Can These Bones Live?

“Ezekiel connected dem dry bones, Ezekiel connected dem dry bones, Ezekiel connected dem dry bones, I hear the word of the Lord…. Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk aroun’, dem bones gonna walk aroun’, dem bones gonna walk aroun’, I hear the word of the Lord!” [sung by the Delta Rhythm Boys and played on Ipod deck.] It’s a great song, a great spiritual, isn’t it? But, do you believe it? Are dem bones really gonna walk aroun’?

Did the exiled Israelites who heard Ezekiel’s prophecy believe it? It was the sixth century BC. Ezekiel, a prominent priest and prophet, was in exile in Babylon, along with the king and the elite of his people. Jerusalem and the temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians. Along with his people, Ezekiel was in deep mourning. Episcopalians don’t hear much from the prophecy of Ezekiel. In our three-year lectionary this passage occurs in Lent in Year A, and here as an alternative on Pentecost. Another closely related passage from Ezekiel can be heard at the Easter Vigil. That’s it. But Ezekiel is an unusual, even exciting book. Traditionally one had to be a seasoned scholar to be allowed to read it. Why? Because the book – and I commend it to you for your own reading – is filled with arresting images that turn up again and again in later visionary writing. Blown about and lifted up by the Spirit, Ezekiel begins the book with stunning visions of angels, of wheels within wheels, and of God’s glory. He then goes on to catalogue the many ways in which the Israelites have broken their covenant with God. Finally, in the last third of the book, Ezekiel offers a stunning vision of the renewal and restoration of Israel, and of a return from Babylon that would be nothing short of a second Exodus.

Perhaps drawing on the vision of a bone-littered battlefield, Ezekiel suggests for the first time ever in history that resurrection might be possible. Is Ezekiel talking about physical, bodily resurrection? Probably not. Rather, it is the renewal and restoration of the people of Israel that Ezekiel is describing here. As captives of the Babylonians, deprived of the sacred temple, the people who heard this prophecy had every right to say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” When God asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel surely thinks, “No way.” But face to face with God, he gives the only – and the truest – answer he can give, “O Lord God, you know.” Only God can make or create new life, so God takes the initiative and orders Ezekiel to prophesy to the dry bones. God tells Ezekiel to call the bones back to life and assure them that bone would join with bone (“Your toe bone connected to your foot bone, your foot bone connected to your ankle bone….”), and that muscles and skin would grow on them.

The Hebrew word ruach means breath, spirit, and wind, all three. So, we have here a wonderful play on words that calls to mind the creation stories of Genesis (“a wind from God swept over the waters” and “then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”). Using this play on words, God further commands Ezekiel to bring the breath from the four winds and “breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” And the newly restored house of Israel clatters to its feet and stands there, “a great multitude,” eager to hear the promises that God offers to the people, to bring them back to the land of Israel, to their own soil, forgiven, restored, and renewed.

Though the prophet uttered the commands, the miracle, of course, was all God’s doing. The agent of the miracle was God’s Spirit. It was a new outpouring of this same spirit that Jesus promised to his disciples on the night before he died. It was a new outpouring of this same spirit, complete with what felt to them like a “rushing wind,” that the gathered disciples experienced on Pentecost. It was the same spirit that equipped them for mission and blew them out into the squares and synagogues of Jerusalem to proclaim new life in Jesus’ name. It was the same spirit that led to the gathering together of the writings we call the New Testament and that has continued to inspire, renew, and empower the community created through the spirit.

Can these bones live? As we look around at the church today, our answer might be the same as that of Ezekiel. We too might want to say, “No way.” However, if God is doing the asking, we just might have the humility to say, “O Lord, you know.” There is no question that we have reason for despair. Although we have tended to see the swelling of church membership in the post-World War II period as the norm, it is more likely that that influx of members was a blip in the long history of the church. Now it is clear that church membership is declining again in North America and Europe. There are fewer and fewer full-time clergy, clergy sexual abuse in parishes and religious orders is coming to light, every level of the church is struggling to make ends meet, parishes are closing, and most members of the current younger generation couldn’t care less about organized religion. They claim to be “spiritual but not religious,” and the vast majority of them claim no religious affiliation whatsoever. Doesn’t Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones describe us too? Where is God’s miraculous life-giving spirit?

Perhaps we need to take the long view. Church historians, most recently Phyllis Tickle and Diana Butler Bass, tell us that the church seems to have experienced a major shift about every 500 years. The fifth century saw the beginning of several centuries of a stagnating church, as the Roman Empire declined, classical learning diminished, the eastern and western churches drew apart, and the torch of learning burned feebly in Europe, mostly in monasteries and convents. At the turn of the first millennium the church experienced a renewal of scholarship, mysticism, and devotion. The great cathedrals were built, and many historic religious orders were founded. Five hundred years later the Reformation fractured the western church yet again. But it also engendered a great upsurge in learning, translations of the Bible, and liturgies in the common languages. Ordinary people were able to have more direct and deeper direct access to God. Following the Reformation, in much of Europe, and even in North America until the American Revolution, church and state were tightly intertwined, and religious diversity was rare. Even with the rise of science, secular culture largely supported church membership. Now it is clear that we are entering a new phase of church life and identity. God is doing a new thing, and we are struggling to find new ways of being church. New spiritual groups are arising: intentional communities, storefront churches, street church for the homeless, groups gathering for worship at times other than Sunday morning. We may not know what’s coming next, but we continue to trust God to breathe life into “these slain,” to restore and renew the church that the Spirit birthed on Pentecost.

Can these bones live here at St. Peter’s? Don’t we have some of the same reasons to ask that question about our parish as we do for the wider church? Our congregation is smaller than it was a generation ago, our budget perhaps half of what it was, your priest is half-time, and there isn’t a single twenty-something whom we can say belongs to this church community. Are the bones of this limb of the Body of Christ dried up? Have we lost hope? God willing, the answer to both those questions, is at least, “O Lord, you know.” Hear again God’s promise: “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live … then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” Hear again Jesus’ promise to his friends: “When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth,… he will declare to you the things that are to come.” As surely as God is doing a new thing in the wider church, I believe that God is doing a new thing at St. Peter’s.

Are we open to what God might be doing here? Ezekiel’s vision reminds us that God alone restores life. Our psalm reminds us that God creates and renews all. Can we give up our preoccupation with the church as it was, and begin to consider the church as it might be? Can we begin to see with God’s eyes and seek out those new paths to which God might be calling us, both in the wider church, and at the parish level? Can we pray that, just like the prophet Ezekiel, we too can be instruments of God’s life-giving power, and we too can say to those who are dispirited and who have lost hope, “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live?” And finally, can we answer with the Psalmist, “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being?”

Sing one more time with me: “Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me, Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me; melt me, mold me, fill me, use me; Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me.” [Sung by congregation.] Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on us.