Sermon: Can These Bones Live?

Can these bones live?

         Here we are, the final Sunday of our Lenten sermon series where we’ve been, at least in a broad-brush stroke kind of way, re-telling the overarching story of the first Testament—Hebrew Scripture.

         Re-telling the first 11 chapters of Genesis, where the priests and poets away in Babylon, faced with strange stories of all sorts,
oppressing, violent, enslaving, arrogant, exclusive, stories…
told better stories, truer to the God who continued to be faithful to them, stories that allowed them to survive and to continue to trust in God.
Stories of liberation, kindness and courage, peace, humility, and inclusion.

         Retelling the tales of the Patriarchs and matriarchs,
the dysfunctional family who God makes a promise to,
who God blessed, to be a blessing to others.

         Retelling, re-membering, Moses,
 the Mediator between God and the people.

         Retelling the sordid-sacred history of the Kings of Israel and Judah
—how in the eyes of God everything looks different.

         Retelling, finally, today,
the prophets and their revelation of judgment, lament, and hope.

Prayer

         We left the story of Hebrew Scripture with the centralization of worship & leadership in Jerusalem,
the Kingdom splitting,
the North’s dispersion by Assyria,
and eventually the Southern Kingdom’s exile in Babylon.

         The exile, an event that looms so large that it permanently altered the imagination of God’s people.
The Babylonians destroyed the temple—God’s house!
What now?
For a WHOLE generation all those who could read and write were taken away to Babylon and those who remained in the land were colonized and sorely abused.

         Yet, from this time of terror and uncertainty, there came an era of ferment,
a great outpouring of Holy Writ
—the joining of the traditions of God’s people up to this point
—scripture itself
—Hebrew Bible itself.
After all, when everyone who can read and write is stuck in one place with nothing to do but long for that which is absent…
Folk singing songs to one another like the 137’s Psalm:
“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion…
How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?
If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill.
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.”
         When you get people of such passion and pathos gathered together,
surely God is going to do something! …………
(perhaps there is a lesson here for us, as we dwell in our little exiles?)

         And one such strain of imagination and interpretation of the exile, was that of the prophets. The prophets who preached Judgment, lament, and hope.

Judgment:

         “You all have broken the covenant with God
—that promise that even that trickster Jacob couldn’t break…
Your injustice and idolatry, your wanton and wayward ways… your abandonment of God has made God abandon you.”

Lament:

         “Look at the beautiful city, once so full of people—now she sits alone, she weeps bitterly at night, no lover to comfort her, all her friends… enemies.”

Hope:

         Have you read Jeremiah 30 or Isaiah 40?

         “Comfort O’ comfort my people… I hear the screams of panic, the day that is awful beyond words, but you shall be delivered! Your shackles shall be smashed, you prisoners shall be freed!”

         Yes, the prophets with their judgment, lament, and hope
—God’s gift to them in an impossible, incomprehensible, time…

         Perhaps, none were more effected by the horror of the Exile, than Ezekiel...

Poor Ezekiel—born in times of prosperity—only to see his people’s continual decline.

Poor Ezekiel—witness to the siege & slaughter of Jerusalem.

Poor Ezekiel—taken as a ransom, kidnapped, with the royal family and the priestly houses and brought to Babylon.

Poor Ezekiel—who witnessed his wife’s death, and used his method of grieving as an example to the people
—"stiff upper lip all!”

Ezekiel who warned the people with signs—Holy bug-out-bags and burnt facial hair.

Ezekiel who knew God as a spurned lover, as well as a mama lion caring for her cubs.

Ezekiel who castigated the people as price gougers and murderers, idolaters and adulterers.

         Ezekiel, who when he heard of the temple’s destruction, received a vision of God’s throne like none had seen before him,
the throne burst forth from the temple
—God’s glory following after the people as they were taken away into exile
—even there they were not abandoned!

         Ezekiel, faced with the people dispersed by death and by distance, was asked a challenging question:

         “Can these bones live?”

         Plucked up by the hand of God and placed at the scene of the slaughter
—those killed by the Babylonians, the wrecked remains of his nation
—mass graves.

         “Can these bones live?”

         Dusty remains of aunts and uncles
—his own wife even,
all picked clean by birds and by time,
the decades since they were first separated.

         “Can these bones live?”

         They were so dry!

         “Can these bones live?”

         He spoke to them,
spoke the horror he had held in, so silently, so long,
speaking those things he never got to say,
spoke of the loss and the void in his heart!

         “Can these bones live?”

         They rattled and gathered together
—united as one again,
bone to bone,
muscle to muscle,
tendon, flesh, skin, all together…

         “Can these bones live?”

         There they were, the very people of God before him
—standing their, inanimate, un-animated, without spirit!

         “Can these bones live?”

         There they all stood, exiles and the exhumed, one in the same
—the wholesome, holy, spark of life snuffed out by sorrow,
standing, yes, but cut off from the breath of God.
The survivors as well as the slaughtered, tired and lifeless.

         Then there was a breath! There was Spirit!

         “Can these bones live?”

         Yes.

         Yes!

         The whole people of God, called out of the grave, united again,
just as spirit and skin and tendons and muscles and bones united again
—they too, no longer cut off!
The people shall return!
The exile shall end!

         

         And, not them alone.

         Ezekiel saw again the throne of God, hovering in the sky
saw it again, this time returning, holiness had been torn from the people, the temple was abandoned… but the glory of God, God’s fullness, Ezekiel saw, flying back, returning!

Because these bones live!

Amen