April 02, 2017
Dr. Susan E. Moorefield
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year A
“Can These Bones Live?”
When you think of this passage in Ezekiel, your Sunday School brain may start singing—Dem bones,
Dem bones, Dem dry bones-- Ezekiel connected dem dry bones--- the foot bones connected to the
ankle bone, ankle bone is connected to the leg bone.
It is such a cute little catchy song for children, that if this is the only hook we have to hang the story of
the Ezekiel on, then we miss understanding the catastrophic place where Ezekiel is---not just in this
passage, but throughout this book.
The book of Ezekiel begins, reading from the Message, “When I was thirty years of age, I was living
with the exiles on the Kebar River. On the fifth day of the fourth month, the sky opened up and I saw
visions of God.”
There is Ezekiel, minding his own business, probably just sitting by the River of Kebar, maybe he was
even fishing…but there he was…in Babylon. Ezekiel is sitting in Babylon.
The Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar has invaded Judah. Judah is the Southern and only remaining
Kingdom of God’s people. This invasion lasts a series of years—with one deportation of folks and
then second deportation of folks to Babylon. Ezekiel is part of this second group deported.
And God finds Ezekiel living in Babylon by the Kebar River---and chooses him to be a prophet.
Ezekiel finds himself preaching to some folks who are in complete denial---This group says things
like, “God won’t let anything bad happen to us. We are God’s chosen people.” While another group
realizes how absolutely awful the situation is, and they are in complete despair: “Everything that we
have ever known has ended, and life is not worth living.” Ezekiel is called to be the prophet for all
these folks.
Ezekiel has these incredible visions right off the bat. They sound more like scenes from some
dramatic horror-style movie than visions we would expect from God! There is a great dust storm and
fire balls and creatures with four faces—a human face, a lion face, an ox face and an eagle face—all
on one body and that’s just the beginning—they have wings and hands. You are going to have to
read it!
If you are having these kinds of visions, then you really want just to wake up. But this whole book
goes on and on with these kinds visions—just disturbing visions. But this is really a disturbing time for
the People of God who have been dragged out of the Promised Land and are living in a land of
foreigners.
And God keeps picking Ezekiel up and putting him down somewhere else—which sounds like those
three Christmas Ghosts —from Dickens’ Christmas Carol where Ebenezer Scrooge is picked up and
put down somewhere by those visiting Ghosts throughout the night. And Ebenezer doesn’t always
participate willingly.
Ezekiel even writes, “The Spirit lifted me and took me away. I went bitterly and angrily. I didn’t want to
go. But God had a grip on me. I arrived among the exiles…at Tel Aviv. I came to where they were
living and sat there for seven days, appalled.” (Ez. 3:14-15)
Are you starting to get the picture? And that was in chapter 3—the valley of bones is in chapter 37.
Ezekiel has been picked up and put down and had these horrible visions and all sorts of other things
at God’s command.
The Message Bible starts our text for this morning this way, “God grabbed me. God’s Spirit took me
up and set me down in the middle of an open plain strewn with bones. He led me around and among
them--- a lot of bones! There were bones all over the plain—dry bones, bleached by the sun.
God said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
And you can almost hear the potential tone in Ezekiel’s voice, “Master God, only you know that.”
Ezekiel has been through enough and seen enough that he knows to give this answer.
He is standing in a valley of bones. Dry bones. When you live in the Southwest, you understand the
complexities of the word dry in ways that people living in other places may never know.
These bones are dry, bleached, and worn. These aren’t fresh bones of newly dead people. This is a
lifeless sea of dead, dried out bones.
Now before we just start writing this text off as yet another vision in the myriad of visions of this
prophet whose book still has several more chapters to go--Take a moment. Close your eyes if you want to. Can you see that valley? Do you know what dry
bones look like lying on the sand? Can you even imagine what it feels like to stand there in that valley?
No water, no life, even the air is stale and empty…can you think of any better way to describe a
sense of loss, despair, grief, emptiness, depression, hopelessness, loneliness?
If you have lived long enough to qualify to live in Sun City, then you have stood in the valley of those
bones. Your valley may have looked a little different.
Maybe it looked like your spouse of many years deciding that the marriage was over. And you just
found yourself in that valley.
Maybe it looked like the loss of a job or a career.
Maybe that valley looked like a family member or friend who turned their back on you and betrayed
you.
Maybe it was a house fire, a car accident, a cancer diagnosis.
Maybe it was having to leave your home and move into an assisted living facility, or giving up your car
keys, or watching the one you love slowly slipping away from you as their mind was becoming more
and more confused.
If you get live long enough, then you, too, will find yourself in this valley. And like Ezekiel, you may
wonder how in the world you got here---and what in the world God is going to do---if anything.
These far crazy visions don’t seem so far away when you really start to think about them.
We hear these very feelings in the words of Psalm 22---words that we will hear in the coming weeks
as we stand at the foot of the cross. The Psalmist writes:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And later:
“I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within
my breast; my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the
dust of death.”
The psalmist could have written, “I am in the valley amid the dry bones.”
But Ezekiel’s vision continues:
God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones---and when Ezekiel starts preaching---the whole valley
awakens. And the noise from the awakening is loud and rattling. And it wasn’t just the bones that
were put back together—but then sinews and muscles and skin covered them. It was full body
resurrection---except there was not breath in these bodies. The air was still stale and empty.
God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the breath—the breath that moved over the waters at creation. The
breath that God breathed into nostrils of Adam when he was formed from the dust of the earth.
Ezekiel speaks to this breath: “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain that
they may live.”
And the breath filled the vast multitude, and they became alive.
God says to Ezekiel, “Go tell all those folks who say their hope is lost and that they are cut off
completely---Go tell them---I will bring you home, and you will know that I am the Lord. I will put my
spirit within you, and you shall live.”
You may be in the middle of the valley—there is no life anywhere to be seen, but God does not leave
you there! God will breathe on you, and you will be filled with life, and hope, and joy, and resurrection.
Our God is a God of resurrection and new life.
It is such an incredible message of hope to a people who had lost everything—that it took an
incredible vision to see and to understand it.
And the Psalmist, the one who asked, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
The Psalmist isn’t left in the valley either but ends the Psalm with the words of hope and resurrection:
“All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord;
And all the families of the nations shall worship before God.
For dominion belongs to the Lord who rules over the nations…
Posterity will serve the Lord; future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim God’s
deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that the Lord has done it.”
May we look with hope towards the Message of resurrection and new life that we will witness with the
coming of Easter.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.