The Breath of Life - Ezekiel 37:1-14
I really
couldn’t figure out what was going on.
Was it lingering anesthesia? I
keep being reminded that it can stay in your system for six months and mess
with your mind and body that whole time.
Was it the pain meds I was on? They
had had to give me some pretty potent meds to deal with pain due to my high
tolerance. I just didn’t know what the
cause was. Every time I would get up and
start my physical therapy after my shoulder surgery, I kept feeling
lightheaded, like I was going to pass out, about halfway through the
exercises. I talked to my physical
therapist about it, and he had no idea.
It was not until about two weeks of near collapse mid-exercise that I
realized what was going on.
I don’t know how
many of you remember when Veronica led the aerobics class here years ago. We would be in the midst of all of those
exercises and she would keep telling us, “don’t forget to breathe.” I thought that was silly. Who is going to forget to breathe while they
are exercising? We don’t have to
remember to breathe, it is something that we simply do naturally,
automatically.
Anybody have a
guess as to why I was about to pass out doing my physical therapy at home? Yeah, that’s right. I forgot to breathe. I was holding my breath as a means of dealing
with the pain. The result, with a cut
off of the oxygen to my brain, the world began spinning and going dark.
Breath is
important. It is essential to life. We can go back to the creation story in
Genesis and we read that God took a handful of dirt and clay and shaped it into
a man. However, it was not until God
took that soil sculpted creature and breathed his breath into it that it came
to life, “…then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living
being.”[i]
The Psalmist
knew the truth of this as well, “When you take away their breath, they die and
turn again to dust. When you give them
your breath, life is created, and you renew the face of the earth.”[ii] Breath is the key to life. Nowhere is that more clear than in this
familiar scene with God and Ezekiel.
Israel had been
exile under the rule of Babylon for years.
Many had been taken into exile from their homeland to the land of the
Babylonians (in the land we now refer to as Iraq). They had witness the slaughter of the sons of
King Zedekiah at the hands of the Babylonian invaders, as well as the blinding
and leading of their king into exile himself.
Many of their family members and friends had been killed as well, others
taken into exile, and still others were nowhere to be found as they hid
themselves away in the hillside.
You can imagine
their mindset. They were supposed to be
God’s chosen people, but it appeared that God had abandoned them (not realizing
that God had never left them, they had simply walked away from God). The people of God had shriveled to nothing
and found themselves in the spread out across the Middle East, dying…maybe even
feeling dead already. The reality of it
is that they had stopped breathing in the breath of God, and without His breath
filling them, they were without life.
There are times
where we, as the church, can identify with the hopelessness that they must have
felt. We have driven by church buildings
that have been sold or abandoned. We
have been in sanctuaries that were once packed, maybe standing room only, and
now are more often not even half-filled.
We have watched as our sons and daughters, grandchildren and others have
been taken captive, and occasionally put to death, by drug-abuse and
promiscuous sex. We have seen our
neighbors led from the worship of God, and forced into the worship of wealth
and power to meet the lifestyles they have chosen. We have watched friends, filled with fear,
hide their beliefs in the hillside, denying or downplaying their faith out of a
fear of rejection or punishment. We look
at God’s church, not in the Middle East, but in the middle of free nations, and
we wonder if, maybe even think it definitely is, dying.
In the midst of
this death-like exile, God comes upon the prophet and priest, Ezekiel, picks
him up, and places him in the middle of a valley of dry bones. Can you imagine the horror? Many of us have watched those television
shows or movies where the characters come face to face with a skeletal corpse
or a cave full of bones. Here Ezekiel is
placed by God in a valley that is full of bones, and not just left their
looking at them, but walked by God through the valley, amongst the
bones…subjecting Ezekiel to the fullness of being surrounded by death. (Keep in mind, that, according to Hebrew Law,
contact with the dead rendered a person unclean.)
God asks Ezekiel,
“Mortal, can these bones live?”
Ezekiel
responds, “God, only you know.”
God instructs
Ezekiel to prophesy to the valley of bones that he will bring them together,
bind them together, cover them with flesh and skin, and breathe life into them
again.
Ezekiel begins
to prophesy to the bones, and as he began to speak, noise began to pick up
around him. Picture the power of this
story, the bones lifting in the air, swirling about Ezekiel, rattling together
until they found the bone they were to be joined to, and settling into
place…and as the bones fit, one to another, muscle and sinew appeared,
attaching themselves to the bones and binding the bones to one another. Flesh and skin covered the muscle.
However, just
like the man-shaped pile of dirt in the Garden of Eden, these reassembled
corpses just lay there in the valley.
God reminded
Ezekiel, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath:
‘Thus says the Lord God: ‘Come from the four winds, o breath, and breathe upon
those slain, that they may live.”
Ezekiel
prophesied and watched as the breath came into the bodies, the bodies came to
life, and began to stand.
God says,
“Israel says our bones are dried up and we have no hope, we are cut off from
God completely. I want you to tell Israel
that I will do with Israel what I have done with this valley. I will raise them up and give life to them
again…I will fill them with my Spirit and they will have life.”
God gave life to
His Church on that day of Pentecost…pouring our His Spirit and filling the
followers of Christ with His Breath.
However, in many ways, in the pain of a post-Christian world, we have
been holding our breath, and in doing so, have not being breathing in the
Spirit of God…and that’s why it feels like we’re dying or dead.
My brothers and
sisters, the Word that God spoke to Ezekiel is the same Word that he gives to
us today. He says, look around…it looks
like a place of death…but do not give up hope.
Speak the Word of God and watch, I will give life to You, to my Church,
to my People.
The important
thing to note, though, is that God is going to act in conjunction with us
responding to His sending. God did not
say to Ezekiel, I see y’all’s desperation, I hear y’all’s moaning and groaning,
you just sit there and watch me work.
God gives Ezekiel an active role.
1) Ezekiel is placed in and
walked through a place of death…a dark place, a dangerous place, an unclean
place. As God uses us to give life to
His Church, there are going to be times where God sends us into places of
death, dangerous places, unclean places.
We are going to have to visit those places where hope doesn’t seem to
exist. We cannot simply sit here and
say, “God, your Church is dying, our children have been taken captive, aren’t
you going to do anything about it.” God
expects us to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching
them to obey all that I have commanded you….”[iii] It is not about staying in place, it is not about
going just in the places we are comfortable in, it is about going into ALL the
world, including the valleys full of dry bones—whether those places are malls
or motels, bars or brothels, drug dens or dirty homes. God tells us to go into the places of death.
2) In those places of death, we
are called to speak words of life. We
are to prophesy to the bones…we are not to condemn the bones for being dead,
but speak words of life that bring the bones together and convey the mending
power of God to heal and restore. All
too often we look at those who are lost and imprisoned by the world and speak
words of condemnation and death, but the command of God is to speak hope and
life.
3) We are to give witness to
the Spirit. We are to reflect to the
world that God’s people are alive. That
God has filled us with His breath and we are not dead. We are not to hide in the shadows or play
dead…but live, fully live, in the world…giving witness to others who need to
experience the hope that lies in those who live filled with the life-giving
breath of God.
My brothers and
sisters, don’t forget to breathe, and let the breath of God, the breath of
Life, fill you completely…that we may fully live as the people of God…
In the Name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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