April 10, 2011
O Lord God, You Know - Ezekiel 37:1-14
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadMy late aunt, Rosanne Maybry, and I would often talk theology. Sometimes she would get a little cantankerous and try to trap me with a question that would prove my theory wrong. I could generally tell when she was doing that and I was normally good and not taking her bait. In fact, generally speaking, I didn’t answer her question at all. At least according to her, I simply dodged the question. I would always tell her, in her frustration, that her question demanded more than a simple “yes” or “no” response.
Well if the prophet Ezekiel is any indicator that I had a point, then chalk one up for me. God took Ezekiel in this valley of dry bones. Ancient Jews of Ezekiel’s day would actually be forbidden to enter such a place. They were forbidden any contact with the dead at all. To be in a valley so full of death would be unthinkable. It would be the place where God was not. We have much the same opinion today, certainly in this particular case. In fact, the Hebrew could also mean a plain of dry bones. It could be like a battlefield. These bones belonged to people who had been slain, or murdered, or massacred. And they were so dead that they were dry. I saw a program not long ago on the American Civil War and it showed pictures of battlefields littered with bodies. In some cases the bodies were never cleaned up for years. There was nothing left but a field of dry bones with both blue and gray clothes around them. Maybe that’s a modern image. Or maybe an even more modern image would be the holocaust. We’ve all seen pictures of that, of piles and piles of bodies (men, women, and children) being bulldozed into mass graves. Maybe that’s the most accurate picture that we can compare to this plain of dry bones.
Now the question that God posed to Ezekiel was a simple yes or no question. “Can these dry bones live?” That was the question. Can these bones that have been dead for a very long time, can these bones that have long since been forgotten, can they live again? That’s a yes or no question it seems to me. Can these thousands of dead, dry bones come together and live again? I guess that there’s one more little caveat that God’s question implies. Not only can these dry bones live, but can the human condition that created these dry bones be redeemed? We hear a lot about how great the human spirit is, and maybe sometimes it is. But the human spirit is also badly broken, so much so that it is capable of mass murder and indiscriminate killing. The Holocaust was perpetrated by the most educated, civilized society in the world, the home place of the Protestant Reformation. We’re talking about our people, for goodness sake. If we think that only some far off “they” is capable of such brutality, then we’re in real trouble. So I’ll ask you again, can this broken human condition be redeemed? Can these dry bones live?
If you want an immediate answer, it would have to be no, on both counts. How unlikely is it that these old dry bones can come together and live again? How unlikely is it that the sinful human condition can ever be fixed? We’ve recorded a fair amount of human history and it’s pretty rough. This past Wednesday I started reading this book called King Leopold’s Ghost about the slave trade in the Congo. The slave trade really got started there in the early 1500s. It started out mainly in the coffee plantations of Brazil, but the market for slaves quickly shifted to the cotton plantations of the American South and stayed strong until a hundred and fifty years ago. I heard an interview on Thursday of a girl who had been rescued from the sex slave trade here in the United States. It really does exist. Goodness knows there’s a market for it. In a way the study of history is the study of same old story, of human brokenness and all of its terrible effects. Can either human brokenness or the effects of human brokenness ever be fixed? Can these dry bones live? I hate to be cynical, but, no, they cannot. At least from an honest look at history, the answer clearly is no.
But faith would have us say something else. Oddly enough, Ezekiel did not simply say “yes,” as if that settled it. What he said was, “O Lord God, you know,” which would have made my Aunt Rosanne a little bit fussy for not directly answering the question, but in this case was honest, and right. And sure enough, God did know. And sure enough, the answer was yes ultimately, but that was God’s call and not Ezekiel’s. “Ah Lord God, you know.” That’s the cry of faith.
Ah Lord God, you know. Ethan Swetta was just baptized. Actually, he was just born, back in July, and he was baptized just now. We have no idea what Ethan’s life will turn out to be. What we do know is that he will be very much effected by brokenness, both his own brokenness and the world’s brokenness. He’ll grow up and he’ll make a few decisions, some of which will be good, and some of which will be bad. And then, of course, he’ll have some things happen to him, some of which will be good and some bad. We all can influence Ethan either negatively or positively. But we cannot control Ethan, either what happens from him or to him. But Ethan just got baptized, and what we just said in that baptism is what Ezekiel said, “Ah Lord God, you know.” No matter what happens to him or from him, God is with him, forever and ever. And not only that, God has breathed his Holy Spirit into him. These dry bones came together again, but they did not live again until God breathed his Spirit into them. It was the same breath that blew over creation. It’s the same breath that blew at Pentecost. God has brought life to that boy, and nothing in the whole wide world can ever take that life away.
That’s not because of anything that Ethan has done, or his parents, or his grandparents, or his pastor. That’s solely because of what God has done. That we can say “Ah Lord God, you know,” is a gift. Faith is a gift. But what Ethan can do, and what we all have solemnly sworn to help him do, is to understand and cultivate that gift. Ah Lord God, you know. When you really work on that statement, when you really think about it, then God does incredible things through that.
As it turned out, God could make those dead, dry bones live again. Not only that, but God could give those dead, dry bones life through Ezekiel. Even the breath, that came through Ezekiel. I love the sound of those dead old bones coming together. I love the promise that God can make dead things live again. The world needs us to take God’s promise seriously. It is very difficult to see, after all, how God is making dry, dead bones come to life again. It’s almost impossible to pay attention to what’s happening in the world and not get depressed. It’s impossible not to lose hope. Yet there is a reason to hope. It’s not in me, or you, or us, or humanity. Ah Lord God, you know. That’s it. That is our cry. That is our hope. It is true that the world is messed up, that history is a broken record of human brokenness, and that the new paper headlines are thoroughly depressing. They always have been. Ah Lord God, you know. That’s even truer. That is our past, and our future. That is our benediction.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
