Dry Bones: a Curious Story about God
Pastor Holly Johnson
Spirit Garage
Ezekiel 37:1-10
August 18, 2024
This summer we have been exploring stories that are creative and quirky and curious about God. A curious story from the Old Testament is the story about a dream or vision that came to the prophet Ezekiel.
It says the “Hand of the Lord” came upon me, and brought me out to this valley that is full of bones. Just imagine it: skulls and femurs and hand bones and foot bones, all piled up in this valley. These things certainly exist in the world. places were armies have dumped the dead. The piles waiting to be burned in Nazi concentration camps. Or the ones already burned.
He is asked: Can these bones live?
And he answered: “only you know, Lord.” A very appropriate answer.
God tells him: Speak to these bones. Tell them I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and I 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.
And so Ezekiel did that. He started speaking to these bones—that they shall live. This valley of dry bones. And then he hears a rattling, and the bones are coming together. And then connective tissue started to grow, and then flesh and skin.
Then God calls on Ezekiel to call from the four winds to breathe life into these slain bodies, that they may live. And he did. And breath came into them, and they breathed new life, and stood up on their feet, a vast multitude.
This visceral vision had a particular message to the folks living the story in the Hebrew Bible: a conquered, occupied land and people, where the ones deemed useful had been captured and taken to new lands; the many who were dead, and the ones left behind in the desolate, war-soaked, damaged, destroyed empty land. Ezekiel was giving hope to the ones who remained, that there could be a return from the people in the diaspora; that they could rebuild. That they would once again be the people of God.
But it also has meaning for every time and place, because there is always death. There is always hope that is gone. There is always some way that an individual or a set of people is experiencing what feels like the end of the world.
Now hear the word of the Lord.
“I will cause breath to enter you. And you shall live.”
All kinds of places in our world are in need of this breath. It doesn’t take long to think of them.
Can these bones live? The ones who are living in a refugee camp and hope died a long time ago.
Can these bones live? If your homeland has been under siege for nearly a year, or more than two years, or more than 200, and you don’t know when it will stop.
Can these bones live? If you are one of the people with your fingers on some button in some room that makes the decisions that end lives.
These are dry bones!
Can these bones live? If you left the church a long time ago because it was speaking words of hate and condemnation to you about your body and your soul.
Can these bones live? If you are feeling dead inside and just trying to find some life again, hoping it might be here.
Can these bones live? If you’ve been listening for a long time but it doesn’t mean much anymore.
These are dry bones!
Can these bones live? If you are grieving. If you’ve lost a loved one to death; If you’ve lost a loved one in all the complicated ways that human relationships can go wrong?
Can these bones live? If you think you can’t get up in the morning.
If you find your nights are not really awake and not really asleep.
If your brain spins on what could have been, what should have been, What you did or didn’t do or say. Or what someone else did. Or what someone else said.
These are dry bones.
Can these bones live? If your church is old and dying.
If you’re embroiled in conflict?
If your church is focusing on things that are not about God.
These are dry bones.
In a country that is built on consumerism.
In a country that focuses on the individual at the expense of the communal.
In a country that is in conflict with deep divides and misinformation.
Can these bones live?
Only you know, Lord.
The building Spirit Garage worships in isn’t one we own. Over the last year we’ve watched as the new owners started making changes. They got rid of the mold, put in new windows, painted the walls, put in new flooring. The blessed air conditioning. The new patio outside where we will eat lunch later on. Someday even the electricity coursing through these walls will be updated in such a way that we won’t knock the power out when we make pancakes or heat up crocks of soup.
Do you know why they’re putting all this time and energy and money into this building?
Because it’s got good bones.
This is what they say on shows like Bargain Block and “This Old House.” What realtors will say when walking through an old house that needs some work but the foundation is still there, and the studs are still solid. The base structure is still standing and can be built upon to make something really good. Good bones means you can do a lot with it to put it back together, breathe life into it, watch it come alive.
God does that work all across the cosmos in big ways and in individual people, all. the. time. That is why we say those words each week: that God is still creating, still inspiring and still liberating us—saving us in all kinds of ways every day.
In Joe Davis’s poetry book, “Remind Me Again” there is a poem called Ancestral Echos that says,
I walk in the strength of 4,000 ancestors
who loved me into existence,
who loved me through their persistence,
who love me wherever I stand—
they're standing with me
and nothing can stand against us.
These bones in this valley—these are the ancestors. And they’re good bones. The Hebrew people, like every people of every time and place were human as we are, and so they made mistakes–there’s a skeleton in everyone’s closet–and the Hebrew Bible, or what we know of as the Old Testament is full of those stories. And they are also called the People of God. They are good bones. They are our ancestors. We stand on the shoulders of those good bones.
If you are feeling dry, know that there is not a time when you cannot be brought back to life by this God who breathes life into dry bones.
Hear the word of the Lord: I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live.
Yes, in the refugee camps, and yes, in the virtual trenches and yes in the streets, and yes in the empty churches, and yes in the hard homes, and yes to your life beyond that lost love. And yes to life after death, and yes to your life after losing that loved one and the future you had hoped for. And yes to life after a difficult diagnoses and yes in the board rooms and yes in the situation rooms, and yes. Yes. Yes. These bones can live.
Here at Spirit Garage. Even though we’ve been through trials and changes that have been hard. Even still, we continue to see new people walk through the doors, and find a place in this community, shaping who we are in ongoing ways, we know that new life is recreating us. We’re taking on new flesh. And in new ways we will listen to the word of the Lord to see where Spirit Garage can join in the work God is already doing to restore and rebuild and reconcile life all over the world where it seems like the bones are too dry to live.
We can be the ones led to the places where life is hard to find, who will speak the words, call in the breath from the four winds, who will tell the ones who feel like they are dust that God will cause breath to enter and you will live.
May God speak to us in dreams that leave us curious to know what God knows: That these bones can live.
May we hear that we’ve been called to us to go out and serve a new neighbor; Invited into relationship with people we may not meet in the rest of our lives; Inspired to care for one another.
May we feel the curious breeze that is blowing new life and fresh air into the good bones that are here.
And on that breath there is a word, and the word is the word of God.
May we keep listening, that we might hear the word of the Lord.
May we speak it to the next one we encounter who needs to hear. Yes. You can live.
Amen.