Ezekiel 37: 1-14
Romans 8: 22-27
Romans 8: 22-27
Ezekiel was a prophet who had many visions given
to him by the Lord. The vision we read about today is one of the more famous
visions he had. There is something so eloquent and poignant about seeing a
valley full of dried bones. The image speaks of death, vast devastation of a
people, and it is heartbreaking.
But the vision does not end there. Suddenly,
Ezekiel hears God’s voice speaking to him, asking him, “Son of man, can these
bones live?” After I hear this question, my instinct is to answer it with a yes
or a no. However, Ezekiel is a much wiser person and responds, “Sovereign Lord,
only you alone know.”
This is humanity’s fatal flaw. We think we have
the answers to life’s questions. We think we know what is coming next and so we
prepare ourselves and we do things in a certain way, because we are positive in
what we know. Look at how we live our lives. If we eat healthy and exercise, we
are told we will live longer. If we buy the latest cars with the newest safety
technology, even if we crash, we will be okay. If we get hurt in the crash, we
have health insurance so that the doctor can make us better. But if the doctor
doesn’t make us better we have disability insurance so that we won’t have to
worry about starving on the street. If we do die, we have life insurance to
help support our family when we’re gone.
For every eventuality, for every possible outcome
of life, humanity has tried to find an answer. We have tried to fix the world
so that it is a safer, kinder place where there is less stress and worry. That
is what all these insurances and safety features and alarm systems and internet
websites are all about. Information and help at the click of a button or the
exchange of money. It is our attempt to answer the questions that God poses to
us. “Son of man, can these dry bones live?” But Ezekiel is not like that.
Ezekiel acknowledges that even though he is looking at a valley of death that
he cannot stop or fix, that if God wills these bones to live, then they will
live.
What God has Ezekiel do next is nothing short of
silliness. God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to these dead, dry bones. There is no
point to prophesy to something dead – it is long gone from this world. There
are no ears to hear, there are no eyes to see, there is no brain to understand
the prophesying. It is completely ridiculous for Ezekiel to go out there and
begin to preach the Word of God to these dry bones. It is a waste of time, resources, and effort.
Wait. I’ve heard these words before. I’ve said
them and had them said to me. When a church wants to shoot down an idea these
are the first words out of our mouths. “There is no point” “It’s a waste of
time” “They won’t listen anyway” “People will hate us and ignore us or worse.”
“We can’t help them without using up a lot of valuable resources.”
Since when has God ever asked a person to do something
that made sense or didn’t seem like a waste of time, money, and resources? God
never makes sense. God is always asking people in the bible to do crazy things
and it is only when they DON’T listen that things go wrong. It is people like
Jonah who thinks he knows the right answer, who thinks the people of Nineveh
deserve to go to hell and so he runs from his duty and ends up in the belly of
a whale. It’s people like Abraham who tells the Pharaoh that Sarah is his
sister and not his wife because he’s afraid to be killed and then ends up bringing
a plague on the Pharaoh’s house when God becomes angry.
Every time we ignore God’s commands, we make
matters worse. This is a nice building we have here, but it is only a building.
What we do inside of it, what we do outside of it is what makes it a church. We
carry the Spirit of God with us and when we all walk into this church - that is
when it becomes a holy place. We forget that. We forget too much about what
Jesus has taught us in our effort to keep up a building when what we need to be
keeping up is the world around us.
Ezekiel does not question God’s command. He begins
to prophesy to those dry, dead bones. Then he watches in amazement as they
begin to take on life and form. The bones connect with other bones and then
muscles and sinew appear, and then flesh to cover them. But still, Ezekiel
notices that there is no breath in these bones that now have flesh upon them.
There is still something missing.
Most churches today are like these flesh covered
bones. They have some sort of life and substance to them, but there is
something missing. Why are so many churches failing? Why, when I look around at
this church do I see an obvious generation gap? For as many answers as we have
come up with to solve life’s problems, there is still misery in this world.
There is still heartache and pain and loss. In previous generations the place
to go to be relieved of that burden, even for a little while, was church. Why
has that changed? Why have we allowed that to change?
Our church is luckier than a lot of other
churches. I use the word luck on purpose. Our most faithful members are getting
older, our most dedicated committee members are getting older and are ready to
put down the reigns. In the last fifty years we have been lucky enough to have
someone to step up and take those reigns when it was needed. But as I look
around this church, I wonder how long that can last without new people. How
long can a church go on without new blood, new life to make this building into
a sacred place?
Ezekiel noticed something was missing from those
flesh covered bones. He looks to the Lord and the Lord tells him to prophesy
again, this time to the wind that will breathe on these bones and bring them
back to full life. And so he does and sure enough, there stood a vast army of people,
no longer dry and dusty bones.
Often in the Old Testament, the Spirit of God is
referred to as wind, breath, or wisdom. What was missing from those bones was
the Spirit of God, the very breath that God breathed into Adam when he created
him at the beginning. And so God tells Ezekiel to prophesy and God would bring
life and spirit back into those dry bones.
Then God explains exactly what this vision is all
about to Ezekiel. These dry bones are the people of Israel who have long been
dead because they are without God’s Spirit, but God is about to change all of
that. He is about to bring them back to life, to save them and give them what
they have been missing.
I think what is missing from the churches of today
is God’s Spirit. We talk about the Holy Spirit, we mention her briefly here and
there but we do not take much notice of what the Spirit is doing. We do not
look around at the church and wonder where new possibilities could be created.
We do not look at the people around us in church and ask, “How has their week
gone?” We do not open our eyes to the problems that exist outside of these
walls, problems we could help alleviate. Instead, we have made church all about
us.
Jesus never intended Christianity to revolve
around individuals or a building. This is a manmade invention. God has been
generous enough to bless many of the things we attempt to do, but obviously the
church is failing. The worldwide church has faltered in Western cities and
towns. People do not care about going to worship. They do not care about God on
Sunday or any other day of the week. People do not know what Jesus has done for
them.
Whose fault is that? We tend to place all the
blame for big things on God, but it is not that simple and never has been. It
is time we step up to the plate; it is time to take responsibility for our
actions, or rather our non-action. We have let society down as we became too
involved in finding answers instead of asking questions. We need to be more
like Ezekiel who looks to God and says, “Lord God, only you know.” And then
when God gives him a task – Ezekiel does it. He does it without searching for
another answer. He does it without wondering about time, money, and resources.
He listens, he hears, he obeys.
This is something the church has long failed at.
It is time to change.
Amen.
