Service on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/100064617886792/videos/839139848726950 and YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmoU4CtGgpQ
Ezekiel, a prophet and a priest, knew trouble. He knew pain and loss. He had been among the first deported from Jerusalem when Babylon conquered Judea. He was in Babylon when 10 years later the temple was destroyed–making the worst case scenario a devastating reality.
Imagine what it must have felt like to be Ezekiel, to be the people those exiled in Babylon hearing of the all that had happened in Jerusalem. Imagine the hopelessness, the grief, the feeling that the world as you know it has ended–nothing will ever be the same.
Those are the feelings of dry bones–grief and sorrow, hopelessness that seeps down into your body, that makes your muscles heavy, that lives in your bones. We are cut off, finished, hope has perished.
So if we were asked, in the valley of dry bones if they could live, we would probably not be as political as Ezekiel–not really answering–we would probably just say no. No, these sun bleached bones, this pile of mixed up bones, they cannot live.
December 1st was World AIDS Day. I keep running across these posts where friends, families, lovers can post stories of who they lost to AIDS. The stories are full of grief, regret, and love. I imagine that for many at that time, there was a feeling that could be described as dry bones. Before it was known how AIDS was transmitted, it was just that gay men were getting sick and dying–so that must be what will happen. And then before medications, AIDS was synonymous with death.
Like the bones, many were abandoned by family, rejected from society, ignored, forgotten. If someone had asked: Can these bones, can these infected, live? the answer was no.
Recently, one post was different.
Juan wrote his own story of growing up in a toxic household, having been sexually assaulted as a child, and having been kicked out of his home at 14.
At 16 he started getting sick, and then sicker. By the time he got a positive HIV test and was hospitalized, his viral load was 3 million and his T-cells count was 40. He nearly died that first hospitalization.
“The kid you see in the picture—the virus almost killed him physically, but it did kill any potential for him to just be a kid, a teenager. My childhood was not ok, but I’d like to believe that those men that succumbed to the virus back in the 80s, alone and disowned, they were my guardian angels back when I was sick.
“I’m 37 years old now. My T-cells are 1,260, and my viral load is undetectable. By the grace of God and my doctors, I made a full recovery. I owe my life to all the people that stood up and demanded for the government to do something while facing death in the 1980s. My survival is their victory.” by Juan Torres #whatisrememberedlives”
I think Juan was onto something Ezekiel experienced in that valley–there can be life. And we don’t do it alone.
Here’s the thing about Ezekiel’s vision–God could have just given Ezekiel a vision of God knitting the bones, tendons, muscles, and skin back together. God could have taken Ezekiel there and just said: watch this!
But that’s not what happened. God told Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones.
And God could have breathed into each one of these bodies that stood there, God could have sent the Spirit to enliven the re-created bones now bodies.
But that’s not what happened. God told Ezekiel to prophesy to the winds–to all directions, to bring breath and spirit back to these bodies.
There is something about this experience that requires Ezekiel to participate, for Ezekiel to speak life, to speak hope, to call on the Spirit of God to move through the valley, through noses and lungs. It’s as if God was saying to Ezekiel: you are part of this work. you are part of bringing hope.
“On June 8, 2013, approximately 2,500 volunteers from across the United States gathered on the National Mall to lay out 1,018,260 handcrafted bones as a visible petition against on-going genocide and mass atrocities. The installation of the bones was the highlight of a three-day event that included speakers from across the anti-genocide movement, a candlelight vigil, educational activities and an advocacy day.
“An important aspect of the project was to raise awareness about the crises happening in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Sudan including Darfur, Myanmar, Syria and Somalia.
“Why did we all feel so passionately about this unlikely vision? On the simplest level, the spectacle of one million bones on the Mall was meant to be beautiful and arresting. Indeed the sight was breathtakingly beautiful, but it was painful as well. Laid out as they were on our national lawn, the bones were intended to invoke a collective sense of national responsibility. They were meant to provoke questions: To whom do these bones belong? What role does U.S. policy play in the lives and deaths of the individuals represented by these haunting symbols? As citizens and voters in the United States, what is our responsibility to victims of mass violence? What can I do to help?”” onemillionones.org
Sometimes the work of bringing hope is one of saying never again, of bringing awareness, of remembering and naming, of digging up mass graves, and honoring those lives stolen. And hope is doing what you can to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The work of the prophet, the work of the people of God is to speak hope and life abundant and renewed, and to call on the Spirit and let the Spirit do as she will–to shake things up, to rattle bones, to bring new and abundant life.
There are things happening in the world that feel… dry, cut off from goodness and life. There has been no end to genocides or wars or refugees since the 2013 display of bones. We have not seen the end of violence and death. There are still so many who suffer or die nameless and forgotten. There are still people being stolen from their homes to lands and places unknown.
I know that there are some of you who know the feeling of dry bones–for yourself or for your community or family or the world. Grief that feels unending, disconnections from family or loved ones, fear for health or jobs or finances or food, uncertainty on the future of church or a changing Dousman.
And sometimes such dryness that settles into our bodies, into our bones.
Here’s what I would like to say to the dry bones, or from last week’s text–when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendego were thrown to the fires for their faithfulness–what I would like to say to them is that it’s going to be ok. But that’s not a promise I can make, and that’s not the promise that God makes. In fact, what we see again and again is that there are going to be fires and losses, uncertainties and dry bones.
But, go read Daniel 7, Shadrach, Meshack, and Abendigo were not alone in that fire. Ezekiel wasn’t alone in Babylon or in the valley. You are not alone. Take a breath, the very life and Spirit of God fills your lungs, moves through your veins, feeds your flesh and muscles and sin-ues. The breath, that is the Spirit of God moves from the corners of the earth, across the water and land, to bring something new, to bring life, for as Job, who new tragic days said: As long as there is breath, God’s spirit within me, there is hope.
It is hope in how this community comes together, cares for each other, our neighbors near and far, cares for those who are living on the margins, those who lives and deaths have been forgotten, those whose dry bones, whose hopelessness might cause sometime to cower away. The people of Israel were re-animated in the bones Ezekiel prophesied to, in the graves flung open to life, and brought into community, in to communion with each other, linked like sin-us and skin as one body. The people of God even today are brought to re-newed life, re-consitituted hope, to resurrection, brought together in the Spirit of God, in the breath of God, in the love of God, symbolized at this table that brings together God’s people across time and space that we are the body of Christ, and that hope and life and love will not stay dead or dry.