Reading One: Ezekiel 37:1-14 (The Message)
God grabbed me. God's Spirit took me up and set me down in the middle of an open plain strewn with bones. He led me around and among them—a lot of bones! There were bones all over the plain—dry bones, bleached by the sun. He said to me, "Son of man, can these bones live?" I said, "Master God, only you know that." He said to me, "Prophesy over these bones: 'Dry bones, listen to the Message of God!'" God, the Master, told the dry bones, "Watch this: I'm bringing the breath of life to you and you'll come to life. I'll attach sinews to you, put meat on your bones, cover you with skin, and breathe life into you. You'll come alive and you'll realize that I am God!"
I prophesied just as I'd been commanded. As I prophesied, there was a sound and, oh, rustling! The bones moved and came together, bone to bone. I kept watching. Sinews formed, then muscles on the bones, then skin stretched over them. But they had no breath in them.
He said to me, "Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son of man. Tell the breath, 'God, the Master, says, Come from the four winds. Come, breath. Breathe on these slain bodies. Breathe life!'"
So I prophesied, just as he commanded me. The breath entered them and they came alive! They stood up on their feet, a huge army.
Then God said to me, "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Listen to what they're saying: 'Our bones are dried up, our hope is gone, there's nothing left of us.'
"Therefore, prophesy. Tell them, 'God, the Master, says: I'll dig up your graves and bring you out alive—O my people! Then I'll take you straight to the land of Israel. When I dig up graves and bring you out as my people, you'll realize that I am God. I'll breathe my life into you and you'll live. Then I'll lead you straight back to your land and you'll realize that I am God. I've said it and I'll do it. God's Decree.'"
Reading Two: John 11:25-26 (The Message)
25-26"You don't have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. Do you believe this?"
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Lent: The Journey through Endings to Beginnings
4-10-11
Let us pray: God, God of healing, gently touch our lives with your Spirit. Bring warmth and comfort, life and wholeness, restoration into our fractured lives and spirits. Amen
I’ll admit it—the passage from Ezekiel today is a little far-fetched—just a wee bit over the top for most of us. And it may be that compared to the rest of the book of Ezekiel, which is often violent and difficult to understand, this somewhat interesting—in a bizarre sort of way—and certainly more hopeful portion of Ezekiel is what we most remember about our old prophet friend Zeke.
Our reading says “God grabbed me!’ Old Zeke was not out on a casual Saturday afternoon walk when he happens on to this valley full of bones. No, God put him there and put him there for a reason. But God starts with a riddle of sorts: “Mortal”, probably, “mere mortal, can you see a way to make these bones live?” Now here is Zeke, standing in the midst of thousands of bleached white bones—bones that weren’t even skeletons anymore, just piles of bones, and God is, are you ready—posing a riddle. Ezekiel, tired from all that has come before in his life, says, “Ok, God, I give—only You know the answer to that!” But if we are to know why Zeke is so tired, so exasperated or so hopeless, we need to know a little of what the poor man has been through in the years preceding the drama playing out before us.
Condensing several decades of history to a few sentences—it goes like this: Ezekiel was forced into exile in 597 BCE after having been a prominent—rising star, if you will—future priest to a priest who had no temple at all in exile. His wife also died earlier in the story, and God called Ezekiel not to mourn her, but rather to use the lack of mourning as an example to the rest of the community to stop mourning the loss of the Temple, which by the way had been destroyed by the Babylonians as they destroyed Jerusalem, killed most of the inhabitants and drove the rest into exile in Babylonia. This is the backdrop upon which the vision, so full of hope and resurrection, occurs.
Only by seeing this backdrop hung behind the platform where our desert scene plays out do we grasp the wonder of the amazing swirling winds tossing and turning the bones until they are fully formed human beings again, breathing the very breath of life that God has blown back into them. Only then can we truly experience the despair of Ezekiel turn to amazement and hope and joy as the resurrection of these people plays out before his, quite honestly, doubting eyes. But old Zeke does as he is told—he prophesies and prophesies until God is finished raising this valley of dry bones into an army of revived and restored souls.
The miracle in this story, or vision, if you will, does not simply revolve around the swirling and spinning bones. The true miracle is that it all plays out after the community has been completely devastated by loss. But the familiarity of the story can lead us to ignore all but that which fascinates us in the swirling and spinning which sets our senses reeling with utter amazement. In fact, we can become so fascinated with the rebirth of the bones that we forget the pain and trauma which got the bones into that dry valley in the first place. So here we are, two weeks before Easter, with a story that reminds us that we must not so single-mindedly focus on the coming resurrection that we ignore that which must come before.
