Can These Bones Live?
Reflections on Ezekiel 37.1-14
RCL Lent 5A
26 March 2023
Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral
New Westminster BC
A touch of the Holy
A recent conversation with a colleague led me to re-read a sermon that I had given some seven years ago when I was Rector of Saint Faith’s in Vancouver. Now, I do try to resist the temptation to re-visit previous sermons, but I found that some of what I said seven years ago is in harmony with what I want to share with you today.
I cannot remember when and where it happened, but I do remember that happened. I was participating in a celebration of the eucharist that involved a significant number of people. As the deacon was preparing the table, I recall thinking to myself, ‘We’re going to run out of wine if that’s all that’s being placed on the altar.’
Sure enough, about two-thirds of the way through the communion of the people, I noticed worried looks on the faces of the chalice administrators. Each time they gave someone the wine, the administrators would look into the chalice and then at the master of ceremonies. Without any hesitation the master of ceremonies, a lay person whose liturgical knowledge is great, walked over the altar, took the cruet with what remained of the consecrated wine and disappeared into the sacristy. He reappeared with a full flagon of wine and began to refill the chalices of the administrators.
After the service I had a private moment with the presider and the master of ceremonies. I described what I had observed and expressed my ignorance as to how the master of ceremonies found such a large quantity of consecrated wine. The master of ceremonies smiled and said to the presider with a side glance to me, ‘I did what you taught me to do. I took what was left of the consecrated wine and poured it into a flagon of unconsecrated wine.’
What the master of ceremonies had done was an ancient practice where consecration takes place by contact or commingling. It is an understanding that a touch of the holy can transform the ordinary. We come to this time in the year exhausted, I think. The wonder and joy of Christmas has floated away. Any plans we may have had for the new year are being seriously tested. Lent came too quickly for most of us and we may not have been as faithful to our Lenten disciplines as we had hoped. Insult has been added to injury by the change from standard to daylight time, an insult to my bodily rhythms that I am still feeling. We know that there will be a number of changes in our life as a congregation over the coming months and that we are still some time away from the physical beginning of our re-development project. We desperately need a touch of the holy to transform the ordinariness that has begun to claim our souls.
Can these bones live?
The question that God asks Ezekiel is an apt one for us at this point in our life as a congregation: “[The Lord] said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones lives?’ I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’ – an inelegant way of Ezekiel saying, ‘I haven’t a clue!’ And then follows the vision of a people who have been dealt multiple blows – military defeat, death and destruction, foreign occupation, obliteration of the Temple, exile of the leading members of society to Babylon – being raised from these graves by God’s gracious and life-giving Spirit. A touch of the holy brings life to the dry bones of Israel’s hopes and aspirations.
At the end of today’s reading, the Lord leaves Ezekiel in no doubt as to the divine purposes: “ . . . Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.” (Ezekiel 37.12b-14)
And God does restore the people to the land that they had received after their wilderness journey from Egypt to Canaan. They grow and prosper. The Temple is re-built. But the winds of history blow strongly against them in the centuries to come. The cycle of death and resurrection is repeated – the conquest of Alexander the Great and the victory of the Maccabees, the Roman occupation and the brief period of independence under Ben Kochba; the centuries of dispersion and persecution and genocide and the creation of the state of Israel. Even Lazarus, raised by Jesus, must re-enter the tomb at some point in the future. But for the moment he lives. A touch of the holy makes dry bones and even foul-smelling cadavers live.
Raised from our graves
I cannot help but think that the past decades and, in particular, the last few years have dug a few graves for many Christian communities in Canada and beyond.
There is the grave of irrelevance. As dismaying as it is, we cannot deny that many people, some of whom are our friends and families, seek religious communities such as ours as irrelevant to their daily lives. Each time I speak to someone in the media or in public office who unintentionally reveals their complete lack of awareness of who we are and what we do in the community, I feel another shovel of dirt thrown on top of me.
There is the grave of fatigue. It is no secret that we share a similar challenge as many other groups devoted to community service – the challenge of finding new hands to carry on the ministries we know to be life-giving and life-sustaining, not only to ourselves but to our neighbourhoods. When I have to determine what we can do and what we cannot do, I feel another shovel of dirt thrown on top of me.
There is the grave of fear. We have all given so much of ourselves to this enterprise we call ‘being disciples of Jesus’ that we can be fearful that we have given ourselves in vain. Each time I meet someone who has given up on the faith or who has chosen a fundamentalist path of one sort or another, choices often motivated by some fear or another, I feel another shovel of dirt thrown on top of me.
I am sure that there are other graves, but these will do for this time.
I say these things to you out of a commitment to honesty. Resurrection comes only after the pains of one form of death or another. If we are truly to embrace the life that God promises us, then we must face unflinchingly the realities of the deaths God is bringing us out of.
Out of the grave of irrelevance, God raises a people committed to the mission of creating life-giving and life-sustaining communities in the concrete realities of their neighbourhoods. Out of the grave of fatigue, God raises new stewards of the resources of time, talent and treasure entrusted to us. Out of the grave of fear, God raises us to a confident life in which we trust that God’s last word to us is never ‘death’ but ‘life’.
Out of the wilderness
Time and time again, the witness of the scriptures is to the experience of having wandered in a wilderness of one form or another, longing to return home and being brought home. We can be too eager to move quickly from the feeling of wandering and longing into coming home. But to be able to embrace fully the life God offers us as disciples of Jesus, we must also embrace the time of wandering and questioning.
As we face the coming months of this year and the changes that are coming, let us ask ourselves these questions: What have we learned from our struggle to be relevant to the needs and concerns of our friends, families and neighbours? What have we learned from our fatigue about inviting others to join us in ministry and embracing the new perspectives they bring to that work? What have we learned from our fears that the values and character of this particular community, this Parish of Holy Trinity Cathedral, might not be fully shared by those who come after us?
My friends, I know that our Redeemer lives. I know that our God is breathing life into our dry bones. I know that Christ is unwrapping, even now, any of the bonds that prevent us from experiencing the fullness of life, here and now. Can these bones live? Yes, Lord, they can – and they are.
