Cool and Fresh as a Mountain Stream

The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know” [Ezekiel 37:1-3, a portion of the Old Testament lesson (Ezekiel 37:1-14), the Day of Pentecost, RCL, Year B].

He poured himself a second mug of strong, black coffee and sauntered back to his make-shift home office. As was his morning habit, he clicked on his computer, opened the calendar app, and stared at the blank day ahead. Having retired a year earlier from a thriving medical practice, he cursed at himself for repeating the meaningless action, morning after morning. For three and one-half decades, he’d had a staff person fill in his work calendar with patients’ needs, utilizing special software that pulled the most out of each available workday. Now, his day was his own, and he realized that he was ill-suited for the freedom that he now “enjoyed.” How dry his life had become, he thought to himself. Anxious patients no longer sought his counsel and surgical skills. Young colleagues never turned to him for an experienced word. Life was dry; he was dry.

She bit her lip as she thought about what she and a close friend called “her predicament.” Having been relatively happy in her marriage for more than thirty years, her husband’s “I do,” had morphed into, “I don’t think so.” Some months back, she’d noticed that he had grown quiet—not a trait he had ever exhibited. At the time she’d thought that it must be the pressures of work. She later discovered that it actually was a younger woman at work. She and her husband had parted like the sensible adults they were. The division of property—of memories—was not as painful as she had imagined it would be. But the aftermath, as she pored over her life, as she contemplated the coming days —no, the coming years —she felt an intense sadness all the way to the pit of her stomach. Her life seemed so empty, so barren, so dry.

Although the prophet Ezekiel was separated from my two friends by more than two and one-half millennia, he knew their experience. He understood their feelings. Ezekiel was surrounded by a host of folks who looked at their lives, and their future, and could only sense dryness. Indeed, in 597 BCE, the military throngs from Babylon had overrun Jerusalem and deported the Judean king and many Judean leaders to Babylon. Ten years later, after Jerusalem had rebelled yet again, the Babylonians returned and burned Jerusalem to the ground. They destroyed the beloved Temple. More of the city’s inhabitants were carried off to slavery in Babylon.

As the Judeans sweated, lived, and died in Babylon, their world seemed so terribly dry. They recalled how a century and one-half before their own deportation, many within the “northern” kingdom, Israel, had been similarly deported, had lost their tribal identity, and had faded into the haze of History. Later, those people became known as the lost tribes of Israel. Would that also be their fate?

And so, the Judean people’s exile in Babylon was more than a crisis of identity. It was even more than a cultural challenge. It was a crisis of faith. Jerusalem, its temple, its leaders, and the entire Davidic monarchy had been destroyed. Many of the exiled Judeans assumed that Yahweh must have been defeated by a more powerful god—the god of the Babylonians. Yahweh had made sacred promises and yes, to be sure, the people had not always kept their side of the covenant with Yahweh, but as the exiles toiled and died in Babylon, they had to wonder if Yahweh’s Word was Yahweh’s bond. Would they ever return to Canaan? Their future seemed barren and dry.

The prophet, Ezekiel, is one of those many Judeans who toil in Babylon. And yet, he’s different. He’s at least somewhat special, for Ezekiel has been anointed by Yahweh to give a word of hope to the captive people. In what is easily the most familiar passage from the long and winding book of Ezekiel, Yahweh gives the prophet a vision. He is carried to a valley filled with dry bones. It’s an obvious echo of the people’s lament.

Yahweh has a question for his prophet: “Can these bones live?” [Ezekiel 37:3] Notice the prophet’s answer. It is not a quick, positive thinking, “Of course, they can live.” To be sure, neither it is overly negative. Ezekiel scratches his head, so to speak, turns to Yahweh and says, “O Master, LORD, it is You Who knows” [37:4, The Hebrew Bible, tr. by Robert Alter].

