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Visions of a New Life
Ezekiel 37:1-14
John 11:1-45
No prophetic pass=
age
in all of Hebrew scripture so dramatically envisions a resurrection to new =
life
for a community of faith that had had the life taken out of it, than the
passage read today from Ezekiel. What the prophet saw, of course, even ente=
red
our popular culture through a spiritual many of us learned in early childho=
od:
“dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones, now hear the Word of the
Lord.” (sung softly by the choir)
Chances are
we’ve all encountered the dry and dismembered bones of an animal, lar=
ge
or small, sometime while hiking in the woods, canoeing a river or walking a=
long
an old railroad track. When coming upon the skeletal remains of some creatu=
re,
most of us pause to take a closer look. There’s a fascination about t=
he
bones of a once-living thing, even though there’s somewhat of a taboo
about touching them. They pro=
mpt us
to draw a picture in our imagination of what those bones might have looked =
like
with flesh and blood encasing them and the breath of life within them. We m=
ay
even entertain a passing thought of mortality --- including our own.
In the ancient wo=
rld
and arid environment in which Ezekiel’s vision was set, dry and
dessicated bones may have been a more common sight than in ours, but those
occasional encounters we have had with blanched bones help us understand wh=
at
the prophet saw. Ezekiel’s vision of a valley filled with lifeless and
scattered bones --- and of what the Lord’s Spirit could do with them =
---
came to the Israelites while they were dwelling in a foreign land during the
Babylonian exile.
Even the youngest
among us have experienced enough separation from people we love, from thing=
s to
which we had become accustomed and from places where we had felt at home th=
at
we can understand, in some small way, the sense of utter desolation which m=
ust
have filled those who understood themselves to be God’s ‘chosen
people’ and now felt like the butt of a bad joke.
Although they
hadn’t been very faithful in fulfilling their part of the Covenant --=
- as
the Lord, through Ezekiel and other prophets, kept calling to their attenti=
on
--- they had expected God to be faithful to them, and after the fall of
Jerusalem in 586bc they were having trouble believing that, while dwelling =
as
‘strangers in a strange land.’ The temple in Jerusalem, the cen=
ter
of their religious life looked more like a Palestinian house in Gaza these =
days
after an Israeli bulldozer gets done with it. Returning to the ‘promi=
sed
land’ didn’t look very promising. As today’s text describ=
es
how the exiles felt: “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we
are cut off completely.”
It is in the mids=
t of
total darkness that just a small bit of light coming through a door cracked
open makes all the difference. That’s the nature of God’s promi=
ses
which came to God’s people through the prophets just as surely as they
spoke of God’s judgment. Ezekiel’s vision of hope for the scatt=
ered
remnant of ‘the chosen’ begins with what is arguably the most
tragic of human scenes --- tragic because avoidable --- today, as then.
He saw the barest
remains of a multitude of sons and fathers and brothers who had been slain =
by
the sons and fathers and brothers of other human families. They had been le=
ft
unburied on the battlefield to have their flesh picked apart by scavenger b=
irds
and animals, and the parts they didn’t want had been literally fried =
off
of their bones by the blazing desert sun. The hip bones were no longer
connected to the thigh bones but were in exile even from one another. Likew=
ise,
the Israelite’s sense of being connected to their identity, their
‘promised land,’ even their covenant with God was virtually
lifeless.
“I know you
feel like all hope is lost,” we can hear God saying through the proph=
etic
words we read today. “But I have greater plans for your future than to
leave you with parched spirits, alienated from one another and your home as
well as from me.” The vision goes on to reveal God’s ultimate w=
ill
for the exiles.
In the midst of t=
heir
despair, God says to them: “I’m going to help you get it all
together again; to regain hope by seeing things from my perspective; to once
again feel the Spirit of life energizing you from within and moving in the
spaces between you, making you newly aware of the many ways in which you are
linked to one another, dependent upon one another, and able to gain strength
from one another as well as me. You can come home again.
The Israelites di=
d,
of course, return from exile in Babylon and the temple was rebuilt. But
Ezekiel’s vision of how ruah
--- the same spirit, breath or wind that first animated human life in
Genesis 2 can also create anew that from which life has been drained, gives
hope to us today, as well.
Having been recen=
tly
involved with those planning community events in coming weeks that will cal=
l to
remembrance both the anniversary of the Iraq invasion and the 4,000th Ameri=
can
military death since that war was started, the image of dead bones strewn o=
n a
battlefield strikes me as quite relevant to our own situation.
Can we have hope =
that
the Spirit which gives life can free us from the culture of death into which
the families of the world now bring their children? Can the millions of exi=
les
who have lost their homes and been driven from their promised lands have any
hope for a more peaceful day, for a world in which racism . . . and tribali=
sm .
. . and nationalism . . . and ancient wrongs remembered . . . and religious
fanaticism in all its varieties no longer control the fate of humankind and
force the most vulnerable of the world into situations of utter desolation.=
When touched by d=
eath
--- either literally or metaphorically ---good news is hard for us to hear =
and
even more difficult to envision. Let the words of Ezekiel give us hope. . .=
.
