The breath of new life

5th in Lent The breath of new life Ezekiel 37: 1-14, Romans 8: 6-11 What do you think people want more than anything else? Say you were to ask someone what it is that they feel would make their life better, what might they say? Well I suspect that were we to take a poll of people's responses there'd be a common theme; that the answers given would be along the lines of: "What do I want?... something different, something new, something exciting, a change from what I currently have, from what I'm currently doing, from the life that I'm living, which more and more I'm becoming disenchanted with." Now perhaps we'd say of such a thought: well, if this were true, that people would generally think such things, then this is just another example of the selfish and small-minded way in which people do think. But is it? Is it not rather a correct way of thinking, a way of thinking that shows an awareness that there's actually more to life than the majority of people are currently experiencing? Which, as those who profess to belong to God's new society in Christ Jesus his Son, we believe to be just the case, don't we? Because we believe that no one is ever going to be fully content with their life, unless the Spirit of Jesus Christ is a part of it. The prophet Ezekiel, in our first reading, was prophesying to a particularly discontented group of people, to a people who had good reason to be discontented. Because they were people who'd been taken into exile in Babylon after the Babylonians had invaded Judah at the end of the 7th century/beginning of the 6th century BC. Ezekiel himself was taken into exile in 597 and received God's call to prophesy in 593 about 6 years before King Nebuchadnezzar's final invasion of Judah, which was to result in the destruction of both Jerusalem and its Temple. And so with the loss of the Holy City and the Holy Temple it seemed as though the Holy Nation of Israel, the nation belonging to God, was finished, was in effect dead in the grave. But then God's message through his servant Ezekiel began to change in its tone as he began to give to the people words of comfort, of hope and of encouragement ... none more so than the words found in these first 14 verses of chapter 37 where we read of a scene of such hopelessness which is, however, transformed at God's command into something wonderful and dynamic. Ezekiel tells us how God's hand was upon him and how he brought him out by the Spirit of the Lord and set him in the middle of a valley ... a valley full of bones. Now we're not told where this valley was, it could have been any number of places because there'd been so much slaughter of God's people during the time of the Babylonian conquest. But as Ezekiel looked out upon this sight, and as the Lord then began to lead him to and fro amongst all this evidence of carnage, you can imagine his feelings of great sadness at the hopeless desolation that surrounded him ... as death pressed in on him from every side. And then the Lord God said a very strange thing to Ezekiel. Asking him: "Son of man, can these bones live?" Now what did he expect him to say? What might we have said? Maybe "What a silly question, of course they can't live, these are old dried out bones, there's no life, or chance of life, left in them ... humanly speaking." And yet this was the point. Ezekiel by now knew his God, knew the one who'd called him to be his messenger. So that although to him the thought of these bones living again might have seemed sheer madness, well this might not be the case for Almighty God he reasoned. And so Ezekiel replied: "O Sovereign Lord, you alone know." The response of faith! Almost a prayer of faith as if Ezekiel, having had the idea of new life placed into his imagination, went straight back to God and said to Him, "Your will be done, O Lord, you for whom all things are surely possible, you who at the beginning created life from the dust, you who used Elijah to bring to life the widow of Zarephath's dead son, you who empowered Elisha to raise from the dead the Shunammite woman's son." It was as if God had given Ezekiel a vision of what might be, and had sought this response of faith so that he might then act with power. And I wonder how we'd respond if God gave us such a vision. Would we say: "no way" and forget about it, putting the very idea down to our over enthusiastic imagination? Or would we perhaps latch onto the vision, become enthused by it, take personal ownership of it ... but then in the process forget about the one who alone knows, whose desire is that we trust and see what He can do? Or would we answer God as Ezekiel did ... simply trusting him and in effect saying: "show me your will O Lord"? You see as we go through the process of regeneration, which Ezekiel describes here, in no sense do we get the impression that he himself is responsible for any of this. Rather he simply does as he's told. And yet how many "heroes of the faith" there are in our own day, men and women who're doing this or doing that for the Lord. And how good it is to admire them and to feel inadequate in comparison and to long to do something similar ourselves, so that we too might feel fulfilled as they must surely be ... shades of the yearning of all people that we mentioned at the beginning perhaps. So many heroes; but is it not the case that the call is to be God's servant, with an ear open to the Lord's voice? To be a servant who is simply willing do what he commands, and then waits to see what He'll do! And what does God do here with his servant Ezekiel? Well, he tells him to preach to these dry bones. In this humanly impossible situation to declare with confidence the full will and intention of God for them. And even as he's speaking they begin to respond; as we're told from verse 7 that: "there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone ..., and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them". There they are before him, what up until now have been just a mass of bones amounting to nothing, now a whole army of complete individual human beings lying there; and how Ezekiel's heart must be pounding! And yet there's no breath in them. There is all of the form but none of the substance. They might look like people, they might feel like people, but as yet they're still but lumps of dead meat! The point is that there are to be no short cuts here, because a process is taking place. First the tendons, then the flesh, next the skin, until finally the breath of life is breathed into these still dead bodies. And Ezekiel's job throughout this process is to