Community Church Sermons

The Fifth Sunday in Lent – March 17, 2002

"Preaching To The Bones”

Ezekiel 37:1-14

 

The best way to get to our camp in New Hampshire is by driving through a cemetery. I’ve told you on several other occasions – and forgive me for telling you one more time - that, if you follow Route 202 through Northern Massachusetts and into Southern New Hampshire, you come to a place where, on either side of the road, there are cemeteries – one for the Catholic folks, the other for the Protestants. And there, where the road divides these two cemeteries, there  used to stand a big yellow highway sign that said in large, bold, black letters, “Go Slow, Thickly Settled.”

 

And if you can draw a mental picture of that scene, and find some irony in the fact that these cemeteries would qualify as a thickly settled district, and that driving through it is the best way to get to the joy of a family vacation, then you are not far from one of the great truths of the Lenten Season.

 

Sometimes, we think that Lent is simply a path we follow to get to the experience of Easter. Forty days of not eating candy, or giving up beer, or of praying every day, or following the Lenten Bible readings – six weeks or so of disciplining ourselves so that we can appreciate Easter when it comes. Well, that’s not exactly the way it’s supposed to work.

 

No, Lent itself has a value. It has an importance all it’s own. To treat Lent as a mere passageway to another event is to miss it’s power, and in some respects, to diminish the meaning of Easter when it finally arrives.

 

The only way to the power of Easter, is through Lent. And Lent leads us smack dab into the middle of a cemetery.

 

I have a friend whose name is Joy. A number of years ago, Joy lost her son Barry to some mysterious illness. We all sat together for many days and nights in an Intensive Care Unit waiting room hoping beyond hope that Barry would survive. But he didn’t. And after his body was buried in a local cemetery, relatives and friends gradually made their way home. But Joy, Barry’s mother, remained tied to that place where her son was buried. Every day she would go there, and tend his grave. She would talk to Barry. And argue with God. And weep and wail and cry out in terrible pain. Joy spends a lot of her time in that cemetery.

 

I think Lent leads us into the middle of a cemetery because that’s where all human beings eventually gather. The harshest reality of our humanity is encountered there – the fact of our mortality. In the cemetery, we discover that in the grand sweep of things, we are as fragile as dust. Titles, accomplishments, power, wealth, position, education, intellect, genetics, family background mean nothing there. The best health insurance policy in the world will not keep us from arriving there in due time. And even before our own time comes, we will gather with people like Joy – and those of you who are mourning the loss of loved ones - and we will dwell there in the face of our own unbearable losses. And not only that, but we will experience moments in life when it seems as though we are dead even though we’re alive – like when we’re having serious marriage problems, or when family difficulties sap the life out of you, or when you’re facing a debilitating illness, or when a nation experiences something like September 11^th, or when others reject you and can’t accept you for who you are.  You’d be surprised at all the people you run into hanging out in life’s cemeteries even years before they die.

 

In our Scripture Lesson this morning, God takes the prophet Ezekiel on a field trip. The text says that God’s hand comes upon Ezekiel. I like that image. God’s hand comes upon Ezekiel. Kind of whisks him away. That hand pulls the prophet away from home. Away from work. Away from church. Away from all the things you and I might think God thinks are most important.

 

And where does God’s hand take Ezekiel? To the middle of a cemetery. For some reason, it is important to God to bring Ezekiel here to this awful place that the Bible describes as a valley filled with dry bones.

 

Why do you suppose God would do that?

 

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that religious people often forget what it means to be human. A friend of mine is a recovering alcoholic. He’s one of my heroes for the way in which he has taken control of his life with God’s help. But he will tell you of the days when he was literally in the gutter, and religious people would come and preach at him. They quoted Scripture to him. Warned him about going to hell. Promised him that, if he would just pray, God would take away the desire to drink. “What those religious people didn’t know about me,” he said years later, after his recovery had begun, “was that never a day went by when I didn’t cry out to God to make it all go away, but all there was from God was silence.” It was not until he hit rock bottom, and admitted that he had a problem that he was unable to solve by himself, that the recovery began. “Even then,” he said, “God never took away my desire to drink. It’s still very strong for me. But God gives me the strength to face it one day at a time.”

 

Sometimes religious people don’t have any idea of what it’s like to be human. They expect us to get over the death of a spouse simply by reminding us that our loved one is safe in heaven, and that it’s all a part of God’s will. But they don’t know what it’s like to be alone in the evenings when the hours become like days, and the house is so empty, and the couples all around you forget that you’re there not that you’re not a couple anymore. Religious people sometimes think that every marriage must be saved – despite the destruction wrought by an abusive partner. Sometimes, religious people think that every problem can be solved just by trusting God, and they forget that even St. Paul had a thorn in the flesh that wouldn’t go away, and that Jesus prayed to be spared from death but was killed anyways, and that there are some illnesses from which people are not healed, and some sorrows from which people are never lifted despite their faith. Sometimes religious people think that faith is nothing less than a handy tool by which we can make all of life’s hurts go away, and get what we want, and turn things to our own advantage.

