Dry Bones

Intro

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room...

On Monday night, I settled down after a long day to watch the Penguins take on the Boston Bruins.

Not long after I sat down, the score was 3-0 Boston, and I came to the conclusion that this one was a lost cause and I moved on.

I started watching the news, because that’s a good stress reliever these days...

But then my phone started buzzing. 3-1. 3-2. 3-3. I tuned back in to the game just in time to see rookie John Marino bust out of the penalty box, skate like the devil to the Bruin’s zone, and score his first NHL goal in his hometown against his hometown team with friends and family near by.

I think one of my favorite parts about hockey is that all you need is 3-4 good shots and any game is winnable.

I’ve seen games come down to the last 30 seconds of playing time, and teams that were long assumed dead come back and rally to win.

Apparently the Bruins have seen those games too because they somehow came back to beat us 6-4, but that’s not important...

In the sport of hockey, there is no point at which you are beyond winning.

Questions to begin the sermon:

I wonder if there are seasons in our lives though when we feel like we are just stuck.

I wonder if there are times when we feel like this is just the way it is, and it’s never going to get any better.

I wonder if it feels like our story has ultimately run it’s course.

And I wonder how frequently we believe that?

Study of

Some History

Isreal as a kingdom is doing really well, until it isn’t.

After David’s son Solomon, the kingdom is split in two.

When you take a tiny little nation that is right by the sea and you split it in two, it is simultaneously really attractive and really easy to beat up on.

So the northern kingdom gets stomped on by the Assyrians, and then the southern Kingdom is taken over by the Babylonians.

The Babylonians were kind of experts in humiliating their opponents.

The King of Judah was forced to watch his family murdered, just before he was blinded. The absolute last thing he would ever see is his family die.

That’s Game of Thrones level messing with you right there.

But the other thing they would do is take some of the most important people of the land they conquered and take them in to exile in Babylon.

You have to realize just how devastating this is for a nation like Judah.

The key promise that God has made with God’s people is that they will have their own land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

That has been the promise since Father Abraham had many sons.

And now God is saying that because the nation has gone astray and messed up, they’re going to be stripped from their land and taken in to captivity in a literal godless place.

Ezekiel

One of the people that’s taken in to exile with the people of Israel is a priest named Ezekiel.

Of course they would take Ezekiel, because he was one of the leaders in the temple, which was the center of religious and cultural life in the community.

And while he is in this godless place with people who are wondering what their future might be, Ezekiel decides that he has some things to get off his chest.

Ezekiel is the prophet in the midst of the exile.

Ezekiel (the book) uses the phrase “in the midst of” or “amongst” 116 times.

This is an example of a person who is in the midst of feeling pain, speaking out to a bunch of people who are feeling pain.

This is an example of a person who is maybe wondering what hope could look like, trying to inspire hope right in the midst of people who are wondering what hope could look like.

The Vision

So God shows this prophet in the midst of his people a vision.

“A certain valley.”

Nowhere at all special.

Bones and priests.

You can’t come in contact with a dead body, so this has not only a creepy factor, but a religious un-clean factor to it.

The big question:

Human one, can these bones live again?

Is there any hope here?

Even in the midst of such terrible death, could there possibly be life?

Am I making it up, or can we hear the despair in Ezekiel’s voice?

Lord God, only you know!

The question put here to Ezekiel, to the people of Israel, the question that the Sadducees put to Jesus, and the question to all of us really, is do you actually believe that there can be life in dead places?

Kinds of Death we all experience

The truth of the matter is, our lives are full of death.

The Death of Betrayal

This one is almost universal.

How many of us know what it’s like to have a trusted friend share a secret about us?

How many of us know what it’s like to place our confidence and trust in someone who wasn’t worthy of it?

How many of us know someone who took the money and ran?

When these wounds are fresh, when we’re in the immediate aftermath of this one, we might find ourselves staring out at the valley of dry betrayal, wondering if these bones can ever live again?

The Death of Heartbreak

As a youth pastor, I deal with the death of heartbreak for a profession.

