May 20, 2018 “Good Bones” – Ezekiel 37:1-14

Ezekiel 37:1-14
“Good Bones”
May 20, 2018 – Pentecost

“May I have the bones?” asked Susan, our little girl. We had just eaten grilled chicken at our cabin in Arizona. Now Susan wanted the bones. So Beth scraped them clean and gave them to her. Our daughter ran outside, intent on a project.

She may have been inspired by Dinosaur National Monument. I can’t remember. But when we went to check on Susan, we found the bones carefully arranged on the bumper of our car, along with a hand-lettered cardboard sign: “See the amazing chicken bones!” We laughed and laughed and congratulated Susan on her creativity. Then we warned her that a cat or a skunk would run off with her bones during the night. That’s what we expected. We did not expect those bones to be truly amazing at all, and they weren’t. They did not, for instance, stand up, come together, and grow meat and feathers again. But that’s exactly what God told Ezekiel to expect, not with chicken bones, but with human bones.

Centuries before Jesus was raised from the dead we get a hint of what is to come. Yes, Elijah and Elisha both raised men from the dead. And Jesus raised at least three. Two weeks ago we read how Paul raised up Eutychus after he fell three stories. But all those others had only been dead a little while. Ezekiel saw a valley full of long dead, scraped clean, dry bones. “There were very many… and they were very dry,” it says in verse 2.

We are talking hopeless situation here. We are talking about a time in the life of Israel when their hope was lost, as we read in verse 11. When Ezekiel prophesied, God’s people were exiles, captives, refugees in Babylon, far from their homes. They were like the women and children captured by Boko Haram or like the Rohingya living in refugee camps or like the Christian Palestinians fenced up in Gaza, in what some call the biggest open air prison camp in the world. Like those modern captives, they had absolutely no prospect of being released anytime soon. They expected to live out their lives and die and be buried in a foreign country. They were dry bones.

Ezekiel was a prophet, but he felt that hopelessness. As he was led up and down what might have been an ancient battlefield, all he can see is desiccated death. The bones were very dry. When the Spirit of the Lord set him down there in a valley of bones and asked in verse 3, “Son of man, can these bones live?” he could not see any way to just say “Yes.” All he could offer was the kind of thing you or I might say when we wonder if there will ever be peace between Israelis and Palestinians, if North and South Korea will actually be reunited, or if school shootings will ever stop. With Ezekiel we can only mutter, “O Lord God, you know.” We might phrase it today as an expression which sounds totally hopeless with the right inflection, “God knows.” Ezekiel certainly didn’t know and neither do we. All he saw were bones, dry bones. It was hopeless.

It probably felt hopeless there in that room where twelve men sat waiting on Pentecost. It was more than a week since they had seen Jesus lift up His hands in blessing and then rise into the sky, leaving them gaping up into the clouds. Jesus had promised to send help, to send power, but ten days later nothing had happened. They were still together, but they must have been weary with the waiting, wondering when or even if Jesus’ promise would be kept. They must have felt pretty dry.

Yes, we’re going to talk in a moment about how the Holy Spirit showed up, both for Ezekiel and for the apostles. But first we need to join them for just a little, walk with Ezekiel through the valley of dry bones or sit waiting helplessly with discouraged disciples as days go by. We could also in our minds walk the devastated streets of Gaza wondering when peace will arrive or sit with the Christian parents of Leah Sharibu wondering when their daughter who just had her fifteenth birthday in captivity by Boko Haram because she refuses to renounce her faith. Jesus compared the Holy Spirit to water being poured out upon the world, but to really get that we first need to feel the dryness, the hopelessness.

Our own lives may be strewn with the signs of death, littered with lifeless bones. It might be bones of lost dreams, bones of broken relationships, or literal bones of those we love. We gingerly pick our way like that old Jewish priest, stepping over, around, through the bones, trying to avoid any contact with death, even though it’s all around us.

As verse 11 explains, Ezekiel was confronted with the metaphorical bones of his nation. Divided in two, one half obliterated, the other half exiled, the once glorious kingdom of Israel was dead. The northern part was destroyed by Assyria two hundred years before. Judah, the southern part, was carried off by the Babylonians. And now, in Babylon, they say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” There was no way forward, no way back, nothing but slow decay in a foreign country.

