“Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” One by one, worshippers lined up on Ash Wednesday, here in our Sanctuary and in churches around the world, to hear these words and receive the sign of ashes pressed into a cross on their foreheads. These words, which come from Genesis, served as a reminder of our sinfulness and mortality, and ushered in the season of Lent. These 40 days for us are meant to be a time when we carry that cross of ashes into our daily lives, and examine ourselves more closely. As Jesus spent 40 days in the desert facing trial and temptation, we embark on a dry, dusty journey ourselves. And just when our bulletin insert hints of the promise of the celebration that is to come at the end of the season, our lectionary texts firmly place us back into stories marked by the frailty of life. We still have work to do before we can be Easter people.
Ezekiel beckons us to look at the valley. More than just swirling dust and dryness, here we are again confronted with the reminder of our mortality, gazing over a valley of dry bones. Death itself looks us in the face. The entire book of Ezekiel is both dramatic and disturbing. Barbara Essex describes it as:
a motion picture director’s dream. Not only does the book lend itself to all kinds of psychological analyses, it also is perfect for computer-generated graphics and animation. Ezekiel is filled with vivid descriptions and impossible feats of power complete with sound effects. Ezekiel is victim to hallucinations and weird behaviors. With the opening lines (see Ezek. 1:1-3), we know we are in for quite a ride. Ezekiel sees visions, hears voices, and acts out his prophecies to the point where we wonder if he suffers some kind of mental illness[i].
These cinematic images, of course, are meant to speak to the real situation of God’s people, Israel. It is believed that Ezekiel was written during the time of exile, and it is likely that he was a priest taken into captivity to Babylon towards the beginning of the 6th century, BCE. His role as priest continues, turning into prophet as he speaks to a people devastated and trapped.
Ezekiel’s vision is given for a people who have lost heart, who are suffering a death of the spirit, a living death in exile in a foreign land. Their temple has been destroyed, their holy city plundered, their leaders maimed and put in chains, their soldiers put to the sword, their young men and women either killed or dragged off into a foreign land. Ezekiel witnesses the soul of his people gradually wither and die, becoming as lifeless as a valley of dry bones[ii].
This text prompts us to stand in the valleys of our own lives, our own worlds, and examine those dry, desolate, and even dead places. Those places that have lost all life-giving energy and are run to the ground. Perhaps this is a description of areas of your life, or even the entirety of your life right now, where you are just completely worn, burned out, drained, and depleted. Maybe it’s a relationship that has lost its spark or become dusty from neglect. The idea of a “dark night of the soul” is familiar to us, and Ezekiel puts the spotlight on those areas of our lives. The places where we are struggling the most, and where life seems to be sucked right out of us. Beyond our own personal lives, there are many valleys of dry bones that exist in our world, too. Places that have been torn apart by violence and war quite literally become graveyards. We know countless people struggle with mental illnesses and other psychological battles that isolate and threaten what is life-giving. This is particularly true and especially sad for many veterans who have served our country as they return from service. So many issues swirl in our country and world that seem to have no hope for a future. The political divides seem too wide to allow anything to have life. And although we live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we have children who are hungry and people without shelter. Dry bones are everywhere. The valleys are full.
Our gospel text reveals a similar finality. John 11 tells the story of the death of Jesus’ friend, Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha. We read of how the news that Lazarus is sick is conveyed to Jesus, who remains out on the mission field for several more days. By the time he gets to the house in Bethany, Lazarus is dead. Grief invades this story. Here is where the shortest verse in all of scripture is found, “Jesus wept.” In this, the form for the verb used is one of the strongest possible. It indicates a fierceness beyond parallel, the kind of overwhelming, gut wrenching, violent crying that comes in our darkest moments. Some commentators suggest that this moment is about more than Lazarus. Jesus is experiencing the very human grief of losing a friend, and at the same time lamenting the state of the world and all of its darkness; the reality that death still has its hold on the earth[iii]. This would be fitting particularly in the fourth gospel, and also suits the placement of this story within John, as the hinge point between stories of Jesus’ signs and wonders and the passion narrative. And Martha’s words of guilt hang heavily around Jesus in this moment by a closed tomb, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
A closed tomb. A valley of dry bones. Such images are finite. The literal end of the road. It is hard, almost impossible, to have hope in these moments. In the many instances that lead us to these places, we are left with a sense that anything we do is futile; we are helpless, subject to the gloominess that surrounds and even engulfs us. The closing line for the sermon Ezekiel is preaching could come with “and then everyone dies.” It is as bleak as it can get. The question comes to Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” For us, “can anything be done to change this reality of lifelessness and hopelessness?” The cynical answer, as well as the realistic one when looking over a valley of dry bones, is no. What is done is done. It is what it is. Dry bones cannot live again. Why would God ask such a fruitless question?