Yahweh tells the prophet to prophesy to the dry bones, to tell them that Yahweh is about to breathe life into them, to lay sinews over the bones, to bring up flesh around them, and to stretch skin over the bones. Ezekiel does as he is told and suddenly, the sinews, flesh, and skin stretched out over the array of bones. “But there was no breath in them” [37:8]. Then, using a beautiful play on words that centers on Yahweh’s breath, sometimes translated “spirit,” at other times translated “wind,” the prophet prophesied again. This time Yahweh’s wind, spirit, and breath come into the newly formed “people”, and they stand on their feet, as if they are a strong and sturdy army legion [37:10-11]. Yahweh goes on to explain this vision He has supplied to Ezekiel, as if it were not already clear. Yahweh says that He will breathe into the exiled Judeans. They shall live and they shall be set upon (i.e., replanted) their own soil. And they shall know that Yahweh has spoken and has done it.

During the past year and a quarter, most of us have come to our own understanding of what dry bones feel like. Of those of you who regularly read this meditation, at least one has lost a brother in the pandemic. Many more have lost friends. Our bones have sometimes seemed to be splintered by pain and grief. And what is worse, for all too many of us, our faith has been splintered as well. It is as if we have lived trapped in our world of exile, a world where so many of us go through familiar motions, but we miss so much from our former lives.

Some of us have begun face-to-face (albeit it actually is “mask-to-mask”) worship. Others of you will soon join in that wonderful “work of the people.” The masking rules have eased up somewhat in recent days, but many of us are left feeling as if we’re stuck in a Neverland of sorts. We’ve been told there is new freedom; we’re not sure we can trust the bearer of the news. We’ve been so often shell-shocked by events that we don’t really know who or how to trust.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could draw in a fresh breath, a breath that we knew was pure and clean? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to attend a friend’s wedding unbridled by the pandemic? Would that we could gather in sorrow, that we could hug each other in our grief, and cry the tears we need to shed for those whom we have lost. That day, of course, will come. We hope it will fully be with us soon.

Yet the Ezekiel passage tells us something powerful and important: It isn’t enough to have sinews placed on our dry bones. It isn’t sufficient for us to have flesh and skin placed upon the brittle and calcified bones that have grown so dry in these many days. For my friend who stares at the empty calendar app, he doesn’t need a new laptop; he doesn’t need new software. He needs the breath of Yahweh.

For my friend who was abandoned by her husband, she laughs at the thought of a new mate. She doesn’t want a quiet dinner with a man she doesn’t know any more than she wants to rehash her marital issues with her former husband. She longs for something more, much more. Whether she can articulate it or not, I think what she longs for is to be filled with the breath of Yahweh.

I know that’s what I want. No—it’s what I desperately need. Just as the bones in Ezekiel’s vision didn’t live when they were supplied with sinews, flesh, and skin—they needed Yahweh’s breath—so I won’t live until He breathes on me. And dare I say it? Neither will you. Only when Yahweh has breathed upon us can we throw away the dry bones of our current existence and become true brothers and sisters with each other, and with our risen Lord.

Years ago, in one of my many unsuccessful “children’s moments” at Asbury, I was stumbling over the story of Jesus’ appearance to the frightened disciples in the upper room on the evening of the first Easter Sunday. You remember the story well. I wrote about it on April 7th.

That day, I reminded the kids at Asbury that Jesus appeared to the disciples and instead of being angry with them for betraying and abandoning Him on Good Friday, Jesus said to them, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

I told the children that after the risen Jesus has said this to them, he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” [John 20:21-23; emphasis added].

An eight-year-old quickly shot up his hand, and almost yelled at me from the circle at the front of the sanctuary, “Mr. Tom, did Jesus use mouthwash?” The congregation chucked, knowing that on yet another occasion, one of the kids had stolen the show. I looked at the boy with what must have been a bewildered look and said, “Uh, I, I don’t think so.”

My questioner looked back at me and said, “I don’t think He would have needed mouthwash; He had good breath.”

“Good breath indeed,” I thought. “From the mouths of babes!” Our Lord’s breath is all we really need.