Ezekiel 37:1-14
The picture at the top of this sermon is of the Old Orchard shopping mall in Skokie. It was taken at about 2 o’clock last Tuesday afternoon. On any other weekday while the mall might not have been packed there would always be cars in the parking lot and people walking around. You can from the picture see there are none.
Being there was not only strange, it was scary as I wondered what all the people were doing. Were they at home curled up with a good book? Fighting for space on the couch with the dog? (As I would have been.) Were they at home pacing in house slippers or shaking in their beds with the covers pulled over their heads.
I thought about all the salespeople and wait-staffs and others whose hourly wage was now gone. I thought about my friend who had spent a great deal of time and money on his new salon only to have it closed over health concerns related to the virus. I thought about people who after long hard efforts had just opened businesses only to have them shuttered.
I thought about health care workers – doctors, nurses, orderlies, housekeeping staff – who were putting themselves in harms way to care for the sick. I thought about police officers, and firefighters, and paramedics who also ran a very high risk of becoming exposed.
I thought about the people at my favorite grocery stores who are manning the registers, stocking the shelves, and also exposing themselves to the health risks by dealing with large numbers of the general public so that you and I can have something to eat.
In the few moments it took for me to snap a picture a million thoughts ran through my mind.
The biggest thought of all was not just when are we going to get out of this but how are we going to get out of this mess to the point where we can start to recover from the havoc this virus has caused.
And the only thing I could say to myself then, as I have had to very often ever since is, “Lord only knows.” It is a perfect substitute for “who knows?” and it is perfect for our time.
“Lord only knows” when the virus will abate and life will begin to get back to normal.
“Lord only knows” how many people will become sick and some sick unto death between now and then.
“Lord only knows” if one of us hasn’t crossed paths with someone who is carrying the virus putting ourselves and the people we then meet in danger.
“Lord only knows” when I will be able to stop having to watch church on my computer and be able to return to the place and people I love.
“Lord only knows” may be a statement as old as time.
I can imagine one cave dweller wondering aloud to another. “I wonder whatever happened to Murry after that saber-toothed tiger caught sight of him.” “Lord only knows” was probably the reply.
A variation of “Lord only knows” was said by Ezekiel as he looked out over the valley of dry bones.
It must have been a frightening scene in a frightening time for the prophet.
We have all encountered those moments on television news programs when the anchor issues the warning: “The following scene may be too graphic for some viewers.” The squeamish cover their eyes and look away but that option was not open to Ezekiel.
What he saw was not like one of those old black-and-white battlefield pictures from the Civil War or World War I. No, this was right there before the prophets eyes in color and in 3-D.
He must have stood for a few minutes with his eyes staring straight ahead not able to take in what he was seeing, his mouth agape. Who knows how long he stood there before the Lord broke the silence with an impossible to answer question: “Mortal, can these bones live?”1
The answer could have been “no” because the people whom Ezekiel was called to prophecy had been held captive by the Babylonians for around a quarter-of-a-century.
If we think being holed up in our homes for a few weeks is tough imagine think of how difficult it must have been to have been carted away to a foreign land with vastly different customs and unknown gods and being stuck there for 25 years.
Perhaps at first it was not hard for the people to keep up their hopes that God would rescue them from Babylon; but as the years piled up into decades and they continued to languish in captivity despair began to replace hope. Finally it had been too long; they considered themselves as good as dead. Their expectation for a better future is as alive as a valley full of dry, disconnected bones.2
If that doesn’t perfectly describe where we are now I don’t know what does.
We are isolated. Many of us are feeling alone in our enforced cocoons of not more than ten people. Our life circle is getting smaller and smaller and perhaps we are missing the interpersonal interaction more and more. We are even cut off from our places of worship not knowing when we will ever be able to return.
The biggest questions that we cannot escape asking ourselves as we gaze out over empty parking lots is the same one that Ezekiel and his people were asking God. When is this going to be over? When will things get back to normal?
God’s questions to the prophet are even bigger: “Do you really think this is over? Do you really think this is it?” And the prophet’s reply is: “Lord, only knows.”
Fortunately he was speaking to the Lord at the time who had something for him to do: “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!’”3
Make no mistake about it, God could have acted alone. Ezekiel could have been a mere spectator to a miraculous event but God always chooses to do God’s work through human actors. Whether it be Moses and Miriam, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel, Elizabeth and Zechariah, Mary and Joseph, all throughout the pages of scripture, the pages of history, God works in concert with God’s people.
God’s instruction to Ezekiel is not random. This may sound too simplistic for words but all God asks Ezekiel to do is prophesy to the bones because he is a prophet.
God knows that Ezekiel is not an Osteologist so Ezekiel is not told to start gathering up the bones or sorting them out and rebuild them into skeletons. God knows that Ezekiel may not have been that great a singer (In some cases that may have done more harm than good.) so he is not told to “Sing to the bones.” He may not have been by any means a baker otherwise God might have told him to “Bake the bones.”
All that Ezekiel has is his voice, his prophetic voice, and so he is told to speak. When he does, things begin to happen not only is bone joined to bone but tendons appear to knit the bones together. And finally flesh, and blood, and breath is added.
It is a recreation of the creation story. God will recreate God’s people.
God proclaims that they do indeed have a future because God will revive them. The source of their hope is not in their own abilities. It is not even in their prophet. The source of their hope is in the God who has not abandoned them, who continues to be with them even in their exile.4
That is exactly where we are and where God is now.
We can hope that the wishful-thinkers are right and this will all be over by Easter and that social distancing will be such a thing of the bygone past the churches will be so packed that the faithful will have to sit shoulder to shoulder if not on each other’s laps. We can hope for that but to those who look at the science and cannot hold out that false hope to people might want to ask: “What have you been smoking?”
We can hope that factories will start to reopen, and restaurants will start table service, and the stock market will rebound to higher heights than we have ever seen before. We can hope for that or see it as the mere rhetoric which always leaves us feeling empty inside because we know it is not true.
Or we can trust God, like Ezekiel did, as he was “willing to listen to God and for God. Whether or not Ezekiel thought it would make any difference in the reality of the world, he did what he heard God ask. What God required of him was none other than to be his own true self and use what was his own true gift.”5
People are using their gifts in this crisis keeping things together.
Over the road truckers and freight trains are still passing through Aurora hauling goods.
Women and children are making masks and construction companies are saying “We have masks too.”
Restaurants are keeping their staff’s busy feeding the hungry among the poor and making meals for hospital workers.
Grocery stores are closing early so that workers can restock the shelves for the next day.
Breweries are even retooling so that they can produce hand sanitizer instead of our favorite libation.
Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto said after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by forces of Imperial Japan. “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Let us stay awake. Let us keep our resolve. So that the bones might not just come together but stay together until that day when parking lots are full again.
May God grant this to be so. Amen.
1. Ezekiel 37:3. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]
2. Rebecca Wright-Abts. “Ezekiel 37:1-14. Commentary 1: Connecting the Reading with Scripture.” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship 2 (Louisville: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2019): 93–95.
3. Ezekiel 37:4. (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]
4. Wright-Abts, loc. cit.
5. Wright-Abts, loc. cit.
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