The Feast of Pentecost May 24, 2015
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
Ezekiel 37: 1-14 + Psalm 104: 24-34, 35b + Romans 8: 22-27
John 15: 26-27; 16: 4b-15
Come Holy Spirit, fill our hearts and kindle in us the fire of your love; Send forth your Spirit and we will be created and you will renew the face of the earth.
Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones
Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones
Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones
Now hear the word of the Lord.
This old spiritual was originally sung by slaves as they worked in the fields and in the homes of their owners. If ever a text must have spoken to a collective people, I can imagine that this odd vision story from the prophet Ezekiel spoke volumes. I can imagine that the future seemed to them to be a parched place where there was not much hope, where their existence seemed like a dry valley, void of any life to speak of, without any way of regenerating itself.
The genre of music known as the Negro Spiritual was birthed out of a desire of a people to tell their own story and a reality that limited the means by which the slaves could do so without punishment. So they began to create songs to sing as they worked – some in a call and response style, some with easy to remember refrains, but all of them connected in some way or another to the great Biblical narrative.
Their owners had no clue that those workers in their fields and homes were singing songs of lament over their own lives and hope in the promises of God. But as they toiled in oppression and abuse and hopelessness, the Word of God breathed in and through them in spiritual song.
This reading from Ezekiel today is not a literal story. It was never meant to be imagined as having actually happened. Ezekiel was a strange prophet – he is rather famously known for his odd visions. And this story is just that – a strange vision meant to be a metaphor for God’s action in the lives of God’s people.
But it is not without at least some historical context. In order to weave this strange vision from the heart of God, Ezekiel would draw on the times in his own life and the lives of his people when hope seemed elusive and when death and dry bones were all they could see for miles.
We can assume that Ezekiel went with God’s people into exile in Babylon. The people of Israel lived through times of great violence and war and bloodshed. They were taken into exile as a result of such violence and their ranks were added to ten years later when what remained of Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. Dry bones in a valley would literally remind Ezekiel and the Israelites of their many dead soldiers, crushed after being defeated by the enemy. The hopelessness of their situation simply took all of the life out of them.
History teaches us that such situations of hopelessness, of defeat, of living exiled lives, happen in cycles and on many different levels. I was talking with a high school student a few weeks ago and she said that she felt that the presence of such evil in our world left very little room for a hope filled future. She wondered about the wisdom of bringing children into a world where there is so little tolerance for differences, where women and minorities are oppressed, in some parts of the world legally so, and where terrorist groups mete out revenge and violence in the name of religion.
As I listened to her, I had one of those “wow, I’m getting older” moments. Because I remembered a time when I thought the same sorts of things. When Russia was the group we feared, rather than ISIL, and when women couldn’t even get a credit card in their own name, and when one never spoke of one’s sexuality if you weren’t “straight” for fear of being outcast or worse.
And then I thought about my own parents as they used to talk about blackout shades and the terrible acts of the Nazis and how we were enemies of Japan and Germany. And how their black classmates had to go to a separate school and eat at a separate lunch counter.
We could go back, to every generation, and name the view as we stand looking out at a valley filled with dry bones.
In our own lives, in deeply personal ways, we have all known, or we will know, times when life seems like a long dry, dusty spell. When there are more signs of death than life. As one commentator noted; “”Who among us has not stood at some time or other by the grave of their hopes? Who has not faced a situation in which any possibility of recovery seemed to be ruled out in advance?” [1]
The Church can also make connections to this vision of dry bones. We have heard for many years now, but most especially in the past decade, that the institution of the Church is undergoing great change. That fewer and fewer people are able to find what they are seeking in congregational settings, especially those that are considered “mainstream.” Just this month a new Pew Research study confirmed these fears as they reported that “the Christian share of the U.S. population is declining while the share of Americans who do not identify with any organized religion is growing. These changes affect all regions in the country and many demographic groups.” [2]
And I confess to you, and this is for all intents and purposes preaching to the choir, so to speak, that this pastor struggles mightily with our own declining numbers in worship. As a congregation, we are growing in ‘official membership’ but our average worship attendance numbers, which the ELCA asks us to track and report, are slowly but steadily declining. And I ask myself in the middle of the night “What can we do? What program will save us? What can I say? Do we change our worship time? What do we do?” and like Ezekiel, I look out, through my own vision and see only dry bones.
“Then the Lord said ‘Mortal, can these bones live? ‘ I answered ‘O God, only you know.’”
Today is the Feast Day of Pentecost. Some call it the birthday of the Church and we have the option this day of hearing the story of how all of the languages began to speak the word of God. And I love that story. And little by little I think our Church and even our congregation is beginning to hear that story. It’s not about being Norwegian or Swedish or Finnish or Danish or German or Ethiopian or French or Russian….it’s about the wideness of the Gospel. And I hope we’re starting to get that.
But on this day, we are hearing the story of Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones because we need to remember what happens there. God gave Ezekiel a job to do. Ezekiel had to prophesy. He had to name what God was doing in the world. He had to tell the story. And in the meantime, God was putting flesh on those dry bones. And not just flesh but everything that would hold them together….skin and sinews, which are connective tissues.
But even with skin and sinews those bones could not live. Not without the holy breath of God. Breath that was gathered up from the four winds and breathed into those dead bodies until they were standing on their feet – a vast multitude of them.
This is not a story about a literal resurrection of the dead, sisters and brothers. This is a story about what happens when we are filled with the holy breath of God….when we are enlivened and empowered and brought back to new life. And this doesn’t happen because of us. Those bones didn’t live because Ezekiel told the story. God commanded Ezekiel to prophesy so that when new life happened, he would remember who had caused it to be so.
May it also be so for us. Amen.
[1] This quote is unattributed but frequently used by many preachers.