”Mortal, can these bones live?” [Ezekiel 37:3a]
For almost four years now, my favorite day of the week (other than Sunday, of course) has been Wednesday. That is because on Wednesdays, first at 11:00 a.m., and then again at 1:30 p.m., I’ve been privileged to teach two Bible studies at Carolina Arbors, a 55+ “active seniors” community in southern Durham. There are about 30 of us. Collectively, we call the two groups, “Simply Scripture,” because we “simply” pick a book of Holy Scripture and take it on, verse by verse. Over our almost four-year time span, we’ve commented about how a number of Biblical themes keep repeating. Perhaps our favorites is this: We worship and follow an “impossible God!” Let me explain.
In our Genesis study, when God chose a covenant people, a “people” who, of course, did not yet exist, God chose an old man, Abram, and his barren wife, Sara, to be their father and mother. What an impossible plan? As I pointed out in my Lenten week 2 reflection, Abram and Sara said yes to a plan that they knew would never be fulfilled, indeed, could never be fulfilled, in their lifetimes. Most would think that kind of faith and acceptance is impossible, and they would be correct, except through the Impossible God.
We also discussed how, when Joseph’s brothers sold him off to Egypt, if we didn’t know better, we’d have said that Joseph’s story had to end there, but not for the Impossible God. Instead, Yahweh wove brotherly transgression into the very act that later saved all of Joseph’s family, plus all of Egypt, from the coming famine.
Those in Simply Scripture have marveled at other impossible stories. God chooses Moses, the runaway criminal, to lead God’s people out of Egypt. Impossible! John the Baptist was born impossibly, to an old man, Zechariah, and yet another barren woman, Elizabeth. What is it with these fertility issues among the Hebrew people? It’s all rather impossible.
And, of course, most impossible of all, God favors Mary, causes Holy Spirit to descend upon her, and she conceives Jesus, the Messiah, the Lamb of God. Can parthenogenesis occur in human beings? It sounds preposterous; no actually, it sounds impossible! Feed a crowd with a few fish and loaves, heal a man blinded from birth, water turned to wine, arise from the dead on the third day — the list goes on. The one common denominator for all the “items” on the list? They’re all impossible.
And so, with that rather long preamble, we come to the OT reading appointed for the fifth week of Lent, Year A: Ezekiel 37:1-14. Yahweh is intent upon adding additional items to our impossibles list.
Ezekiel, we’ll recall, is a prophet in exile. In 597 B.C., the Babylonian armies overran rebellious Jerusalem, and deported the Judean king and many leaders, including Ezekiel (see 2 Kings 24). Ten years later, the Babylonians razed Jerusalem to the ground, destroyed the Temple, and deported a second wave of Judeans.
Picture yourself as a Jew in Babylon during the exile. The key symbols of faith are gone: Jerusalem itself, the Temple, and the Davidic monarchy. Had their deity been beaten down by the gods of Babylon? Without the Temple, was Yahweh still their Lord? Was Yahweh still faithful to the earlier promises?
Within this impossible context, Yahweh calls forth Ezekiel. In the third of four visions provided to the prophet by Yahweh, Ezekiel is transported to a strange valley filled with dry bones. Perhaps it’s the graveyard of a defeated army, an army whose victors forbade the burial of the defeated. Yahweh asks the prophet an imponderable question, “Mortal, can these bones live?” (Ezekiel 37:3a). Ezekiel hedges with his answer. While it certainly seems impossible, Ezekiel says, “O Lord God, You know.”
Indeed, the Lord God does know. God commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones, to tell them that Yahweh will breath on them and they will live. Ezekiel does as he’s been told and, sure enough, the bones grow skin and sinew and all the rest of the physicality that they’ll need. But they’re not yet alive! They aren’t yet alive, because life depends upon God. Alas, only when Yahweh causes His breath to flow over them — much in the way that Yahweh created humanity in the very beginning, by making human beings out of dry dust and then breathing on them — does the valley of bones come alive.
While utterly strange to us, those in Babylonian exile would have understood the vision, for it was a metaphor that they often used to describe themselves. They often turned to the psalms of lament and repeated their powerful images of brokenness, sorrow, and hopelessness — images of dry bones. “My bones waste away” [Psalm 31:10]; “My bones are shaking with terror” [Psalm 6:2]; and “My bones burn like a furnace” [Psalm 102:3]. And in the last portion of this week’s Ezekiel passage, we see similar language on their lips, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost: we are cut off completely” (Ezekiel 37:11). Ezekiel’s vision, therefore, isn’t so much the dead on a battlefield as it is the dead in spirit who are in exile.
To have one’s possibilities appear to dry up, to lose hope, to feel cut off — those are terrible feelings, and yet, such feelings are shared by many of us in these perilous days. Two close friends have severe auto-immune disorders, another suffers from serious pulmonary issues, a sister-in-law has COPD, pulmonary hypertension, and a heart condition. Each has confessed worry to Jane and/or me in recent days. Others who are much younger, who don’t face significant health issues, but whose economic world has been turned upside-down by current events, have also sought out my pastoral counsel. Each, in his or her own way, has lamented that the path ahead seems impossible.
Much of my counsel, at least so far, has been lacking. When I spoke to them, offering platitudes in this or that direction, I hadn’t yet re-read and meditated upon this Ezekiel passage. This passage seems to cry out to me, to my young — and also to my not-so-young — friends, and, therefore, to you who are reading these words: “Take a Breath” (notice the “B” is upper case, for this Breath doesn’t belong to us, but to God).
One special word is repeated 10 times in the 14 verses of this week’s Ezekiel passage. It’s the Hebrew word, ruarch (Anglicized version), which, depending upon the context, can mean “spirit” (as in God’s spirit), “wind,” and “breath.” In Year 2 of the three years of divinity school, they teach you that when a word appears 10 times in 14 verses, it’s important! You, of course, already knew that.
With Yahweh’s “Breath” within us, we become one with His “Spirit.” It flows to us as do the four “winds.” Ezekiel calls to us, “Take a Breath” and you will live. That life may be different than you imagined; I can assure you from personal experience that it will be much more satisfying than you have ever imagined. Just do it — Take a Breath.
“Mortal, can these bones live?” With Yahweh’s unfathomable, all-loving, all-powerful, uncontrollable Breath upon us — and in us — I wouldn’t bet against it, for Yahweh is the Impossible God. You believe me, don’t you?
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