The wise prophet replies with the only answer possible – only God knows. The story of Ezekiel reminds us that life itself is utterly and totally reliant on God. And it offers a glimmer of hope that the work of God is to bring new life, even when things seem to be completely dead. Here, in this ancient text from our Hebrew Scriptures, we read some of the first hints of resurrection. God instructs Ezekiel to prophesy, to preach, to these dry, brittle, dusty, well beyond life bones. This is not the end of their story. And we see it come to life, as sinews and muscles and skin again cover the bones assembling together. As the old spiritual goes, “Dem bones, dem bones gonna rise again. Now hear the word of the Lord[iv].”
So the bones are assembled. But they aren’t complete. God has more work to do. The final step, and the most important one, is the gift that God gives to these bones. From the four winds, God breathes new life, new spirits, new breath, into these bones. Ruach in the Hebrew. The same wind that was breathed into the first humans is again breathed into these dry bones. And they stand up, fully assembled and now, full of life. We might even imagine them dancing in what once was a graveyard. Hope is restored. Life has returned. And the only way any of this is remotely possible is through the gift that God gives – the gift of breath.
The vision Ezekiel conveniently comes with an interpretation – that dry valley of bones was Israel, dried up and cut off, sinful and punished in exile, taken to the point of death. But God is a God who can even open the graves, and breathe new life into what seems lost. God gives the people Israel another chance at life, with the promise that they will return to their homeland.
Just as God breathed new life into the valley, putting the lives of God’s people back together, God’s promise to us today is new life. As preacher and speaker Nadia Bolz-Weber says:
God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and resurrecting us from the graves we dig for ourselves through violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance, and our addictions, and God keeps loving us back to life over and over again[v].
It comes to us from the gift of breath. And it comes to us in the darkest, driest, most dead places in our lives. That is what resurrection is all about.
You know how you hear the emergency instructions before you take-off on a flight? The flight attendants will always reference, that in the case of the loss of cabin pressure, air masks will come down from the ceiling for you to quite literally be able to breathe. You know the instructions. Put on your own mask, and then help others. God’s gift of breath can be our oxygen masks, particularly in times of distress or trouble. God’s gift of breath can rescue us from even the hardest places in our lives, the places we thought were lost causes, and breathe new life back into us. One more thing about those oxygen masks to keep in mind – the flight attendant will remind you that the bag may not fully inflate, but to trust that oxygen is still flowing. This is much like our work of faith sometimes, especially trying ones. We may not be able to see God’s work in our lives, but in faith we trust that God’s breath is flowing.
Jesus looks to Martha and declares, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). In this pivotal statement, the air mask falls, and Jesus invites Martha to take a breath. But although she does, and agrees to the assertions he makes, she isn’t ready yet to fully embrace all that breath implies. She still clings to those dry bones, mindful of the realities of death. She laments that her brother is dead and stays in the valley. Then, after Jesus instructs those present to “take away the stone,” (v. 39) she protests again, with the practical reality that a sealed tomb with a several days old body will absolutely stink. She holds back from the possibilities that Christ provides for change, even though it is change that she wants. In many ways, Martha is in a tomb of her own. And I think the words Jesus speaks to Lazarus and to her, and to anyone trapped and confined by death in any of its forms, are meant to be a freeing breath, “COME OUT!” (v. 43).
We worship a God of resurrection, even though we ourselves may be in valleys of dry bones or tombs of darkness. The good news is, to these difficult places where hope seems lost and all seems to be at an end, God gives us breath. Life-giving breath. As we enter these final days of Lent, my hope and prayer for you is that you will take that breath, and ask God to renew your spirits. That you will remember that God breathes even into the most difficult places in your life, and offers hope. Breathing the breath of God is the first step to experiencing the powerful, life-changing, transforming resurrection that we will celebrate in just two weeks. And doing so can be as simple as taking a breath. Your breath can become your prayer, heightening your awareness of God’s presence in your life. So take deep breaths. Lots of them. And as you do, may God’s breath be a gift to you, and may you have life. Amen.
~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford
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[i] Barbara J. Essex, Bold and Brazen: Exploring Biblical Prophets, (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2010).
[ii] James A. Wallace, “Homiletical Perspective: Ezekiel 37:1-14,” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 1, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010).
[iii] “Fifth Sunday in Lent,” Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV – Year A, Walter Brueggemann, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Gaventa, James D. Newsome, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995).
[iv] “Dem Bones,” Written by James Weldon Johnson. First recorded by Bascomb Lunsford in February 1928. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dem_Bones
[v] Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, as quoted by the Clergy Coaching Network Facebook Page, April 1, 2017 (https://www.facebook.com/clergycoachingnetwork/photos/a.553233241362454.130264.546972935321818/1496180503734385/?type=3&theater).