What does this mean for us in the world—walking these ways in the weeks before Easter. I believe that it means that we must first be willing to walk in the depths of the despair that so pervades our world if we are to truly understand the heights of the joy that comes with resurrection. It also means that like, Ezekiel, we are to be active participants in the revival; we are to prophesy in word and deed until the hopelessness in the world is replaced with hope and despair with joy.
This Sunday is celebrated as Lazarus Sunday in many churches, and, indeed our statement from Jesus, “I am the resurrection and the life” is the very statement that Jesus says just moments before he raises his friend, Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus from the dead. But the contemporary Lazarus Sunday is designated as a Sunday to remind ourselves of the hundreds of thousands of people in Africa dying of AIDS. Lazarus Sunday calls us, just as Ezekiel was called to survey the dry bones, to be aware of an entire generation of African people crying out “our hope is lost, our bones broken and fragile, we are cut off from the rest of the world.” This is one of many calls to hear our prophetic voice in the bone-filled valleys of despair—the prophetic voice that calls for a life-giving response from individuals, faith communities, indeed governments and corporations.
And there are more valleys of dry bones demanding our attention. This week our Moderator, Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson, called us to be aware of the situation for gay, lesbian and transgender people in Uganda. She says:
At a time when many nations are recognizing that LGBT rights are human rights, Uganda is moving rapidly in the opposite direction. In a country where gay sex is already illegal, Uganda's Parliament has spent two years debating new anti-gay laws which, in various versions, would mandate the death penalty for gays and lesbians, require a sentence of life in prison for engaging in a gay sex act, and even imprison persons who fail to report to authorities if they overhear a conversation in which someone acknowledges they are gay.
It gets worse... Sadly, some Uganda church leaders are fueling the anti-LGBT frenzy. For example, Rev. Martin Ssempa, pastor of an evangelical church in Uganda's capital city, regularly hold anti-gay rallies at which he describes all gay people as pedophiles and deserving of imprisonment or death. He even shows hard-core pornography at churches and Christian conferences to fuel anti-gay sentiment. Think that's bad?
But it gets worse...A number of American fundamentalist churches -- including some mega-church pastors -- are sending funds to support anti-gay in Uganda! Horrified?
It gets still worse...The current anti-gay frenzy in Uganda has created a climate of threats, intimidation and violence against LGBT people. The situation has become so volatile that many human rights groups now describe the situation there as a "Gay Genocide."
But I am happy to tell you that the story does not end there: there is hope—there is God’s prophetic voice speaking through this very denomination and other organizations working to end some blatant discrimination and hatred before the valley of dry bones becomes full to over-flowing.
Rev. Elder Nancy reminds us that on January 26 of this year, David Kato, head of Sexual Minorities Uganda, murdered in his home in Mukono, Uganda. She also wants us to know that “MCC's Global Justice Institute organized David Kato's memorial service at New York City's historic Abyssinian Baptist Church and helped organize a major rally at the site of Uganda's mission to the United Nations. And MCC has partnered with his organization and Integrity to establish St. Paul's Reconciliation & Equality Center, which offers safe space to LGBT Ugandans. This Center meets a pressing need for Ugandans who live under the daily threat of anti-gay violence. For some, it is a safe space where they can experience a time of freedom from persecution. And for others, it offers temporary housing while awaiting asylum to other countries.” And for this reason and others, she calls us to be a part of the prophetic voice of MCC in the world, through our special Easter offering and our daily walk and work in our communities.
Our final reflection on this out-of-the-ordinary passage is to remind ourselves that our old pal Zeke did not do this miracle alone. Yes, he prophesied, he followed God’s orders, but God gave the breath, formed the glue that held the once dusty bones back together and poured the life, quite literally into them. He opened the space for God’s breath to come in. When we seek the will and want of God, we walk headlong into valley after valley of dry bones. We do it each time we open these doors to another person who wonders if this is the place where they will find a community of people just like them, broken and battered, yet aching for the renewing spirit of God. We do it each time we speak up and out and call for an end to injustice for our community and for likewise marginalized communities everywhere. And we do it every time, we say “this is not the way the story ends—in pain and hopelessness!” Every time we prophesy as God calls us: Let these dry bones live and dance and go forth to bring the breath of God into the world. Amen and amen!
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