Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "Waltzing with Dry Bones"

Text: Ezekiel 37:1-14

your life felt like a valley of dry bones?

Maybe it was a time when you were seriously ill,

or you were getting ready for major surgery.

Maybe a close friend died,

or a member of your family.

Maybe it was when you lost a job,

or your spouse said, "I want a divorce."

It could even be something as simple as

a time when you moved to a new place,

and didn’t know anyone,

and felt alone and isolated.

Unless we’re very lucky, or very young,

we’ve all known those times.

When we feel dried up, cut off,

with no life in us.

And perhaps I shouldn’t speak just in the past tense …

Because probably

some of us are in that valley right now.

Learning to live with a chronic illness …

Grieving over a recent death …

Agonizing over a rebellious child or grandchild …

Struggling with alcoholism or other addictions …

Learning to cope as an adult

with the effects of abuse when you were a child …

Oh yes, we, and people we know

may be stuck in the valley here and now.

Feeling scattered, cut off from life,

dried up and withered.

And even those among us

whose lives are presently on level ground …

Even we need only read or watch the news

to get caught in a valley experience.

What will we do with the dead bones

of Iraq, and Afghanistan, and in the Sudan?

What will happen to the scattered bones of the dying hungry

in Haiti, and India, and countless other places?

The aching bones of people with HIV/AIDS?

The broken bones of the victims of inner-city violence?

We look upon a world in pain, and we wonder,

can these bones live?

And God may know, but we don’t.

When Ezekiel saw his vision

of the valley of dry bones,

that was a pretty apt description of his audience,

the people to whom

his prophetic words were spoken.

The Hebrew people – God’s chosen –

were in exile,

overrun by the armies of a pagan nation.

They were cut off,

they were sent away from the land

they believed had been given them by God.

They had lost family and friends;

their kings and other leaders had been executed.

In exile, they could not worship as they wanted,

and they wondered,

how could they sing the Lord’s song

in a foreign land?

Their bones were dried up; their hope was lost;

they were cut off completely.

And just as Ezekiel’s vision

enabled him to bring hope to them,

so also it give us hope,

for ourselves and for our world.

But only if we observe it carefully.

Tell the truth now: what’s our normal reaction,

when we discover an area of pain

in our life or in our world?

For most of us, the first line of attack is,

we try to fix it ourselves.

If we start feeling sick, what do we do first?

Usually we ignore it and hope it’ll go away.

If not, we pick our favorite over-the-counter remedy

and try to take care of it that way.

Only if that doesn’t work,

might we give in and consult a doctor.

And, too, then it might fall into the category of

serious enough to pray about.

Or if we begin to suspect

that just maybe occasionally

we’ve been drinking a little too much …

First response is,

I can take care of this;

no problem, I’ll just cut back.

You watch, I can do it.

I don’t need AA or any of that stuff.

I have willpower.

What happens when we become aware of a problem

causing pain in our world?

If it’s something like hunger,

we might bring food or write a check.

We might organize an agency to distribute food

and pay on-site volunteers to do the work needed.

If it gets really bad, we might send in the Marines.

When there is hurt in our world,

we want to respond.

We vote for leaders who promise to respond,

or we run for office ourselves.

We contribute to causes.

We join organizations.

We volunteer our time and talents.

We work hard.

We prophesy to those dead or dying bones,

and something does happen, often.

Somehow the scattered bones do start to come together,

and they get organized somehow,

and flesh gets on them,

yet something is still missing.

And that something is the breath.

Now to know why that’s so important,

you have to know that in Hebrew,

the word for "breath" is the same word

as "wind," and the same word as "spirit."

So that, for example, in Genesis,

after God has formed the human out of dust,

when God breathes into him the breath of life,

it is God’s own spirit

that is breathed into the human.

Not just the usual air mixture of

nitrogen and oxygen and a few other trace gases.

It is the spirit of the living God.

So, when Ezekiel has finished that first bit

of prophesying to the bones,

and all the toe bones are connected to the foot bones,

and the head bones connected to the neck bones,

and all that,

and there is flesh and sinews and skin on them …

still, one thing is lacking.

And it’s not just any old breath or any old wind.

It is the spirit of the living God.

Until God has animated those bones and those bodies,

they cannot live.

They may look fine; they may exist;

but they cannot live.

And so it is for us,

when we begin confronting and dealing with

our dry bones,

whether they are in our personal lives,

or in the larger world …

There’s no question that

many things we can do on our own, and should.

But our efforts are incomplete

unless they are animated by the spirit of God.

They are mere flesh and bone;

they have no life of their own.

To me, this is what makes Pentecost important.

Not that it’s the "birthday of the church,"

though it is that, in a sense.

Not that people stood up and spoke in different languages,

although that’s an important piece of the story,

especially as we think about how they traveled

and spread the word over thousands of miles.

But to me, the most important thing about this day

is the coming of the Spirit.

The breath of God,

which breathes life into our human endeavors …

if we will invite its presence and leading.

You may or may not recall

that the book of Acts begins after Jesus’ resurrection,

but before the ascension,

when he makes a permanent exit from earthly existence.

He tells the disciples to wait in Jerusalem

"for the promise of the Father."

Or in other words,

they know what he has told them their mission is,

but they aren’t to do anything about it

until God has made it clear, shown them a sign,

opened the way for them to move forward.

I suspect they had no idea what that would look like,

and just had to trust that

"they would recognize it when they saw it"!

The coming of the Spirit at Pentecost

was surely one of those moments.

One could hardly miss it.

And just like that, the disciples were empowered.

The Spirit gave breath to their message,

which they were now ready to go out and share.

The Spirit gave them gifts and skills

that they would need in order to do the job they had been given.

The Spirit gave life to their bones,

and sent them dancing forth with a message for all people.

Without the wind of the Spirit,

their efforts were destined to fail.

Without the breath of God in our words and actions,

our own dry bones cannot rise up and dance.

Let me just say briefly

that the reverse of this is also true:

For the most part,

God is not going to act unless we also are involved.

That is, it’s true that our own actions aren’t sufficient

without the Spirit of God …

but it’s also true that the Spirit of God normally waits for us

in order to embody, to give flesh to,

the things that are God’s will.

It isn’t enough just to pray

that God will do something

to heal the world’s pain, or our own.

We have to be willing to work

to flesh out God’s intentions.

But that’s probably a whole sermon by itself.

What Ezekiel and his dry bones remind us

is that our own work,

even if it is ordered by God,

even if we are a prophet,

is not by itself enough

to heal the hurts we all know about.

If we’re sick,

of course we follow the doctor’s instructions

and take our pills and all that,

but we need to enlist God’s help as well.

If we’re struggling with an addiction,

to alcohol, or drugs, or whatever;

our own willpower and strength may help us,

but without the spirit of God we may well fail.

It’s not for nothing that AA and other 12-step groups

invoke the assistance of a higher power.

If there are starving people who need food,

of course we send assistance,

and maybe we even send the marines,

but unless God breathes life into our solutions,

they’re not what they should be.

To make those bones get up and dance, requires two.

Us, and God.

The Spirit has come to us,

and comes to us in every moment that we ask for it.

May we go from this place to do the Lord’s work,

strengthened by the meal we share at Christ’s table,

and empowered by the Holy Spirit

to do whatever it is God needs us to do.

Amen.