Ezekiel faced the dry bones of his people in captivity. People today around the world are still living in captivity. You too may feel caught. How and where do you and I face bones, dry bones? What’s dead for us? What seems hopelessly dried out and beyond recovery for you? Is it a job? A marriage? A dream of education? A house of your own? A desire for Christian service? A hope to become a better person?

God says to us, as He said to Ezekiel, “Children of men, can these bones live?” And the only answer we have is Ezekiel’s, “God knows. We sure don’t.” It’s so hard to be in dry places like I’ve been talking about. “Let’s move on,” you might be thinking, “let’s talk about something else.” O.K., but first remember this, verse 1 says it was the Spirit, the Spirit of God who brought Ezekiel to the valley of bones. It is the Spirit who brings us face to face with our dry, dead bones, and it is the same Spirit who brings us God’s answer.

On a Boy Scout hiking trip in Zion National Park we came across the carcass of a dead cow. In the arid climate it was completely dry. No smell, no flies, no flesh. Just skin and bones, dead as a cow can get. Being typical boys, we poked at those bones and that hide with sticks, threw rocks at it, jumped on it, and took pictures of it (I still have one). We did all the silly things you might imagine boys doing with the dead body of an animal. But there is one thing we never considered. We never even thought of talking to it. If one of us had gone up and begun to speak to that corpse, we would have checked him for heat stroke, figured he had gone out of his head in the sun. It’s absurd to talk to dry bones.

God’s answer to Ezekiel seems totally absurd. In verse 4, the Lord told Ezekiel, “Prophesy to these bones…” Preach to the bones. That’s as insane as you can get. “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!’” “Oh hear the Word of the Lord.” That’s the refrain, over and over, in the old spiritual set to music by James Weldon Johnson. “Ezekiel cried, ‘Dem dry bones, Oh hear the Word of the Lord.’” You know it:

The foot bone connected to the leg bone,
The leg bone connected to the knee bone,
The knee bone connected to the thigh bone,
The thigh bone connected to the back bone,
The back bone connected to the neck bone,
The neck bone connected to the head bone,
Oh, hear the word of the Lord!

Dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk aroun’,
Dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk aroun’,
Dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk aroun’,
Oh, hear the word of the Lord.

Hear the Word of the Lord. Hear the voice of God speaking to dead bones. Hear what God has to say about death and dryness and our despair. Hear the Word of the Lord.

In verse 5, Ezekiel says God told him to speak His Word and prophesy the coming of “breath.” “Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.” The word for “breath” is the same as the word for “spirit,” ruach in Hebrew. Hear the Word of the Lord, and look for the coming of His breath, His Spirit. The Word of God and the power of God’s Spirit go out together.

Word and Spirit. That’s how it came to those 12 apostles on Pentecost. Jesus gave them His Word, told them to wait for “power from on high.” From John 15 and 16 this morning we read Jesus’ Word that He would send an Advocate, a Comforter, the Spirit of truth. Wait for it. That’s what Ezekiel was to tell the dry bones. Wait for it. You aren’t always going to be dry. God says in verse 6, “I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin and put breath [put Spirit] in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

That’s the Word of the Lord to you today, the Pentecost Word. No matter how dry it all feels, no matter how dead your hopes are, wait for it. Wait for God’s Holy Spirit to pour down like living water to restore your flesh. Wait for the Holy Spirit to blow across the dryness like a cool breeze restoring your breath. Wait for it.

Ezekiel did what he was told in verse 7, “So I prophesied as I had been commanded.” He went out and stood over dead, dry bones and told them what God had to say, told them unbelievable good news about them being made alive again. That’s what the apostles did on Pentecost too. They went out and stood in the city of Jerusalem and told them good news, told them about how one Man Jesus in particular had come to life again and how that meant they could all be made alive again. That’s still the Good News. That’s still the Word of the Lord you and I and all the captive people of the world need to hear.

It happened. While Ezekiel was still delivering his sermon another sound began, says verse 7, a rattling sound, bones coming back together, foot bone, ankle bone, leg bone: hear the Word of the Lord! Ezekiel saw bones reconnected, saw muscle and tendons grow round the bones. But they were still not alive. They were still corpses, fresh corpses, but dead.

