Delivered by Rev. Ellen Brantley
Sunday, May 31, 2009
SERMON: …And You Shall Live
TEXT: Ezekiel 37:1-14
One of my seminary classmates was
a young woman named
Come to think of it, though, we’ve
all probably been guilty of the same thing from time to time. When people are
suffering it’s hard to know what to say or what to do, so instead we end up
using some inane platitude like, “Everything will be alright,” “This too shall
pass,” “Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise,” or “You’re a survivor; you’ll
survive this, too.”
If you’re on the receiving end of
such platitudes, you might want to respond, “If this is a blessing, I’d rather
not be blessed, thank you very much. And, as far as surviving goes, either let
me die or let me live; Survivor is not the game I signed up for.”
I wonder if the Israelites found the words of Ezekiel to
be an inane platitude. They didn’t just wish they were dead; they felt as
though they already were dead. When they were feeling that their bones were
dried up and their hope was lost; when they felt “cut off completely,” was
God’s promise to bring them up from their graves and return them to their land
just a feeble attempt to comfort them?
Well, it wasn’t just an empty
promise. It was a vision – an experience to which the Spirit transported
Ezekiel. “The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the
spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones…
and they were very dry.” These bones had been dead a long, long time – long
enough to have been violently stripped of all their meat by the birds of the
air and the beasts of the field; long enough to be completely dried out and
brittle; long enough to have been separated and scattered so that not even
their skeletons were recognizable. And then God posed a ridiculous question to
Ezekiel: “Mortal, can these bones live?”
If you’re on the receiving end of
such platitudes, you might want to respond, “If this is a blessing, I’d rather
not be blessed, thank you very much. And, as far as surviving goes, either let
me die or let me live; Survivor is not the game I signed up for.”
I wonder if the Israelites found the words of Ezekiel to
be an inane platitude. They didn’t just wish they were dead; they felt as
though they already were dead. When they were feeling that their bones were
dried up and their hope was lost; when they felt “cut off completely,” was
God’s promise to bring them up from their graves and return them to their land
just a feeble attempt to comfort them?
Well, it wasn’t just an empty
promise. It was a vision – an experience to which the Spirit transported
Ezekiel. “The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the
spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of
bones… and they were very dry.” These bones had been dead a long, long time –
long enough to have been violently stripped of all their meat by the birds of
the air and the beasts of the field; long enough to be completely dried out and
brittle; long enough to have been separated and scattered so that not even
their skeletons were recognizable. And then God posed a ridiculous question to
Ezekiel: “Mortal, can these bones live?”
Ezekiel’s answer is appropriate no
matter how you look at it. “O Lord God, you know.” Today, we might reply to the
unimaginable and unanswerable question with, “God only knows.” But the Lord
told Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones, as if they had ears to hear: “O dry
bones, hear the word of the Lord…. I will cause breath to enter you, and you
shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you,
and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you
shall know that I am the Lord.” Ezekiel spoke, and it happened just as God
said, like a movie running backwards. Bones came together, sinews and flesh
came upon them and skin covered them. Then Ezekiel prophesied to the breath,
“Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they
may live…. And the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their
feet, a vast multitude.” And YOU shall live. And you SHALL live. And you shall
LIVE.
Not just a pat on the back of comfort. Not just platitudes
about mere survival. But the breath of the Spirit and the word of the Lord
making it happen: AND YOU SHALL LIVE.
It is no accident that this scripture occurs on Pentecost
Sunday. For just as the Spirit of the Lord breathed life into dry bones and
restored the hope of the Israelites, so the Spirit of Pentecost breathed life
into a gathering of believers to give birth to the church. And over 2000 years
later, Christian believers are still gathered, still worshipping together,
still speaking about God’s deeds of power, still filled with the gifts of the
Spirit.
The trouble is, we are not “all
together in one place” – whether physical, theological, political, or
spiritual. We do not understand one another in our own language. We do not try
to understand one another at all. Our membership is declining, our denomination
is under the threat of a split just 25 years after reunion, our budgets are
suffering a bad economy, and people who are suffering are NOT flocking back to
the church as we expected. “Our bones are dried up, and hope is lost.” While we
may not feel “cut off completely,” perhaps we have wondered, “Can this church
live?”
A number of years ago, a former
executive presbyter informed his presbytery in both written and oral reports
that if the membership of the Presbyterian church kept declining at the current
rate, the last person would turn out the lights in the last church for the last
time in the year 2034 (or something like that). After hearing his prophecy of
doom, inane platitudes would have been a welcome relief.
What we need is a rebirth, a
renewal, a revitalization. What we need is the breath of the Spirit to inspire
these dry bones. What we need is the cleansing water of baptism to cleanse and
renew us and to bring us back into community with one another. What we need is
to gather around the table to share in the Bread of Life and the Cup of
Salvation. What we need is to remember the sacrificial love of Christ and to
allow him to re-member his church – to put back together that which is broken.
I read once that a church that
wants to grow should focus less on bringing people in and more on sending
people out. When we worked with the Re-Member organization on the Lakota
Indian Reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, we weren’t worried about
declining church membership or arguing about how to balance the budget. We
weren’t wondering what year the Presbyterian Church might cease to exist. We
weren’t complaining about bad news and acting like we were dying, because we
were too busy telling the Good News and sharing life.
Four members from our Presbytery,
including our own Debbie Esselman, are currently in Geneva, Switzerland,
celebrating the 500th birthday of John Calvin
with the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. It makes me
wonder if John Calvin ever worried about whether his name would still be known
500 years later. I doubt that he did. He concerned himself solely with
understanding the Gospel and renewing and reforming the church in accordance
with his understanding of the will of God.
We need to focus on living – not
because we think we’re dying – but because it is God’s will. “I will pour out
my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and
your young shall see visions, and your old shall dream dreams.” AND YOU SHALL
LIVE.
Finally, our living is not the
end, but only the means to an end. These four words from God spoken through
Ezekiel were followed with nine infinitely more important words: “and you shall
know that I am the Lord.” Isn’t this our job as Christians – and as the church
– after all? That ALL shall know that God is Lord; God has spoken, and God will
act.
So, “Come from the four winds, O
breath, and breathe upon us, THAT WE MAY LIVE, that the church may live… to the
glory of God!
AMEN.