First Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Psalm 130;  Ezekiel 37:1-14

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. — Psalm 130:1

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. — Ezekiel 37:1

"Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!" the psalmist sings.  Someone in deep distress is crying out to God.  We don’t know who this is, only that this person wants desperately to be heard by God.  And even though there is nothing to tell us what the problem is, this cry resonates in the depths of our souls.  It echoes in the chasms of loss, sorrow, and despair that we all know as part of being human.  As desperate as he (or she) is, the Psalmist still knows where to turn.  "I cry out to you, O Lord!"  There is trust here, rooted in a deep awareness of the certainty and power of God’s forgiveness.  If all God does is tick off little black marks against our names and exact retribution for what we’ve done wrong, then we might as well give up.  But knowing "there is forgiveness with God," the psalmist cries out to the Lord… and waits for the Lord… and hopes in the Lord.  And whether or not we can do the same when we experience those depths, the psalmist shows us the possibility.  As the old cliche says, "Where there’s life, there’s hope."

 

But what about when there’s no life at all, no breath even to gasp out that cry to the Lord?  The "depths" are one thing, but what about when we are "out of our depths" and out of possibilities?  In another time and place, the psalmist expresses trust that God will be present "in the valley of the shadow of death."  But what about when we find ourselves in the depths of the valley of death itself?  That’s where Ezekiel finds himself when the hand of the Lord comes upon him and transports him in the spirit down "in the middle of a valley full of bones."  There’s no breath here at all… no flesh, just bones… many bones… very dry, very dead, disconnected bones.  So, is the negative of that cliche also true—where there’s no life, there’s no hope?

Certainly Ezekiel might well think this.  It has been more than ten years since he, his family, and thousands of others—the cream of the children of Abraham—were herded off from Judah into exile in Babylon.  Ezekiel’s entire world was turned upside down.  He’s a priest.  But before his very eyes the Temple in Jerusalem—the center of his life, the center of his people’s life, the very home of God on earth—was destroyed.  And it doesn’t help at all that as a priest and a prophet he had warned the people over and over again about the injustice of their ways, and now those people are only getting what they deserve.  But it’s no help, for the home of God is no more, and the people—the chosen people—are now slaves in a foreign land, cut off from their culture, temple, and traditions, and from their God.  Surely God would not be caught dead in so unclean and unholy a place as Babylon.  The "chosen people" are no more.  They’re lifeless bones.  "These bones are the whole house of Israel," God says to Ezekiel.  And the bones themselves cry out in anguish, "Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely."

These dry bones deep in the valley of death do not cry to the Lord out of trust and hope.  They’re too far gone.  So when the Lord asks Ezekiel, "Mortal, can these bones live?" Ezekiel says, "O Lord God, you know."  I disagree with those commentaries that see this as a statement of Ezekiel’s deep faith and trust.  Of course, God knows.  But I think Ezekiel is being evasive here, trying to avoid saying, "No way, José!" to God’s face.  When he responds, "O Lord God, you know," he’s essentially saying "How in the heck should I know?"  In a similar situation, we might well shake our heads in hopeless resignation and mutter, "God only knows!"  "O Lord God, you know."  There’s a certain irony in this, for indeed God does know.  And the answer God has in store is surprising Good News—Good News for Ezekiel, Good News for the bones, and Good News for us.
Before I come to that, it is important that we remind ourselves of just who we are in this story.  We are certainly not God.  And we’re not the prophet either, although we could probably learn some lessons from him.  After all, he is in the process of learning for himself one of the oft repeated lessons of the Old Testament—that no matter where he is, no matter how God-forsaken it may seem, "Surely God is in this place" also.  God is ever present.  But the story here is about death, and in this story we are the bones.  In this story, we are dead.

Psalm 130 speaks to us about being in the depths, yet the depths are still a place of action.  The psalmist still can do something.  He turns to God.  He has breath, so he can cry out.  And he can wait.  And he can hope.  But what about deep in the valley of dry bones where nothing moves and nothing can be done?  We usually hate to think about our own deaths.  But no matter what we do, what we eat, and what preventive measures we may employ, every single one of us here in church today will die sooner or later.  (Now, before you go wishing you’d stayed home today, do know also that sooner or later all those who aren’t here in church today will die as well.)  We cannot stop death or put an end to it.  Everyone dies.

