Dem Bones, Dem Bones

Ezekiel 37:1-14

I know a woman who, a number of years ago, was at a desperate place in life. She had just left an abusive marriage and still feared for her safety. She carried pepper spray on her keychain, and had a bottle by every door. She always looked over her shoulder, always checked the backseat of the car, afraid that one day her ex-husband would snap and come after her. And that’s when she started having flashbacks to early childhood memories of sexual abuse at the hands of a relative. She began to realize how much of her life had been marred by pain and suffering, and she didn’t know how to stop that pain from overwhelming her. She looked at her life, and it was like looking at a valley of dry bones. She lost faith. Even worse, she lost hope. Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.

Well-known minister William Willimon once told the story of an inner city church that had been in decline for twenty years. He described the church like this: “Dark hallways where children once hurried to their classes, now dark, dusty, vacant. It’s empty pews staring back at the pulpit even on Easter. Grass growing in the corners of the church parking lot. The frantic search for some agency to rent unused space for a church now preoccupied with keeping a roof over its head.”[1]  Into this church a bishop sent a recent seminary graduate. It was her first assignment, and the bishop’s advice was “Just keep it going as best you can.” When the new pastor met with the board for the first time, she told them that she thought she had a gift for working with children. “Then the bishop sent you to the wrong church,” one of the women responded. “We are long past those years here.” Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.

“The prophet Ezekiel had lived through the final, fateful fall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. He and his friends and relatives had been marched off from Judah to life in captivity in Babylon. There he was witness to the unraveling of the social fabric among his people. He watched their disorientation emerge.”[2] The people of Israel had lost everything. They had lost their land, their temple, their holy city; they had lost their country and their identity. To make matters worse, they knew the story of how something like this had happened to someone else. “A century-and-a-half previously, many citizens of Judah’s sister kingdom Israel had been similarly deported, had lost their identity, and had faded into the mists of history—the so-called lost tribes of Israel.” So they knew what awaited them—being lost. No wonder they said: “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.

Many of us have experienced the valley of dry bones at some point in our lives. A failed marriage. A broken relationship. A business dream turned to bankruptcy. A dream deferred so long it only taunts us. An estranged child. A fatal accident. An untimely death. Just about any major loss can leave us feeling as if life were a valley of dry bones.

Mortal, can these bones live? God asked Ezekiel as they overlooked the valley in his vision. Ezekiel answered, “You know, Lord.” The answer was a bit of a cop-out on Ezekiel’s part. He didn’t want to say the bones could live when he had little to no faith that they could. He didn’t want to say the bones couldn’t live and be reprimanded for his lack of faith. So he said “You know, Lord,” which is the equivalent of “Only God knows!”

Or maybe Ezekiel was a bit like me…in which case his response would have been more like: “You know, Lord. It didn’t have to be this way. You could have intervened. You could have stopped it. You could have made everything turn out right. But you didn’t. You didn’t stop the disease. You didn’t take the wheel. You didn’t remove the pain. You didn’t stop the marauding enemy. And now look. A valley of dry bones.

Then God tells him to prophesy to the bones. This vision of Ezekiel’s had to be a dream, because who would prophesy to dry bones? What preacher would preach to the dead and gone? Our job is to preach to the living. Sometimes. And sometimes our job is to preach to those who still linger in the valley.

Anyway, Ezekiel did as he was told, and so began God’s miraculous work of reversal, reversing the power and process of death. First the bones came back together, then sinew and muscle, and then flesh. But they did not breathe.

It is not the preaching that brings people to life. It is not the rattling of bones that brings people to life. It is God’s Spirit. God’s breath. God’s mighty ruach in Hebrew, which means wind, breath, and spirit.

This is the word that is used in Genesis 2 when God creates a human being and then breathes into the creature the breath of life. Ruach. This is the word used in 1 Samuel when young David is anointed to one day become king—the spirit of the Lord came upon him—ruach. This is the word used in Isaiah when the prophet proclaims “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because God has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.”      Ruach. And the word appears ten times in our fourteen verses for today, with phrases such as “I will cause breath to enter you” and “Come from the four winds, O breath” and “I will put my spirit within you and you shall live.” Ruach

One pastor and writer has this to say about the power of God’s ruach: “I try to imagine the multitude of dry bones rattling to find one another. The bones of those who have gone before us? Or are they bones of those who we have called ruined, prophesied as ruined? The young urban man whose family is a gang. The single mother with two jobs and two kids and two twenty dollar bills left at the end of the month. The middle aged man riddled with Parkinson’s. The elderly woman with Alzheimer’s. The young woman who cuts herself to feel the pain of her life. The lonely, the aged, the unemployed, the sick, the despairing, the addicted, the bones of the dried up. Imagine these dried up, cast away piles of death rattling to find one another. Suddenly I want to be part of the pile. I want my own dryness to count so that I can find one another. I want to be put together too.”[3]

I love that phrase: I want to be put together, too. Imagine it: God’s breath, God’s wind, God’s spirit blowing through your life, blowing through your dry places, blowing through your valleys of dry bones.

What might happen? What might happen if you let God’s spirit blow through your life? Remember, this is the ruach of God that came upon a young boy and filled him and guided him as he grew up to be king. What might it guide you to be able to do? This is the ruach of God that empowered the prophet to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners. How might it empower you to break the chains of bondage? This is the ruach of God that breathed life into the new human God created. How might it bring you to life?

It is the spirit of God, the breath of God, the wind of God that brings us to life. It’s the only thing that can. It’s the only thing that will.

If you find yourself in a valley of dry bones this morning—if you see only death and dryness and defeat—then hear the word of the Lord. Dem bones, dem bones gonna rise again. If you find yourself back together, reconnected to flesh and spirit, then don’t just stand there. Breathe!

The woman I told you about earlier—the one who lived in fear and pain—she is now healthy and whole and unafraid, and she works to help others be unafraid, too. She is a minister in the United Church of Christ. Dem bones, dem bones gonna rise again.

The church that I told you about earlier—the one that was dying. The pastor found an old lady in the parish, Gladys, who used to play with Count Basie and the Dorsey brothers. The pastor found two ladies to make peanut butter sandwiches. Then, on Wednesday afternoon the four of them rolled the old piano out of the Fellowship Hall. Gladys sat down and began to play hits from the 30’s, then some ragtime. By 3:30 a crowd of children had gathered. The pastor passed out the sandwiches. Gladys moved from “In the Mood” to “Jesus Loves Me.” The pastor told them a story about a man named Jesus. They clamored for more. Years later, nearly a hundred children crowd into that church every Wednesday afternoon. On Sunday, classes are full, taught by a group of women who thought that they were too old to have anything to do with children. Those children brought parents. The bones now have flesh, and sinews and the breath of life.[4] Dem bones, dem bones gonna rise again.

If God can breathe life into dry, dead bones, then imagine what God can do with this lively bunch! Imagine what God can do for those of us not living in the valley of dry bones. Just imagine what God can do with us—here—now.

And you know what’s gonna’ happen next?
Dem bones, dem bones gonna’ walk around.
Dem bones, dem bones gonna’ walk around.
Dem bones, dem bones gonna’ walk around.
Now hear the word of the Lord.
Amen.

 


[1] Willimon, William. The Intrusive Word (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s, 1994), p. 126.

[2] Thomson, Judith E. Lectionary Homiletics: Back Issues Plus, Pastoral Implications.

[3] http://www.bethscib.com/1/post/2013/12/shalom-by-prophecy.html

[4] Young, Robert D. Lectionary Homiletics: Back Issues Plus, Sermon Reviews II.