Can These Bones Live?

“Mortal, can these bones live?” Six centuries before Christ, the prophet Ezekiel was preaching to a despairing people. Their holy city had been destroyed. Their richly ornamented temple, built by the great king Solomon, was no more. They had been forced into exile, and they were now living in an alien culture. They struggled to remember the God whom they had once so fervently worshipped. Surely all that had once given meaning to their lives was gone, and they were living in a darkness that was almost worse than death. And then God called Ezekiel to give the people a different vision. God called Ezekiel to remind the people – just as we need to be reminded – that God not only creates life but also restores it, and that exile, darkness, and death are not God’s last word to them, even when they could not see how or where new life might be possible.

What could be more lifeless than the huge mass of “very dry” bones God commanded Ezekiel to walk around? “Mortal, can these bones live?” Ezekiel is dumbfounded by God’s question. Surely, the answer is “No!” Surely there will never be life again in these absolutely lifeless skeletons. Ezekiel gives the only possible answer: “O Lord, God, you know.” Indeed, God does know. For the God addressing Ezekiel is the God of promise, the God who fulfilled God’s promises by creating a nation out of the elderly and childless Abraham and Sarah, by delivering that nation from slavery in Egypt, by bringing that nation into a land of milk and honey, by entering into covenant with them, and by raising up judges, kings, and prophets. Who else but that God brought the people back to life – again and again?

And so yet again, through Ezekiel, God promises life to the Israelites. “Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live.” With God’s command come muscles, sinews, and skin, until the bones are all knit together and standing upright. Then comes the most important part: God commands the breath to come from the four winds and breathe upon these slain. And so it does. And what is this breath? This is the life-giving spirit of God, the ruach, the same Spirit that God breathed into the masses of dust in the creation story of Genesis, the dust that became human beings. And one more promise: God promises that, with God’s breath animating them as they come alive, the people will recognize and celebrate their dependence on God’s breath, they will “know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.”

“Mortal, can these bones live?” The same breath that God breathed into the very dry bones of the House of Israel, Jesus breathed into the son of the widow of Nain and the daughter of Jairus. Jesus breathed that same breath into an equally lifeless Lazarus. In the last sign of his identity as the Messiah, Jesus gave the clearest possible demonstration of God’s power over death and the grave. God breathed that same breath into the crucified and lifeless Jesus, raising him to resurrection life. The same breath, “the Spirit of him who raised Christ from the dead” came into our bodies when the waters of baptism flowed over us. That same breath moves in the world today, raising people, communities, and nations to new life – against all odds.

“Do you believe this,” Jesus asked Martha. Do we believe in God’s promises of restored life? Easter is two weeks from today. What do we really believe about death and restored life? On hearing of someone’s death, many of us say, “May her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.” Do we really believe that the souls of the dead are now with God, in a place of perfect peace, perfect joy, and perfect health? Isn’t the continued life of our lost loved ones, to say nothing of all those dead in wars and genocides, too much to hope for?

“Mortal, can these bones live?” Isn’t it easier to see all the dark places in our lives? Who could forget Auschwitz and the horrors that occurred there and at all the other concentration camps? Have we so easily forgotten the many descendants of forcibly exiled Africans who perished under a cruel system of slavery or were lynched during the Jim Crow era? We remember those lost in Rwanda, on September 11th, and in Darfur. We remember those lost when a tsunami struck Southeast Asia, or when a wall of mud came down in Washington on those living in houses that should probably never have been built.

And how about the dark places in our own lives? In our study of forgiveness this past week, we took the brave step of looking at those places in our lives where we need to repent, to change course, to get a new mind. We even considered the people to whom we might need to apologize, in order to truly reverse course. Where are the places of darkness and death in our communities? Can we forget those lost in fires in old ramshackle houses or murdered on the streets of our cities and towns? Stephanie Jaeger, a Lutheran pastor in Chicago tells of hearing Ezekiel’s prophecy at a service honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. The congregation hearing that prophecy “came alive” when the Baptist preacher called for changes in the mandatory sentencing laws in Illinois. “On any given day,” Jaeger tells us, “more than 10,000 men are housed in Cook County Jail in Chicago. Most of them are poor; almost all are men of color. One fifth of the men suffer from mental illness.”1 Where are the places where war and death still hold sway? Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Syria? Where are the places where modern-day slaves are forced into prostitution or sweatshops?

“Mortal, can these bones live?” You know all this. You have only to open your newspaper or your favorite news app. Even though our culture avoids dealing directly with death – people don’t “die” anymore, they “pass” – you don’t need me to remind you that we will all die, and that we live in a world of darkness, sin, and death. If you are here, it must be because you need to hear a different message. The congregation in Chicago needed to hear a different message. They needed to hear that God breathes new life into us when we are addicted, hopeless, guilty, depressed, and in pain.

And the church has a different message for us. We can’t help but hear it if we have “ears to hear.” We hear that different message not only in Scripture. We hear in the baptismal liturgy when the priest prays over the water: “We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.” We hear it sermons. Didn’t Ezekiel show us that good preaching can even raise the dead? In the Nicene Creed, we reaffirm our trust in “the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.” We hear it in the priest’s declaration of forgiveness, when I ask God to “strengthen you in all goodness, and by the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life.” We hear it in the exchange of peace: “The peace of the Lord be always with you.” We hear it as we receive Christ’s Body and Blood: “The body of Christ, the blood of Christ, keep you in everlasting life.” We hear it in our hymns. Even if you don’t like to sing, pay attention to the words of the hymns. In a few minutes we will sing, “They who eat of this bread” – i.e., the Eucharist – “they shall live forever.” Our last hymn will remind us that Jesus is, “enthroned in glory,” and, more important, “There for sinners thou art pleading: there thou dost our place prepare; ever for us interceding, till in glory we appear.”

Though we must travel with Jesus through the darkest places, though we must cry with the psalmist “out of the depths,” if we have ears to hear, we cannot miss the message that the church delivers to us at every turn: that God not only enlivens our natural life but also promises us life other than and beyond this world, a new creation, a new way of living that will come into being when this created existence ceases.

“Mortal, can these bones live?” The three great days of Holy Week are almost upon us. What will we say on Good Friday? Can the bones of the crucified man live? They did. Can our bones live? They will, because the “Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead” dwells in us, has been poured into us, because we live in him, with him, through him, and for him. We have God’s promise. All we have to do is trust in that promise.

1. Christian Century, Vol. 131, 7, April 2, 2014, p. 20.