Last weekend I had
the privilege of attending Kalamazoo Central High School’s courageous
presentation of “The Laramie Project.” With a script written
entirely from interviews conducted in Laramie, Wyoming after the gruesome
torture and death of a young man by the name of Matthew Shepherd --- who
happened to be gay --- the story unfolds as to what happened when two other
young men, after offering him a ride home from the bar where they’d a=
ll
spent the evening, took Matthew, instead, to a back country road where they
severely beat and tortured him and left him to die.
The script tells =
much
more, of course, than just what happened. It explores how people in Laramie
reacted to the brutal hate crime that caught the attention not only of our
entire nation, but made news around the world. The words came from the bar =
maid
who’d last seen Matthew alive and from the bicycler who’d liste=
ned
to an inner voice early the next morning that took her on a different route
than usual, a route that took her past the almost lifeless body of a 21-year
old man tied to a fence post and covered with blood.
The words came fr=
om
the families and friends of both Matthew and the young men who took his life
because he was gay. They came from the sheriff, who almost ‘lost
it,’ emotionally, when he first saw the battered and bloody body; and
from the doctor who did ‘lose it’ at a press conference after
losing the fight to save Matthew’s life.
The play also
included a film clip of the Baptist minister from Kansas spewing his
hate-filled message, claiming to speak on behalf of a god who was glad to s=
ee
Matthew die. Clearly, he was not speaking of the God whose fullness was ple=
ased
to dwell in the One of whom the gospels and letters of the New Testament sp=
eak.
Many of you are a=
ware
that this minister and his klan of followers had threatened to show up here=
to
protest the opening of Kalamazoo Central’s play. A community response=
to
both the play and the threatened protest was held in our church dining room
last night, an event supporting diversity and making a positive statement to
the world that the message of hate and bigotry which might have gotten all =
the
news several weeks ago does not represent the people of Kalamazoo.
Given today’=
;s
lectionary, it was fitting that a friend of Matthew Shepherd who spoke last
night brought a message, not of revenge for the hate crime that took her
friend’s life, but of hope --- of deliverance from the utter desolati=
on
Matthew’s loved ones felt. It is hope which grew from seeing how the
tragedy awakened many good people across the nation to see the price
that’s paid for continuing to tolerate --- even, to our shame,
religiously bless --- our society’s last acceptable prejudice.
Beyond the
‘valley of the shadow of death’ through which those who loved
Matthew passed, comes the vision of a world in which we are no longer alien=
ated
from one another out of fear of our differences. In the most hopeful lines =
from
“The Laramie Project,” a friend says she expected her enormous
grief to be borne by just a few, perhaps even taunted by others. She had no
idea that a young man’s death along a back road in the middle of nowh=
ere
would touch the lives of so many across the whole country and stir up a
response that overwhelmed them with support. Can a spirit of new life grow =
out
of utter desolation? A re-inspired movement for justice arising from some
lifeless bones tied to a fence post in a seemingly God-forsaken place? Who
knows what God can do? Let the prophecy of Ezekiel give us hope. . . .
This past week I
participated in Portage Northern High School’s “Challenge
Day,” an event in which professionals who do this program at schools
around the country, share their life stories in a process that encourages t=
he
students --- through small group discussions and large group activities ---=
to
share some of their life stories with one another.
The day was inten=
ded
to help students be aware that each of them walks through the school door e=
ach
morning bearing the emotional, spiritual and physical baggage of their lives
outside of school --- especially their life at home; that many of the scars
they bear and challenges they confront are common to other classmates; and,
knowing this, they can choose to care for one another and support one anoth=
er
rather than seize upon one another’s vulnerabilities to bully, tease =
and
tear down. High school can be a desolate place for some students. Hopefully,
programs like this can help create more humane environments in our schools.=
During the final
activity in which students were reflecting on what they’d learned abo=
ut
themselves and one another and what changes they intend to make in
relationships with one another, a student who’d been somewhat of a
‘scapegoat’ got up to speak. She’d had an unfortunate
accident during class while in elementary school, and many of her classmates
had never let her forget it, having fun at her expense. It was an appropria=
te
moment for her to share with all of them the larger context of what had been
going on in her life when that long-remembered incident had occurred and why
she has dreaded coming to school everyday since. In response, almost half of
the ninety students taking part in this “Challenge Day” went to=
her
to apologize for the thoughtlessness with which they had continued to humil=
iate
her for over five years.
I watched those
classmates go to her, one after another, to say whatever they needed to say
about the past and promise to remove the fences with which they had separat=
ed
her humanity from their own. I wondered if a new spirit was welling up insi=
de
her, if she was able to envision a new life where she no longer needed to d=
read
coming to school; where the skeletons in her closet could be re-clothed and=
no
longer threatening; where exile from her fellow students would come to an e=
nd.
I also wondered if those who felt a need to be unburdened of their guilt for deeds past would allow a new spirit to be created within them --- a spirit that can handle o= ne another’s weaknesses with care, be kind to those outside of one’= ;s comfort zone, and stand up for what is right when another is being dragged = down by abuse. Who knows what God might do with these young people through experiences such as these? Let the prophecy of Ezekiel give us hope. . . .<= o:p>
Today’s gos=
pel
lesson is the well-loved story from John in which Jesus comes to the home of
some good friends and turns tragedy and grief into something that can be us=
ed
as a testimony to the power of God. The breath of new life that brought Laz=
arus
from the grave reaffirms the prophecy from Ezekiel: God is ultimately in
control --- despite evidence to the contrary --- and death will not have the
final word.