keep on preaching to them; even though he might not be seeing any obvious response. His job is to keep on declaring God's word until it is finished. He's to be no "fly-by-night", no "in it for the initial glory and then away" man. No he has to stick at it until real living men with the breath, the Spirit, of God within them, stand there before him, a vast army. Perhaps too often leaders of the Christian community are guilty of building a church that looks and feels, and even sounds, like a family of God's people. Whereas the reality is that it isn't. Because its members aren't yet truly alive. Such a situation may come where the full message of God isn't being given, or where, even though it is, the preacher or people, or both, are impatient, too eager to be up and doing, feeling that they're ready. Even though the truth is that God has still much to tell them, to teach them, so that they might really take their God intended place in that vast army. It's something that's a danger for all of us because there is so much to be doing, and patience isn't something that comes easy. It's so tempting to cut corners, especially when processes and procedures seem to be designed only to get in the way. But then this vision that Ezekiel had here was just that ... a vision, representing a message that God intended his people, the people of Israel, to understand. As far as they were concerned their very bones were dried up, there hope was gone, they were cut off from their homeland and from their God. And yet the Lord, He assured them, would bring them back, saying in verses 13 and 14: "Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord." And we know that nearly fifty years later they did begin to return out of captivity and to once more rebuild Jerusalem and the temple there. Although of course the full outworking of this vision of Ezekiel's wasn't to begin to be seen until centuries later, when Jesus Christ began to bring hope into what had been a hopeless situation, and the promise of new life where before there'd only been the prospect of death. And then, after Jesus himself died on the cross, and the breath of God had departed from his body, the Spirit returned three days later and he arose again now to live forever. Such that all who have faith in him are enabled to similarly die to their old nature and rise again, transformed by the Spirit of God which is breathed into them when once they trust in him for their forgiveness and salvation. This was what the apostle Paul discovered on the road to Damascus when the living Christ met with him, when his dried bones of death began to rattle in response to the words of life that he heard, and to come together into that wholeness that's only possible when the power of God begins to act upon an individual. So that, later, when writing to the church in Rome, he was able to write with confidence about the certain future for those who don't have the Spirit of God within them as well as for those who do. Those without the Spirit, Paul now understood, remain scattered and incomplete like the dried bones in that valley of Ezekiel. Or, like the pieced together but lifeless bodies, dead and as yet without hope, unable to rise, unable to do anything to achieve that for which they were created; which is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Their very mind is naturally hostile to him. There's nothing that they can do to please him because they're incapable of obeying him. But then those to whom God has given the Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, who have his Spirit living within them, have been raised to a new level of existence. Such that now their lives are lived under the control of the Spirit and they've received new life, and they've received peace with God and with each other. And not only that they've also received the promise that like their Lord, their physical bodies will one day rise to a totally new level of life when He returns to gather his own. They've received that for which every heart hungers, which alone satisfies. Finally being able to repeat from a heart that understands, the prayer of Augustine when he said to God: "Thou hast made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee". In Christ alone then is true life to be experienced. Whilst without him there's the equal certainty of a life that's incomplete, that's dead to its true purpose. And with this inevitably comes dissatisfaction, a yearning for something more, as individuals become aware of the limitations of the lives that they're living to bring them wholeness and lasting peace. And so they push and they pull against those ties that bind them, they look for ways to break through, to be free to truly live. Many young people think that they've already achieved this as, filled with energy and optimism, thoughts of death yet far away, they embrace all that the world has to offer. But then experience teaches them that, for all that they've discovered and obtained, the satisfaction which they desire still eludes them. So that, as they grow older, they reconcile themselves to living a life which they know is less than it ought to be, or else they continue looking for that new experience, that higher degree of excitement, that different life situation which they hope will bring them what they want. The reason surely for so much of the crime, addiction, self-destruction, and relationship problems, that we see around us in society today. Meanwhile like Paul, if Christ is truly in us, we have seen that vision, and we have received that breath of God. Or are we not there yet? Are we still filled with doubt at the thought of new life being breathed into that which is so clearly dead; unable to believe that, actually, God can do anything? May we when we think about that first Easter time and Christ Jesus on the cross, and then risen from the tomb, may we once more get excited afresh. May we once more celebrate and glorify God and experience great joy in knowing that he did it all for us. But you know we mustn't stop there. Because we have, through God's grace alone, been blessed with the gift of that for which everyone is looking in their own way. And so, surely, we have a responsibility, in humility and love, to direct others to the truth so that they might also receive that blessing, that new life, that breath of God. God says to each of us, just as he said to Ezekiel and just as he later said to Paul: "Go and tell my message to people". And so, as we depend on him for his leading, may we each be open to doing so in the ways that he directs and enables us. Amen