these bones live?
At this point in the hot August summer there may be weariness of caring for kids who we excited to return to school or tired of the routines of this season or of someone else’s expectations. And also real anxiety, I know there is in our home, about starting new school. We wonder, can these bones live?
Can these bones live? You might be in a dry period in some part of your life. You might have lost momentum in your career or hope in a relationship. Or might be at a place where you feel we are just going through the motions of Christianity. Do we dare ask God, “Can these bones live?”
Yet the God who brought life to the bones in Ezekiel’s vision is the Lord who gives us hope for being spiritually alive today.
Wherever our faith has become dull and dead, God calls us to life. We are to be filled with the spirit and waters in our dry lands.
God wills us refreshment. But we have a responsibility and opportunity to be that for each other. In fact, much like Ezekiel was transformed from being a prophet of criticism to being a prophet of hope, we might find our spirit most strengthened when we tell a word of hope to someone else.
I needed it more than anyone this week with some difficult challenges. At the end of another challenging meeting at church a member lifted up a prayer. And it refilled my spirit and lifted my dry bones up.
After my meeting, I went home that night and inspired by that prayer and the Olympics this month, watched the second half of the movie Chariots of Fire. Eric Liddell’s chance to run in the 1924 Olympics came when he wouldn’t run the 100 meters on the Sabbath. But he was able to run and win the 400 meters on Thursday. The movie builds to the contrast of the heavy, dead place that Liddle was when he felt boxed in and having to choose between running on Sunday and staying true to God. And the freedom of Liddell preaching, from the prophet Isaiah, Second-Isaiah of all things, and then running. With his head up. Feeling free in the spirit. Feeling God’s pleasure.
My mind had been racing and I felt the strength that night of the freedom of having God’s spirit as I experienced the prayer of a fellow member of this church. After watching Chariots of Fire I reread Ezekiel, and I realized that is what is meant by prophesying to the dry bones. That means speaking the word of God and the hope of God to someone in a dry place. We all can do that. That is what we do when we pray with and for each other. So late that night, I prayed a prayer of gratitude for the member who had prayed hope for me and I slept soundly.
God wants us to be alive in the spirit, not dead as dry bones.
John the Baptist said of Jesus “In him was life and his life was the light of all people. Christ came to be “the way the truth and the life.”
John tells us “God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Eternal life which begins now in what Jesus calls the abundant life.
God’s purpose for us is abundant life.
We were meant to be full of God’s spirit. Our life in faith, in the church, at Bradley Hills, as we come back to fall, is to be alive. To be filled with Christ means to be alive.
If we are feeling dull or downbeat, sleepy or sleepless, hollow or hurting, like the house of Israel we are to remember God’s vision for us is to be alive in our God. And from that to have hope.
Last weekend, I flew to Wyoming last weekend to officiate the wedding of the couple who disagreed about the elephants. Wild fires were all around. It hadn’t rained for weeks. It was dry. Very, very dry. I flew in Sunday night. The wedding was Monday. Monday morning, I hiked with the groom. An alpinist. It was high altitude and hot and my body and bones felt dry. I was tired by the wedding ceremony.
We started the wedding and it started to rain. Usually at outdoor weddings rain is not welcome. But when it hasn’t rained for a long time and all is dry it was welcome and good luck for the couple. Water from above and around for dry bones.
As we looked out over the valley of Jackson and the rain streaked down, our bones came alive. And we celebrated in hope for the future of the couple. This couple was not very religious, but I realized that hope can meet us wherever we are. And like Ezekiel, I felt most alive in my preaching hope to this couple.
Can these bones live? As fall comes, perhaps you’ll remember who you are in faith. Who you are at play. Who you are in prayer. Who you are in planning for your future. Who you are in prophesying to someone who needs you. Who you are in planting a seed for someone for the future.
Let us remember that God comes to us and through us to give life. Let us remember that God is the one who re-members us, pulls us together as a family of faith and gives us hope for our future.
For as Easter people for whom Christ was dead and now is alive, there is a Pentecost spirit and living water flowing through us, waiting to be rediscovered. For we just know that in our bones. Amen.