The dry bones Ezekiel sees on his tour around the valley can do nothing.  Can these bones live?  Not on their own, they can’t!  But the Good News is that they don’t have to, for God is the one who acts.  Death is not the end.  But new life does not depend on something we have to do.  It is a gift, an act of divine grace.  This is the message of Ezekiel, also the message of Jesus calling Lazarus from the tomb, and the message of Easter when we proclaim "Christ is risen indeed!"

In the story of the valley of dry bones, the Lord God comes to Ezekiel in the midst of the death of exile and reenacts creation right there—not in the same way, but as an act of new creation.  This is the Lord God who made the heavens and the earth, who brought forth life when there was no life before.  And now in the depths of the valley of dry bones, the Lord God acts to bring forth new life once again so that the people might live.  The bones receive both flesh and breath.  These two—flesh and breath—are metaphors for how God acts in giving new life to us.

First the flesh.  Ezekiel looks and sees the dry bones coming together, each bone to its bone, with sinews to attach them and flesh to clothe them.  ("The knee bone’s connected to the leg bone, now hear the word of the Lord.")  God connects us, binds us with sinews one to another, drawing us together into a community of caring, the body of Christ.  When we learn together, share stories with each other, gather for common prayer, come to communion at the Lord’s Table—in all this we experience connection through bonds of love and care.  When we help one another and our neighbors, when we forgive each other and ourselves, when we celebrate and worship together—we put that love and care into action as God’s love incarnate.  All these are not things we have to do in order to achieve new life.  After all dead, dry bones can do nothing by themselves but sit there.  No, these are but some of the signs and benefits of God’s grace at work.

Yet connection is not all there is to God’s gift of new life.  In the depths of the valley, the dry bones are bound together with sinews and flesh, but Ezekiel sees that they lack breath.  So once again he speaks in God’s name, but not to the bones this time, rather to the breath, "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these dead, that they might live."  The Hebrew word for "breath" is "ruach," a word marvelously complex in its meaning.  "Ruach" means, "spirit and wind and breath"—all three together.  So Ezekiel addresses at one and the same time the Spirit of God, the Wind of God, and the Breath of God.  As Spirit, ruach is God’s very essence—creative, life-giving, loving.  As Wind, ruach is powerful, felt but not seen, and it recalls the great, rushing wind that brooded over the waters of creation in Genesis 1.  And as Breath, ruach is the very breath of life that God breathed into a lump of clay in Genesis 2 to make Adam a living soul.  So the ruach comes to the dry bones that are now clothed with flesh and brings to them the fullness of new life.  And with that the Lord opens the graves of death and exile, the graves of lost hope and deep despair, and the people awaken to new life.  Glory be to God!  As one of the early church Fathers, Irenaeus, once declared, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive."

The ruach of God does all this.  The prophet doesn’t do it.  And certainly the dry bones cannot do it for themselves.  Oh, we can certainly choose to do good things to refresh and renew ourselves.  But no matter how hard we try, no matter what toys we buy, we cannot bring ourselves to the fullness of new life.  Still, we do know new life in those times when we find ourselves inspired to break out of old and ineffective patterns of thinking, feelings, and behaving.  We know new life when we find ourselves drawn to new ways of caring and sharing that reach out beyond ourselves and include those who are outcast.  And we know this gift of new life when in the depths of the valleys of loss, the valleys of sorrow, the valleys of despair, we find ourselves still able to cry out to the Lord.  Still able to wait for the Lord with the confidence of those who wait for morning knowing it will come.  And still able to hope in the Lord.

"Out of the depths we cry to you, O Lord.  Lord, hear our voice!"

Yet deeper still, down in the deepest depths of the valley of death, we trust that we are never alone, that God is there with us, loving us with a strong, steadfast love that never fails.  We are Ezekiel’s bones ("Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.")… we are Lazarus lying in his tomb… we are Jesus in that dark Saturday waiting for Easter Sunday morning—trusting, trusting always (!), in the Lord God, maker of heaven and earth, who opens graves and brings forth new life from death.

 

Thanks be to God.  Amen and amen.