Then in verse 9 he’s told, “Prophesy to the breath [remember, that’s the Spirit]; prophesy, son of man 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.’” Ezekiel tells us in verse 10 that he did prophesy, and the breath did come, the Spirit came, and those dry bones stood up alive “stood on their feet, a vast multitude.”

Verses 11-14 are God’s explanation of the vision for Ezekiel. Israel is in captivity but it is not dead forever. God’s people will not always be dry bones. They will not always be exiles and refugees. God is going to raise them up, going to bring them back to their own land. Verses 12 and 13 say that God is even going to open their graves and bring them up from their graves.

We know that it happened. In 539 B.C., the Persians conquered the Babylonians. Their king Cyrus issued an edict allowing the Jewish people to go home. The prophecy of return and restoration was fulfilled. But we are still waiting for part of it, the opening of the graves part, the literal rising from the dead part. 50 days ago we celebrated that Jesus’ grave was opened and the Father raised Him out of it. Now we are waiting for that raising from the dead to happen for the rest of us. We don’t have that yet, but we do have the down payment on it. We have the Holy Spirit.

II Corinthians 1:20 tells us that in Jesus, “every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’” And verse 22 there explains that in Christ God has put His seal on us and given us His Spirit “in our hearts as a first installment.” Pentecost was the first installment of that first installment. The Holy Spirit came to guarantee God’s promise that He is going to raise everyone, raise all the dry bones, just like Jesus was raised. And God keeps on giving His Holy Spirit guarantee to everyone who believes in Jesus.

At the end of our passage in Ezekiel, verse 14, God says “I will put my Spirit in you, and you shall live…, then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” When God speaks, things happen. Ezekiel went out into a desert valley and spoke the Word of the Lord to dry bones. The apostles went out into the crowded streets of Jerusalem and spoke the Word of the Lord to people who couldn’t understand their language. Both times it looked foolish and hopeless, but God sent His Spirit. That’s how it works. Whenever God’s people share His Word, the Spirit arrives too.

Over the past couple years, I have enjoyed running into a new colleague at our Covenant pastor gatherings. Matt serves St. Thomas Covenant Church in Salem. Yes, he knows that’s a strange name for a Covenant church, for an evangelical church. But it’s named after one of the men who was there on Pentecost, Thomas, the one we often call “doubting Thomas.” He’s their patron saint because it’s a church aimed at people like him, people who struggle with believing, people whose faith seems all dried up.

Matt serves people who have lost their faith or who have been hurt by a church sometime in the past. His approach is to simply share God’s Word with them and invite discussion about whether it actually says what they may have thought it said. Is it really as unbelievable or as hurtful as folks may think or is there something more, something true and life giving? God’s Word is spoken and the Spirit shows up. Last month Matt say that their congregation is growing and is solid financially after only a couple of years. The Spirit has taken the dry bones of people’s doubts and fears about Christian faith and raised up a new church like he started that first church in Jerusalem.

I can only guess what feels dry or dead for you. You may have your own doubts about the faith or hurts from other Christians. Maybe you are thoroughly discouraged by news about school shootings and bombs and refugees and corruption. Perhaps your health is not what it used to be or you have a child or parent you are worried about. It could be that your marriage or your job is on the rocks. If any of that is true or there is some other dry or tender bone in you, then you are walking with Ezekiel today in the valley of dry bones. Remember what we read. The Spirit brought Him there. He may have brought you where you are so that you can hear God’s Word to dry bones. “Hear the Word of the Lord” that Jesus’ spoke, promising to send His Spirit to give you life. The Word brings the Spirit and the Spirit empowers the Word. Word and Spirit together are your promise, your guarantee of the hope of life, of resurrection from the dead.

Our little girl asked us for those chicken bones because she thought they were amazing. God thinks your bones, even the dry bones of your life, are amazing bones, good bones. He created them. He wants them to live. He is sending His Spirit to make it happen.

Hear the Word of the Lord, welcome the Spirit, and let the bones of our lives, of our own selves come back together. Hear the Lord’s Word, feel the Lord’s Spirit and let Him reconnect you to Him. Hear His Word, obey His Spirit and reach out to connect with those who live dead lives apart from His gracious Word and life-giving Spirit. Hear His Word and, through His Spirit, let everyone hear and live.

Amen.