You're Not in Kansas Anymore: Can These Bones Live?

Since I’ve moved to Smalltown, I have spent a lot of time learning about the history of this town. At it’s founding in 1761 it was one of the best agricultural towns in our state of however the Blanky Falls running through our town helped Smalltown develop to become the home of our states machine and tool industry. The manufacturing that this town produced was so vital that during World War II, our town was on Hitler’s hit list. However after the war, the demand went down for machinery and tools and much of American manufacturing went overseas. With the declining economy, the closing of businesses and schools and the falling of our population the life of our town has suffered. As we look upon the empty machine shops and dilapidated homes through out Smalltown – we wonder if Ezekiel’s dry bones could be describing us.

This morning we hear a vision Ezekiel written during a period of Judah’s history known as the Babylonian Exile. Before the exile the people of Judah were enjoying a Golden Age just like the glory days of King David’s empire. However the dream was shattered by the brutal invasion of Judah by the Babylonian Empire in 597 BCE, 600 years before the birth of Jesus. In an effort to demoralize the nation of Judah in the aftermath of the invasion, the king of Babylon to took away the cream of the Judean population and left behind only its poorest of people. Along with the Judean king and many of the Judean leaders, Ezekiel, a priest who belonged to the aristocracy of Jerusalem was swept away in the first deportation. Ten years later Jerusalem, the capital city of Judah revolted against the Babylonians and in return the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and its temple and deported a second wave of Judean leaders. For the Judean exiles forced to live in Babylon the future seemed hopeless and they wondered if their nation and its history would disappear. Some note that “The key symbols of Judean faith—Jerusalem, its temple, its people, and the Davidic monarchy—had been destroyed. According to the theological rationality of the ancient world, many exiled Judeans assumed that their deity had been defeated by a stronger deity from Babylon. The people wondered if the Lord was truly lord and truly faithful.”[i] It is within the context of exile and fear of the unknown that Ezekiel has his vision of the valley of the dry bones.
Ezekiel is picked up by God and set down in the middle of a valley. He looks all around himself and finds that it is full of bones. Then God asks Ezekiel, “Mortal, can these bones live?” and Ezekiel answers, “O Lord God, you know.” Then God commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones so that they may live and Ezekiel begins to speak. There is a mad rattling and the bones came together one by one, then muscles and skin formed over the bones, yet the thing that made them alive, that animated them was the breath of God. It was that same breath that brought the disciples to life on Pentecost morning, it is the same breath of God that brought a women’s prayer group to life.

In the early 1990’s in East Los Angeles in a neighborhood called Boyle Heights, a group of women formed a prayer group in Dolores Mission Catholic church. The neighborhood that the church was located in was a war zone riddled with gang violence, drugs and prostitution. Everyday there were gang killings and injuries. Within the church itself there were members of eight gangs and so you can imagine the heart break these women felt over the fact that their sons were killing each other over such things as turf, drug trade and reputation. Like the disciples in this morning’s New Testament reading the women were locked up in a room doing bible study together because they were too afraid to go out into streets for fear of their personal safety. They prayed every night for the violence to end and studied the bible together for comfort and assurance.

One evening they were studying the scripture about Jesus walking on water and calling the disciples out of the boat. After their bible study they prayed together and as they prayed “one of their number -- electrified with a sudden sense of discovery and consternation -- shared with others what she saw as the parallels to their own predicament.”[ii] This woman caught a spark of inspiration from this story and realized that their prayer group was being called to get out of their locked room and to “enter the violence saturated streets and…calm the storm together.”[iii]

The other women looked at her like she was nuts. “What are you saying?” They asked. And she explained to them that “they were being called to walk together in the midst of the war zone of the gangs.” And after a long discussion and more prayer and discernment that night seventy women began to walk the streets as a procession from one gang turf to the next throughout the Boyle Heights neighborhood. When they encountered gang members preparing for battle they gave them food and offered to pray with them. “Throughout the night, in eight war zones, the conflict was bafflingly, disorientingly interrupted. People were baffled; the gang members were disoriented.”[iv]

Every night thereafter the mothers would walk the streets and talk to each other’s sons. Now the gangs were reluctant to engage in warfare because it was their mothers who were putting themselves in the crossfire. The love that the mothers gave on their nightly walks made the gang members see that there really were people who cared about them. Eventually the mothers called their nighttime walks, “Love Walks.” Within a week there was a dramatic drop in gang violence. Eventually through community organizing the mothers and gang members created a tortilla factory, a bakery and a child care center thus creating jobs and giving the gang members an opportunity to learn job skills. Also the members of opposing gangs were learning how to get along through the community work that they were doing with their mothers.

The spirit that pushed these women from their locked room out into the streets is the same spirit that brought the valley of the dry bones to life, and it is the same spirit that brought the disciples to life on Pentecost morning. The Holy Spirit doesn’t come in quietly as a ray of light, or a dove or an angel with a halo about its head. It comes in as a mighty wind, a tornado like force that blows the windows open, blows everything off the surfaces of the room and sweeps everyone in the room off their feet. The appearance of the Holy Spirit is unsettling, causing disruption and confusion rather than calm. Then “divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them and a tongue rested on each of them.” And “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the spirit gave them ability.” Then filled with the Holy Spirit they went out into the streets to preach the good news about “God’s mighty deeds and power.” It is through the church that the Holy Spirit breaths dry bones to life. In her book, “Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism.” Rev Martha Grace Reese states, “Church is an igniter of faith, an instigator of growth that affects your whole life. Thinking extraordinary new ideas about surrender of self, healing of bodies, addictions, marriages, wounded souls, and surviving others-these thought come to mind when members of great congregations hear the word church.”[v]

With the prophecy of Ezekiel something wonderful happened. The spirit of God swept through the exiles and they started to make plans for the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Ezekiel’s vision became their expectation. They began to hope and what was previously unimagined became reality. History was made by envisioning alternative possibilities and acting on them as if they were inevitable.[vi]

Ezekiel’s vision speaks to us today by telling us that restoration is always possible through the spirit of God. The spirit of God is blowing through the aisles and hallways and classrooms and assembly rooms of First Congregational Church bringing dry bones to life. See visions, dream dreams, go out and prophesy. Let the mighty wind of the Holy Spirit sweep us off our feet and carry us into the world.

May it be so.

Amen.

[i] Rolf Jacobson “Commentary on First Reading – Lectionary for March 09, 2008” http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=3/9/2008&tab=1

[ii] http://www.thirdside.org/stories_01.cfm

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Martha Grace Reese, Unbinding the Gospel (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2006), 65.

[vi] Walter Wink “These Bones Shall Live” The Christian Century, 1994.