5 Lent A (9 March 2008)

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Pr. George L. Murphy

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Akron OH

 

“HEAR THE WORD OF THE LORD”

 

            What is the difference between mere human words and the Word of God?  We could get into a technical theological discussion about that but there’s a very simple way to state the difference.  It makes no sense to address mere human words to a pile of dead bones.  It makes the deepest kind of sense to say, “O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.”

 

            In Ezekiel’s vision he is carried to a valley, maybe the site of an ancient battle, strewn with dead, dry bones.  “Can these bones live?” God asks.  And Ezekiel answers – what?  He could give the realistic answer – which is often to say, the response of the pessimist: “Of course not.”  Or he could give the positive thinking answer – which is often to say, the response of the fanatic:  “Sure, no problem.”  But Ezekiel gives a faithful answer:  “O Lord GOD, you know.”  He is not here to pursue his own agenda, but has been brought here to carry out God’s purpose - “O Lord GOD, you know.” 

 

            And Ezekiel doesn’t speak until he is told to – but then with no ordinary speech.  “Prophesy, mortal.”  What he speaks are ordinary human Hebrew words – shim^echu d^ebhar-`adonai , “Hear the word of the LORD.”  And because they come at God’s initiative and God’s command, those human words are the Word of God.  And at God’s creative Word the bones come together and flesh comes upon them.

 

            The Word of God does not work alone.  Just as our speaking comes with our breathing, the Hebrews pictured the Word of God together with the breath, the wind, the Spirit of God.  “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.”  The wind blows, God breathes into that still and silent array of bodies, as in one of the creation stories God bent down and breathed into the form that he had shaped from dust, “and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.”

 

            Who are these bones to whom the Word of God comes?  What do they represent?  God is very clear:  “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel.”  They are Jewish exiles like the prophet Ezekiel, carried away to Babylon when Jerusalem had fallen.  The entire city had been destroyed and the Temple, the center of their religious life, was gone.  Their political order was wiped out.  Israel no longer existed as a nation and by all the sensible criteria that people use to judge religions, the God of Israel had been defeated.  “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.”

 

            Who are these bones to whom the Word of God comes?  They are the African  slaves who sang “De foot bone connected to de – ankle bone.”  That was no cute song and dance routine for American Idol but the experience of people whose ancestors had been captured and sold into slavery and survived the horrors of the Middle Passage, who had suffered all kinds of oppression and degradation for generations.  But they had heard the Word of the LORD that he spoke through Ezekiel and said “We are where Israel was.” And they knew that that word was addressed to them.

 

            Who are these bones to whom the Word of God comes?  They are, perhaps, you - or maybe you.  You have probably not, by the mercy of God, been beaten down as those Jewish exiles or black slaves were.  But you may have gone through times of failure, when nothing you attempted could succeed.  Perhaps you’ve been betrayed or abandoned by people you trusted.  Most of us have been beset at times by guilt for things we’ve done or failed to do, and find it hard to believe that God can ever accept us.  It’s easy to believe in God.  To believe in a gracious and merciful God is sometimes a lot harder.

 

            “Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones:  I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.”  It is the Word and the Spirit, what Irenaeus called the two “hands” of God, that create and give life.  Not just eating and reproducing life but the abundant life that God intends for intelligent beings, a life of freedom and responsibility, life that can repent and accept forgiveness, life that can suffer failure and still hope.  “One does not live by bread alone” is part of a Bible verse that people often quote.  They usually omit the rest of the verse.  “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”        

 

            During these past weeks the Gospel has told us about  Jesus’ encounters with various people – with the enquiring Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at the well, and a beggar blind from birth.  Today he comes to Bethany, to the tomb of his friend Lazarus and to the dead man’s grieving family.  This is the Word of God – and not just as stories in a book.  Jesus Christ himself is the Word of God, the fullest self-expression of the heart of God.  He is the Word made flesh, and we’ve heard how that Word instructed Nicodemus, and forgave the woman at the well, and restored sight to the blind, and calls Lazarus from the tomb.  He is on the way to a tomb himself – to the place of dry bones.

 

            On Easter we will hear that that tomb was empty.  And because of that these stories from the Gospel are much more than ancient history.  Today the Word of God comes to Bethany, and comes to you as well.  “I am the resurrection and the life” is addressed to you as well as to Martha. 

 

            In speaking of the resurrection of Jesus some theologians say that he is “risen into the proclamation.”  That’s not a complete statement of what the resurrection means but it certainly does not mean less than that.  When the good news of Jesus Christ is proclaimed, the risen Christ, the Word of God, is present in the power of the Spirit and meets the hearers of the word.  And that is how faith is awakened, and strengthened, and renewed when it has faltered.  “Faith comes from what is heard,” Paul says, “And what is heard comes through the word of Christ.”

 

            When you hear the announcement of God’s forgiveness for Jesus’ sake in church – or for that matter, anywhere – it is not just another Christian speaking to you.  It is the living and active Word of God that does what it says.  When you hear the words or works of Christ or the teachings of prophets and apostles about Christ, Christ encounters you in the power of the Spirit.  It is those “hands” of God that make Baptism more than ordinary water and Communion more than ordinary bread and wine.  They are what Augustine called “visible words” – God coming not just to our hearing but to our sight and touch and taste to arouse and sustain faith.

 

            You sometimes hear people say things like, “I don’t get to church very much.  I guess my faith is kind of weak.”  There’s no great mystery there.  It’s like saying “I don’t eat very much and I feel kind of weak.”  To use the vernacular, “Duh!”  Of course if you don’t eat you get weak, and if you don’t have spiritual food you weaken and die spiritually.  Faith in the true God is not something we get a lifetime supply of at Baptism or some other point in our lives so that we can coast the rest of the way.  “Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.”  If faith is weak, hear and receive the Word – being sure that it is the real Word, bread rather than a stone.

 

            Ezekiel had a vision of death that represented the condition of broken Israel.  At God’s command he speaks twice and what God says comes to pass – the dry bones on the valley floor come together, and are covered with flesh, and stand and live.  Israel will be brought back home and restored.  And it really happened.  Some fifty years later the exiles were able to go home, just as your faith can be renewed by God’s promise.

 

            The word comes a third time, now to those who lie in the grave, those who are dead not as metaphors but as literal truth.  And the prophet doesn’t see this promise fulfilled.  The dead are not raised – yet.  It is six hundred years from the time of Ezekiel to the raising of Lazarus and then to the reality of Easter.  It is even longer – it has not happened yet – before we share fully in the risen life of Christ.  Until then the Word of God sustains us.  “And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people.”