BREATHING INTO DRY BONES

Scriptures:

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Romans 8:9-17

Toward the end of the series of sermons on our Lenten journeys when we talked about the raising of Lazarus, the Hebrew Scriptures text for that day was the familiar story of Ezekiel’s vision in the valley of dry bones. Because the focus on that date was so clearly on Jesus and Mary and Martha and Lazarus, we didn’t spend much time with that Ezekiel passage, and it’s sorta been floating around in my mind ever since. So, I want to, as it were, “step outside of” the lectionary today and spend some time with dry bones and the spirit of God that breathes new life into them.

As a reminder, here’s what I said a month-and-a-half ago about Ezekiel and his vision at the end of that sermon on Lazarus, which sets the theme for this sermon:

“Ezekiel’s vision in the valley of dry bones is like this. It is another sign of what God will do in God’s own time. God’s breath, God’s spirit, enters into what seems to be completely lifeless – unable to care or hope or move beyond anxiety ever again. The important part of Ezekiel’s vision is the promise: “…and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.” Even in a valley of dead, dry, withered up remnants – long after a time when they would seem to be vital once again – God in God’s own time gives them life in order that they shall know that God is the Lord.”

Of course, we are familiar with this passage mostly from the spiritual that we sang as children in order to learn about parts of the anatomy. It’s a bit embarrassing to listen to this spiritual with today’s heightened sensitivities, since its stylized language – “Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk aroun’” – reflects a patois that feels demeaning. However, according to Wikipedia, the music for this spiritual was written by James Weldon Johnson, one of the great poets and musicians of black culture. Perhaps the only other element of Ezekiel’s prophecy we could identify besides this valley is the “wheels within wheels” image.

Certainly, the valley of dry bones is a striking image. There’s a lot of Biblical imagery reflected in spirituals – remember when the choir sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Deep River” a few weeks ago – which is particularly strong when it comes to making truth come alive for us in our visual consciousness. While there are a lot of negative things that can be said about television (and I’ve said them myself) one thing that this omnipresent medium has done for us is to help us become a more visually oriented people. A documentary video that I helped produce nearly 30 years ago now was called The Power of Image, and it demonstrated how images hold on to our imaginations much more than, oh say, this sermon I’m preaching right now.

So, despite our somewhat embarrassed use of the language, I’m glad that we have a spiritual like “Dem Dry Bones” to help us get the image of Ezekiel’s valley planted in our heads. You see, what the image of the valley of dry bones taught Ezekiel and what he therefore was wanting to communicate to his people was what it meant to be dead and then to live again. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it, to we who are a post-Easter people. Ezekiel, of course, was not thinking in terms of an after-life or resurrection. Rather, he was concerned about death in this life – that is, he was writing for a people who were very much physically alive but who were dead to God’s will. And so the valley of dry bones – even though it sounds very arid and depressing – is a prophecy of hope. Israel was saying, “’Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’” And in response God is saying through Ezekiel, “’I am going to open your graves…O my people….. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live…..’” What a word of hope in the midst of the dry and barren place where they found themselves!

In many ways death-in-life is the most real of deaths. We have names we give to it, even though for the most part these are inadequate – names like depression, insensitivity, unawareness, sorrow, meanness, joylessness, even that old-fashioned word, sin. But the kind of death Ezekiel could characterize with dry bones goes deeper than this. Probably the one English word that comes closest to conveying the hopelessness of the kind of death-in-life Ezekiel was talking about is: despair. When we are in despair we are closest to what real death is like. The hopelessness of despair dries our bones, our minds, our hearts until physical death may seem like a relief.

Now, I don’t think I’m saying anything new here. Most of us have known those moments of despair which have a death-like quality to them. And at such times it doesn’t help much for preachers or anyone else to say that Christianity can keep you from falling into despair – that if you just believe hard enough you will have a sunny disposition and a joy-filled life. No, despair is a necessary part of the human condition. If adversity doesn’t touch us at some depth, then our smiling faces may just reflect a surface glow that does not really testify to the fullness of what God’s spirit does within our lives.

The English writer, Charles Williams, one of that group called the Inklings who was an intense Christian and who influenced both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, wrote a highly mystical novel called All Hallows’ Eve. It begins with a plane crash and two women who died in that crash, and then it follows them into their life-after-death experience and what that comes to mean especially for one of them, Lester. Before her death Lester had had very little experience with the kind of intensity we have been calling despair, so she is not well prepared for the meaning life-after-death can have. Here’s Charles Williams’ imaginative interpretation of what this means for Lester:

“…she had, on the whole, been fortunate in her passage and some

pleasantness in her past had always offered her a promise in the future.

This however was a quite new life. Her good fortune had preserved her

from any experience of that state which is – almost adequately – called

‘death-in-life’; it had consequently little prepared her for this life-in-death.