 

Maybe that’s why God’s hand grabbed Ezekiel by the scruff of the neck that day, and whisked him out to that cemetery of dry bones. Maybe Ezekiel had to learn – like we do – that if we’re going to be effective ministers of God’s grace we’ve got to expose ourselves to the real world where people actually live. Someone recently told me that, as the violence in the Middle East has escalated over the past months, and wave after wave of suicide bombers have wrecked destruction in Israel, they find themselves torn between two thoughts. One is of absolute repulsion and rejection of that kind of senseless violence. But the other is of a strange kind of understanding. He told me that, when he visited Israel several years ago, and saw the abject squalor of the Palestinian refugee camps, the thought came to him at that time that children who grow up in such despair – with no hope of a future – are ripe for the pickings of terrorist groups. I don’t know whether that’s true or not. I grew up in a nice little Cape Cod style house in a middle class neighborhood at 35 Calumet Avenue in Worcester, Massachusetts. I’ve never in my life lived in a place where I didn’t have a chance at a future. How could I possibly understand what it’s like to be a Palestinian child? Can you? What do I know about what it’s like to be third or fourth generation welfare family poor? Or what it’s like to live as a black man? Or what it feels like to lose a child? Or what it means to be told I’ll never walk again? Or what happens to your faith when you are sexually abused as a child by a Protestant minister presumably representing the love of Christ? Yes, it happens among Protestants, too. Oh, there is so much of life that we know nothing about.

 

So God whisks Ezekiel out of the suburbs, and out of that big mega-church where theater lighting makes it seem as though the sun is always shining, and where true faith is equated with success. And God drags Ezekiel into the valley of dry bones. You see, only by embracing another person’s reality, and being willing to listen to them, and trying to understand, and being willing to be present in love with that person as they experience life can you ever learn to minister to them.

 

And then God asks Ezekiel a question. “Can these bones live?”

 

Will there ever be life again for those who mourn the death of loved ones – for those whose spirits are crushed in refugee camps – for those who face serious illnesses and the prospect of dying – for those hopelessly caught in a web of addiction – for a world that is filled with violence, and bruised by racism, and under attack by terrorists? Can these bones live?

 

And that’s the test of faith. Is the valley filled with the dried up bones of humanity the final reality of life? Is the cemetery our ultimate destination? Will there ever be peace in the Middle East? Will the poor among us ever be self-sufficient? Will healing ever come to the person who’s lost a spouse? Will I ever be able to live in the new limitations of my disability?

 

Can these bones live? That’s the question God asks Ezekiel. That’s the question God asks you and me. Can these dried up bones that surround us on every side live?

 

And for once in our lives, as in Ezekiel’s life, the moment has come for us to defer to God on this question. “Only you know the answer,” says Ezekiel.

 

And God says, “Preach to those bones, and see what happens.”

 

Now I’ve preached to some pretty tough crowds in my time. In fact, once a man had a heart attack in the middle of one of my sermons. So we told everybody to remain in their seats and we called 911. But when the EMT’s got there, it took them twenty-minutes to figure out which parishioner it was! Now that’s a tough crowd! But it doesn’t compare to Ezekiel’s congregation. Can you see him there, standing in the middle of this cemetery filled with dry bones, preaching to the bones?

 

And this is the message God tells Ezekiel to preach: “O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live…and you shall know that I am the Lord!”

 

Craig Barnes, writing in The Christian Century, says how foolish this must have looked. The Lord’s prophet standing in the middle of a pile of dead bones, telling them to not give up hope! 

 

And yet, this is the way of God, Barnes says. God’s words always make room for hope. And it is the hope that brings us back to life. Hope rises up from our bones and chooses to believe in spite of how it is.

 

So our job as people of faith is to preach to the bones. And the message is not one of judgment, not one of minimizing the pain of others, not one of trivializing the burdens people bear.

 

The message is that God is breathing his spirit into those dried out bones and they shall live! And we are present there with them in love as the proof of it!

 

So we hold Joy’s hand, and go out to the cemetery with her. Together, we weep, and we assure her that one day…

 

So we build this Child Advocacy Center, and we place our little drop in the bucket of fighting child abuse, and in love and support, we administer healing to these children all the while believing that one day…

 

So we reach out to both Israelis and Palestinians, and we visit shut-ins and those in hospitals, and we feed the hungry, and build homes for those who otherwise would have no home. And why do we do such things in the face of human hopelessness?

 

Because God is not done yet. Because today is not permanent. Even dry bones can live when God breathes His spirit into them!

 

And as Ezekiel stands there in the valley of dry bones – preaching to the bones - there is a rattling sound…and the bones start joining together…and flesh comes upon them…and they come to life!

 

Friends, go out to the cemetery this week, and see who’s hanging out there with dried out bones.

 

And then in a gentle spirit of love and hope…preach to those bones!!

 

And then leave the rest to God.