Choose Your Own Adventure: All Dried Up (MPLS)

Ezekiel 37:1-14

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.”

Dear beloved of God, grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus who is the Christ. Amen.

I don’t know how many times in a single day I tap it. Dismiss. Dismiss. Dismiss.

10? Maybe 20?

It’s gotten to be something I don’t really even really pay much attention to, kind of autopilot. Bzzzz. Dismiss.

I know I can turn it off. But I always think that one of these times I’m going to actually do it. Because I know it’s good for me. It’s the breathe app on my watch.

The app is supposed to encourage you to relax and focus on your breath. It’s supposed to encourage you to mute some of the noise that is constantly swirling around you. For a minute it silences some of the notifications that are constantly buzzing and you center yourself and just breathe. In the year that I’ve owned the watch, I think I’ve taken time to use the breathe app maybe twice.

I didn’t hate the experience. It was actually kind of nice. The trouble is my watch always invites me to breathe at the most inopportune time. Like when my hands are full and carrying groceries in. Or when I’m stressed and chasing the kids around. Or when I’m anxious and nervous about the sermon I’m about to preach or a big meeting I’m about to lead. Maybe it’s irony or maybe it’s the technology, but it seems like I’m being reminded to slow down and breathe at the very moments that I need to breathe but don’t feel like I have time to breathe. You know what I mean?

All right, deep breath. You ready for some dry bones?

I’ve long been a fan of this story. It’s weird and wonderful. The imagery is rich and confusing. The prophet might be terrified or a little sarcastic. It’s so good.

Quick recap. This vision that Ezekiel has, occurs when God’s people are in exile, in Babylon. They’ve been taken away from their home and are being forced to live as captives in the land of their conquerors and oppressors. It’s a hard time. A challenging time. A time of despair.

The people feel abandoned by God. Right? I mean everything that God had promised to them — land, nation, descendants, a special place among the other nations — all seems for not now. What does the future hold for them, is there even a future?

So God whisks the prophet off to this unspecified valley, it’s only identifying characteristic is that it’s filled with bones. Old bones. Dry bones. Bones that have baked in the sun, that have had all the flesh and muscle and everything picked off. They’re really dead.

And God says to Ezekiel, can these bones live?

And Ezekiel says, “Lord God, only you know.” I can’t believe that was his first response. I mean I get that he’s on some holy vision quest but to look out at an entire valley of bones, dry bones, you don’t need a magic eight ball to know that it’s not very likely that these bones are coming back to life.

It would have been easy to dismiss God’s invitation to speak to some dusty old bones. He prophesies to the bones. But Ezekiel does what he’s told. He speaks God’s word to them. Then they begin to rattle and move. If things weren’t weird before, now they get really odd. The bones come together. Muscle, tissue, ligaments, tendons and skin cover the bones. They become bodies once again, but they’re still dead bodies. Biblical zombies? Maybe, maybe not. But God’s not done yet.

God has Ezekiel prophesy again, this time speaking the breath, the winds, the Spirit. All three words are possible meanings in the Hebrew word, Ruach. So Ezekiel speaks to the Ruach, to the breath and the wind and the Spirit and tells it to come into these bodies, so that they might live.

And the bodies stood up, and were alive.

Neat huh?

I mean, it’s a little trippy, but super cool right? But what does it mean? Why keep reading this story 2,500 years later?

That is the challenge here isn’t it. This vision is for God’s people in exile. It was a word of hope and promise for a people that had experienced and continued to experience the unimaginable. It was a hope and a promise that these people were not alone, that God hadn’t forgotten them, that they still had a future.

We’re not in exile. And yet this last year has been a once-in-a-generation experience. And yet we’ve lost hundreds of thousands of people to this pandemic and it’s not yet over. There have been moments and will continue to be moments and seasons where we will no doubt feel isolated and alone, dried up and cut off and abandoned.

But you’re not. We’re not. It’s within us. Wind. Breath. Spirit. God has placed it within you. It fills your lungs and animates your being. You hold within you the life force that brought creation into existence. You have within you power and presence of God that descended upon Jesus and declared him God’s beloved. You hold within you the very breath of life that carried Jesus from death to new life. You have inside you the Spirit of God that calls and gathers and makes holy that church on earth across time and space. You have been given the life of God, you will live now and forevermore.

It’s a promise you can’t dismiss or can’t ignore. It shows up exactly when you need it and in the most inopportune of times reminding you that you are beloved and that so is your neighbor. It’s a promise that shows up in the hardest moments and the most beautiful ones.

It’s with you minute by minute. Whether your watch reminds you of it or not. You are God’s people. You have God’s life within you. In there, can you feel it, can you hear it, will you speak it, will we live it?