Her heart had not fallen – ever, ever – through an unfathomed emptiness,

supported only on the fluttering wings of everyday life; and not even

realizing that it was so supported. She was a quite ordinary, and rather

lucky, girl, and she was dead.”

Again, we who are a post-Easter people shouldn’t have too much difficulty with this idea, despite its mystical setting. What’s being said here is something we have heard all our lives – namely, that what we are and do in this life prepares us for the acceptance of life-after-death.

I’ve been reading a book that a friend of mine gave me for Christmas: Norman Mailer’s reflections “On God”, if you can believe such a thing, and he says something quite similar to this thought when he says, “I think at the moment we die, we are the sum of all the good and bad we’ve done, all the courage and cowardice we’ve exercised. And so…if we die with a desire to be reborn, I think it means a great deal to God.” (p. 98) (As an aside, Mailer then goes on to talk about his belief in reincarnation and building up karmic good will; he rather lost me there.)

What Charles Williams and, I believe, Norman Mailer are talking about is that how we respond to our moments of despair – this “death-in-life” that Williams is talking about – provides us with significant opportunities to prepare for “life-in-death”. This, of course, is the core message of the crucifixion, which is given its true significance by the resurrection. You’ve heard me use it before, but it’s such a lovely line that is so very appropriate here: from the off-Broadway musical “The Fantasticks”: “Without a hurt the heart is hollow.”

So, the important thing is not that we experience depression, despair, death-in-life, but rather what we do with it – how we use this death-in-life to prepare us for life-in-death. To do this we have resources well beyond our own will power. God tells Ezekiel, “’prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breath upon these slain that they may live.’” The Hebrew word, here translated as “breath” is ruah, which can also mean “wind”, but most significantly “spirit”. What God was asking Ezekiel to tell the people was that God’s spirit, which was breathed into human beings in creation, was still an essential part of our lives. We’ll pick this up again in three weeks when we talk about the trinity on Trinity Sunday, but as a quick note here a couple of weeks ago when I was talking with Samantha and Amanda in confirmation class about the Trinity we said that the Holy Spirit was God’s way of being with us always. Also, God’s Spirit was (and is) something that could be called upon in every situation: it comes from “the four winds”, which, as we know, is a symbol for the whole world. God’s spirit comes to us in the farthest corner to which we can run or in the farthest recesses of our hearts when we try to turn inward, like a deflated balloon. Even if, like that limp balloon, we come to the point where we feel there is no wind left in our souls, God’s Spirit breathes again and again, making these dry bones moist with the reality of love.

How do we know this Spirit during our own moments of death-in-life? We experience it through the Spirit of a people, the Spirit of adoption, and the Spirit of life.

There are all those accumulated relationships of a people to God’s Spirit that we have to call on – the Israelites and the Christian church. Ezekiel would never have made that symbolic descent into the valley of dry bones had he not been aware that his people needed to be renewed – as had been the case so many times in the past – by feeling God’s Spirit with them. For him, these skeletons did not signify just isolated individuals but the whole of his people. As God says to him, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel.” That word “house” is important, because it says that these people have come together with a closeness that is like a family. God’s Spirit was able to come alive for the Israelites precisely because there was this common bond uniting very diverse individuals. At its best, Christian community offers this same kind of family feeling, no matter how many differences there may be among us.

Through the communities of past and present we have access to the Spirit of a people. But also in our own lives we can sense the Spirit of adoption. As someone who has adopted two children, I can really identify with what Paul is saying in the passage we read from Romans about what this Spirit means. Paul says, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption….. (I)t is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ…..” (9:14-17a) To be adopted means to be wanted. We are desired by God even to the point of being made joint receivers with Christ of all the tradition that is marked by Christianity. If our experiences of despair – of death-in-life – can be understood as participation in Christ’s sufferings then we have linked the Spirit of adoption with our own human spirit. God’s Spirit thus opens up for us the whole of what it means to be adopted as children of God.

If we participate in the Spirit of a people, and if we accept the Spirit of adoption, we then come to know the Spirit of life. God has Ezekiel affirm as God’s word to the people: “’…when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people, I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live…..’” Centuries before the resurrection Ezekiel was able to make this kind of affirmation about life-in-the-Spirit replacing death-in-life. Living is so much more than just existing. The lives to which these dry bones were called was a life lived in God’s Spirit.

Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s wonderful play Death of a Salesman is a practically perfect example of someone who has let death-in-life overcome him, so that the breath, the Spirit of God is stifled. We are called by God’s Spirit not to let our own despair – our death-in-life – so overwhelm us. We do this by reaching out for the Spirit that Ezekiel, Paul, and Jesus have talked about. To be aware of the Spirit of the people, the Spirit of adoption, the Spirit of life is to take our death-in-life and turn it creatively into that life which is lived in the here-and-now, as well as in life-in-death. And this is the promise we have, which comes to us, marvelously, out of that dismal valley of dry bones: “…I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live…..’”

Amen

Dave Pomeroy

First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ

Las Vegas, NV

April 27, 2008