And before we giggle too much, let’s all remember that we’ve been there at one point or another in our lives.

Some of us were the nerdy kid, who was totally convinced that the other person was our soul mate, only to come to discover that you might actually need to have a conversation with your soul mate, or at least have them know who you are, before you can begin a life together.

Some of us remember that first break up. The first time someone tells us that they actually don’t want us around anymore. The first time we feel something about someone and they tell us that they used to feel that way, but they don’t any more.

Some of us remember the embarrassment of having to pass an ex in the halls every day, watching them date the next person in line, and wondering where it all went wrong.

And some of us know that none of this is limited to middle school and high school.

We know that this can feel like death, don’t we?

We can remember what it felt like to stare out at the valley of our broken heart, wondering if any life can ever come in to it again.

The Death of Poverty

Some of us have varying degrees of experience with this one:

Some of us can remember a time where we were dirt poor, where we didn’t have two pennies to rub together.

Some of us know what it’s like to be more scared of the mailman and the bills he’s delivering than we are of the zombies on Halloween.

And some of us can tell harrowing stories, rags to riches, pulling ourselves up by our own boot straps.

Some of us know that time in our lives very well because we actually don’t have the harrowing rags to riches tale, we’re still living in a semi-impoverished life.

And yet some of us know the death of poverty because we’ve intentionally placed ourselves there.

Some of us know what it’s like to walk the coast of Florida after a major hurricane, and have our breath taken away by the devastation caused.

Some of us have been to places like Haiti, or Malawi, or India, and have seen first hand people who live on what we throw into the tip jar at Starbucks.

Some of us have seen the joy that can come on a person’s face when we show up to help, and it makes us want to show up and help all the more.

So for many of us we can look out over the valley of corrupt systems, unfair practices, and greedy institutions that create a system of haves and have nots, and we wonder what life could possibly ever be breathed in to these bones.

The Other Deaths

I name these particular deaths because one of the best parts of our faith is that Jesus came to us in human form, and he himself has experienced each of these.

Jesus knows what it’s like to be betrayed.

Jesus knows what it’s like to look at Peter’s denials and have his heart broken.

Jesus knows what it’s like to live in and around poverty.

But there are so many more, and you know what they feel like.

That secret sin that you carry with you, only you know about.

That relationship that is on the rocks.

That bitterness that wells up inside you when you can’t find a way to forgiveness.

That problem that just never, ever, EVER seems to want to be solved.

And here comes God, in the midst of all this death all around us, and God points a question right to us:

Human one, can these bones live again?

Hope in the face of death

Ultimately, what we are talking about here is hope.

Hope defined

There are words that I don’t think our population understands, or uses right.

Hope is one of them.

Hope can be a cheerful expectation for some good thing.

A few weeks ago we celebrated Ray and Cass’s wedding.

In the days leading up to the big day, I realized that I had a very serious cake deficiency going on in my life.

I personally believe that cake is one of the four food groups.

And so, ask Ed, I began to live in the world of hope for cake.

The problem with this view of hope is that it isn’t sustainable.

We did indeed get cake at Ray and Cass’s wedding, but that was like so two weeks ago, and I haven’t had cake again since.

One can only last so long when you are constantly needing to re-fill the hope bucket.

You can see this coming a mile away in people who say “I’ll be happy when...”

Hope can be a stand in for an optimistic and plucky attitude.

Hope can look like a steadfast belief that the Steelers are going to make the playoffs.

Hope can look like an unwavering conviction that this scratch off is the one that’s going to make me rich!

Hope can look like the assurance that everything is going to turn out alright in the end.

But the problem with this definition of hope is it’s uncanny ability to let us down.

The Steelers are 4-4, so let’s calm down.

I don’t know anyone in my life who’s actually hit it big with a scratch off.

Sometimes things don’t turn out alright in the end.

For this reason, so many people are over the idea of hope.

I think hope is much more like what’s going on here in Ezekiel.

