Feeling dry?

Ezekiel 37:1-4

There are times when we feel completely dried out. We deal with work to the point it no longer provides anything but headaches and falling in front of the TV at night when we finally get home. Marriage can dry out, becoming a series of years spent with the same person, both shambling about inside the house, strangers to themselves. Our health can dry us out, especially as our physician begins a litany of necessary changes to life and habit. We hit deserts along the journey that is our life.

Ezekiel was in such a desert. His people were in a sad and sorry state--oblivious, of course, but lost in a desert. They have wasted to nothing. God judges them. That is the message of Ezekiel--the prophet is forced to see that the impending doom hanging over Israel is the result of their spiritual aridity--they have no life, they are husks. They are dry bones--bones so dead that they are bleached, dusty, and brittle. They have been dead for a long time. 

No wonder the prophet wisely chooses to elude God’s question, “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel chooses not to state the obvious. Instead, he throws it back to God, “You know, Lord.” Why wander into pointless speculation? These bones are dead. There has been no life in them for so long to even hint they are organic is ludicrous. 

We might praise Ezekiel for his humility. He seems clearly in tune with the great gulf between what God can do and what he can do as a human being. 

But is it humility? 

You could argue that Ezekiel is actually, very politely, telling the Almighty, “What a stupid question!” 

That is not humility. That is resignation.

And that makes the desert all the more arid.

I imagine God’s response being made in bemusement--”All right, little man, let me show you what is what.”

In Ezekiel, God’s favorite way to speak to Ezekiel was as “Son of Man.” I read this designation as more than simply God naming the prophet a human being. Instead, I hear it as the above term--”little man.” Christ himself did much the same with the disciples trooping with him. He would call them “little faith”--much the same idea--they are nowhere near where they should be and there remains a chasm between what God sees and what human beings perceive. 

So, “little man” sees a valley full of deadness. No life. No breath. No hope. Resignation.

When we become resigned to the world in which we live, we become dry. It is understandable and easy to do in our context. Leaders no longer lead, they only serve self-preservation. The poor fall deeper and deeper into poverty. High schools that once offered vocational classes to educate plumbers, masons, carpenters, mechanics--necessary trades and good jobs--stopped due to a reorientation of educational goals--now everyone is on a purely academic track and those for whom that is not them are lost. A friend of mine observed that we live in a society that looks more feudal than democratic--a small cadre of “lords” live surrounded by vassals who will never, ever cross the chasm to the heights. Nothing looks like it can or will change--ever--so we resign ourselves to things as they are.

Can these bones live?

You know answer, Lord.

(Nope, not a chance...)

O, little man, how little you know!

You know the end of this chapter--the bones snap to life, becoming a powerful, resurrected people of sanctified children of God. 

Yes, our world has more challenges than we can shake a stick at, but that does not mean that those challenges cannot be met. It is amazing to see the power of love to transform lives and communities. We see it in the miraculous resurrection following a natural disaster. A tornado literally blows a town off the map, but the people dig in, dig out, and the town lives, aided by complete strangers who blow into town in love to help. Imagine if we applied the same approach to our more existential disasters--imagine the change we could make if we let love rule our interactions each day. 

Some immediately say that it is so little in the face of so great a challenge.

Little faith persists.

Allow God to enter--not as the subject of judgmental or self-aggrandizing sermons--but as love that knows no bounds and will not quit until lives are rebuilt. 

Imagine.

Dry bones can live.

Dry bones WILL live.