Dem Bones

                                            Ezekiel 37: 1-14

             

 

 

          Yesterday, I was listening to a college professor talk about a study he and others had conducted. They rigged Monopoly games so that one player has most of the money and power from the outset. When they won and were interviewed about the game, all the winners’ responses had to do with various moves they had made. They completely ignored the fact that they had the upper hand from the beginning, that they were favored with more money. They said nothing about good luck. That same team conducted other similar tests to weigh the tendency of people to react certain ways in certain sets of circumstances. Their findings were very predictable. In fact, similar studies have been conducted by a number of famous universities for a period of over forty years, and the results never vary. Their conclusions are that people who are advantaged by wealth or power quickly learn how to take their good fortune for granted. Not only that, they fairly quickly lose their ability to be sympathetic or empathetic to their fellow man. Put in simple terms, they thumb their noses at those mundane rules of life that the rest of us have learned to follow.

         Recently, I was at a synagogue during Sabbath worship. It was very interesting as a Christian to watch these devout people, direct descendants of Abraham and Moses and David, as they read from the Torah. Their worship was moving, and yet as I watched and listened to the reading and liturgy from the same books that you and I call the Old Testament, I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of sorrow that these, the chosen people of God from the beginning, stop right at the edge of the grace that God has offered through his son Jesus. In the next ten days, they will celebrate Passover, while Christians will go to the cross and then celebrate the resurrection of the Son of God. The Jews are still a “works” religion, while Christianity points to Jesus not only as Messiah but as Savior of all mankind.

          Think about it. In the eyes of religious history, the nation of Israel had it all. They were God’s chosen. While we played Monopoly with the Iron, the nation of Israel got to move around the board with the Rolls Royce.  While the Gentiles were trying to scrape up the religious capital to buy Baltic Avenue, the nation of Israel was getting monopolies like Boardwalk and Park Place. They had the Law and the Prophets.

          And yet, Israel couldn’t get it right. First, the Northern kingdom fell and later Judah followed.  Rescue after rescue after rescue, from the garden to Sodom to the Exodus to Sinai, and yet, the more that Israel benefitted from a playing field built in its favor, the more it became complacent and the more it acted ungrateful and unimpressed. Israel acted just like the participants in the Monopoly study.  It was so proud of itself; it felt so vested, that it never could take the time to remember who it was and how it got there.

          In the 37^th chapter of Ezekiel, the exiled prophet says that the hand of the Lord is upon him, a claim he makes several other places in the book. Ezekiel and his people Israel are in exile and their situation looks completely hopeless. Not only is the Temple gone, but so are most of the people.  They are living in the lands of their victors and their identity is practically gone. It is to this backdrop of hopelessness and despair that God speaks through his prophet to his people.

Doesn’t this story have a ring of familiarity? It is the story of the cripple at the Sheep gate who had all the excuses about why he couldn’t get to the pool. It is the story of Nicodemus who, for all his education and training and wealth, could not grasp the power of God to transform the human heart. At the end of the day, these are not stories about people or places or nations. They are stories about God.  

Lucky for us…and the nation of Israel, that it is not God’s story. The hand of the Lord was upon Ezekiel and God’s Spirit set him down in the middle of a valley of dry bones. The dry bones were the hopeless, exiled nation of Israel, or the hopeless cripple at the pool, and even the hapless Rabbi Nicodemus who couldn’t see the power and face of God in plain view. God asked Ezekiel: “Son of Man, Can these bones live?” And the wise prophet said to God: “You know.”

Yes, God does know. God told Ezekiel to prophesy over those bones, the bones of a nation gone bad, a nation corrupt, a nation in despair. A rattling sound was heard and bones came together. They were tied together with sinew, then flesh came upon them. And Ezekiel is looking at a valley of people the size of a great army, but with no breath, and with no breath, there was no real life in these people.

Where was their hope? The nation of Israel had run out of gas, just as so many of us have done in our own lives. What could it do? What can we do? Read on. God said to Ezekiel: Prophesy! Call for breath, and the prophet did as he was commanded. And the Scripture tells us that “the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.”

When God chooses to act, things happen. God chose to act in that valley of dry bones. God brought the nation of Israel back to the Promised Land. God brought them through many more watershed events in their history, just as he has with us.  We know now that God’s people are those who come to believe in him and in the life, death and resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ. What we also need to realize is that his power and authority transcend all things human, all things finite. As it was in Bethesda and in Jerusalem, it also was in the days of the exile. God can raise us from the valleys of our lives, from the depths of our despair, from the hopelessness of our plight, whatever it might be, by the simple breath of his Spirit. He did it for Israel, He did it on the cross, and he does it for us even now.

“And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord. I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”