I think I’ve used this here a bunch of times before, but I’m not creative. My friend Marko defines hope this way:

Hope is faithful confidence that God continues to author a story that moves us from vision to action.

Hope is faithful confidence that God continues to author a story that moves us from vision to action.

Hope is standing in the valley of dry bones, standing in the wreckage of our failure, standing in our lack of options, and actually believing that God can and will make these bones live again.

The Opposite of Hope:

The opposite of hope is cynicism, the belief that things are as they are and that they will never ever change.

The opposite of hope is never going to the valley of the dry bones because it’s too depressing, and what could we do to help anyway?

The opposite of hope is dismissing the real pain and heartache our brothers and sisters feel, because it’s not a pain we have to deal with.

The opposite of hope is living in a religion where you go through all the motions, but deep down have no trust in the power of Christ to breathe new life in to our dead places again.

Ways to make room for Jesus to breathe new life in us.

So I think our challenge today is to allow Jesus to breathe new life in to us.

Be ok with being in the valley.

So many people want to avoid the death of our lives, like a priest would want to avoid the valley of dry bones.

We look the other way when we come across other people’s suffering.

We wear the masks of optimism

We prefer to live in our own world, rather than discuss the pain and suffering of others all around us.

And truth be told, this valley could be anywhere, couldn’t it?

It’s a certain valley. Nowhere special. Nowhere in particular.

Death could be happening all around us, and we might not be aware.

I think God is calling us to be present to each other’s suffering.

I felt so bad for Louise last week, the number of prayer concerns that went up from this congregation were impressive!

I never would have remembered that big list!

Every week we invite each other to participate in the hard places in our lives, the dry bones of our existence, and to hold each other up through it all.

I wonder if there’s room for that in other places in our lives.

Listen to what God is speaking to us.

The new life for these dry bones begins with a prophesy.

It’s not big, or fancy, of complicated, or eloquent.

God tells Ezekiel to say “Listen to the word of God.”

Part of why we gather in a place like this is to listen to what God has to say about us.

We read scripture so that we can be reminded again and again that no matter how dead we are, no matter how far gone we are, we can live again.

We listen to sermons because God wants to tell us that no matter what we’ve done, no matter how horrible we’ve been, no matter our heartbreak, we are worthy of forgiveness, we are worthy of grace, we are worthy of mercy, and we are worthy of love.

One of the questions I’ve come to love asking people is what do you most want to hear from God.

One of the reasons I love the question is because I think I’m pitching a shutout.

People want to feel like they are enough. God has said that.

People want to feel like they are loved. God means it.

People want to feel like they matter in the the scheme of things. Jesus would tell them they do.

What do you most need to hear from God today?

Know that God is the one working the action.

One of the things I most appreciate about Ezekiel is his knowledge of where the movement is coming from.

Can these bones live again?

Lord God, only you know.

Only you are going to be able to bring life to this.

Only you are going to be able to author this story.

Only you can do what needs to be done here.

So much in life we like to imagine that we are the only ones that can solve our problems.

We feel the weight of the world on our shoulders.

We carry the burden of our own dreams and desires.

We feel like we have to be the masters of our own destiny.

Maybe for us, it’s time to let the Spirit of God breathe new life in to us.

The word for wind, breath, and spirit is the same in Hebrew.

This passage might just be a reminder that every time you let air hit your lungs, you are in fact being filled with the Spirit of God.

Left to our own devices, we would probably screw this up.

But it’s God who authors the story.

It’s God who moves and breathes in to us.

It’s Jesus Christ who brings us to a place of resurrection.

Join in.

But our story doesn’t end there.

God is authoring the story, but we have a roll to play.

God is moving in the air, but it’s up to us to breath God in.

Jesus Christ offers us the possibility of resurrection, but we have to believe in it.

Do you believe?

Do you believe these bones, whatever they look like for you, can live again?

Do you believe that love can come from bitterness, that grace can come from failure, that forgiveness can be possible in our wounded states?

Do you believe that God is authoring a story that’s going to move us from vision to action?

I hope so, because he’s doing it again and and again and again and again in our lives.