Lectionary: Lent 5(A)
Texts: Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45
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| You Shall Live Cranach, Lucas, 1472-1553 |
In case you haven’t guessed already, today’s message comes from our Ezekiel reading.[1] It is a dialogue between God and Ezekiel, set in a valley of dry bones. It is a curious passage where God commands Ezekiel to prophesy, to speak words that God has given Ezekiel, to the bones. Once the words are spoken, God does something. But the return of life is not instantaneous; it is completed after two phases and required Ezekiel’s involvement.
What could this vision of Ezekiel mean? One interpretation
that is dismissed by nearly all is where this vision is interpreted as evidence
of a future resurrection of individuals. A key reason for this is that the idea
of resurrection of people developed in the post-exilic period. As we will see,
Ezekiel was written close to the beginning of the Babylonian exile.
First, who was Ezekiel?
Ezekiel the son of Buzi (1:3) was
an Israelite priest in the deportee Israelite community in Babylonia. Dates in
the book imply that he was born in Judah in 622 BC, just before Josiah’s
reform, and thus lived through much of Jeremiah’s ministry there. He was
married (24:18), was thirty years old when he began his ministry in 592 BC
(1:1), and continued his ministry until at least 571 BC (29:17).[2]
As for the book bearing his name, scholarly views range from
Ezekiel being its sole author to Ezekiel having written none of it. There are
reasons to dismiss the sole authorship hypothesis, and it is impossible to determine
how much of the text can be traced back to the prophet in Babylon. Therefore,
it is perhaps best to conclude that the text of the book has some
undeterminable relationship to Ezekiel and his time in Babylon.
The portion of text that was read comes from the fourth and
final division in the book where the prophet writes about the restoration of
Judah and a return to their land. The key point of the prophecy of the dry
bones is found in verses 11 to 14.
11 Then he said to me,
“Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are
dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ 12
Therefore prophesy and say to them: 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. 13 And you shall know that I
am the LORD when I open your graves and bring you up from your graves,
O my people. 14 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.”[3]
The bones represent an entire group of people as a single
entity. There is no hint that the bones are about individuals. The message
presented is not about a resurrection, but a return and restoration of the
group entity to their ancestral lands. The message is for a people who have
lost hope, “who have lost heart, who are suffering a death of the spirit, a
living death in exile in a foreign land.”[4]
Is hope and the lack of it really a determinant of life and death?
You may have heard of a book by the title, Man’s Search
for Meaning. It was authored by Viktor Frankl, a Jewish Austrian who survived
the Nazi concentration camps and wrote about his experiences and observations
while imprisoned. In it he writes how those who looked for meaning and purpose,
however minute, in their lives tended to survive better than those who lost
hope.
Another example comes from the city of Sarajevo and a
cellist by the name of Vedran Smailovic. An explosive shell had killed 22 and
wounded more than 100. To honor those who had died, Vedran played Albinoni’s
Adagio for 22 days. In this war-torn city, where many civilians had died and
had been wounded, Vedran, even if for just a few minutes, brought a sense of
normalcy and hope that peace would return.
A third example comes from our own state, Alaska. In 2014
Craig Johnson fell through ice while riding a snowmobile 80 miles to visit his
family for the holidays. A rescue chopper flew overhead without seeing him and
he was stalked by a wolverine. He was ready to give up, but his hope of being
reunited with his boys and family kept him going and alive.
Finally, from the world of fiction we might look at the Lord
of the Rings where Frodo is the unwilling ring-bearer. He is accompanied
every step of the way by his loyal friend, Sam. Toward the end of the journey,
Frodo, burdened by the ring and the responsibility of carrying it, poisoned by
the curse of a Nazgul, he struggles and is on the verge of giving up. But Sam
is there by Frodo’s side, carrying him when necessary, and keeping hope alive
for both.
Several years ago, I was involved in several suicide
prevention and intervention courses. Among the many ways to intervene when
someone is considering suicide, here are a couple of them. The first is to remind
the individual that things won’t always seem so dark or hopeless – that there
are better days to look forward to. A second is to talk with them to find at
least one reason to keep living, even if for just one day.
For the Jews who ended up in Babylon, the dry bones
represent a total collapse and loss of hope. God asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones
live?” When Ezekiel answers that he doesn’t know, God tells him to prophesy to
the bones, “I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay
sinews on you and 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.”
Ezekiel becomes the agent of hope that is carried to the
hopeless. He sees the bones come together, and sinews and flesh formed on the
bones. But there is yet no life. Ezekiel must persist by prophesying breath
into the physical forms. Only then do the bones, sinews, and flesh recover life
and stand as a multitude.
The African American spirituals, of which we sang one
earlier and we will be closing with another, were words of hope in what seemed
to the ones singing places of hopelessness and death. They looked toward a time
and place when they would be free, away from forced labor, and where families
would not be torn apart for the monetization and profit for the slaveowners.
The world we inhabit today is not all that different from
nations and empires of the past. The poor are still exploited by the rich. War
and violence still mostly victimize the poor and weak. The powerless continue
to be the victims of the whims and privilege of the powerful. Outsiders are
still blamed without cause for the problems created by those on the inside. The
powerful still lord power over the less powerful.
All of us, in one way or another, participate in the games
of power and position. We try to hang on to what we have, lest we end up falling
down the ladder of this game called life. We are scared. We are fearful. And
sometimes we feel hopeless. We look at our nation and world and oftentimes it
can be difficult to see any kind of hopeful future.
Maybe hope isn’t looking for something big to change. In
fact, it doesn’t seem to be about waiting for something to change. Rather, it
is finding something, however small it might be, to be an agent and spark of
hope in someone else’s life.
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is the agent of hope who
brings life back to Lazarus. It is a sign that even death and the grave is
powerless in the presence of Jesus, the Life and Light of the world.
We are agents of hope and life in the world as well. We may
not physically resurrect dead people back to life, but we can carry the hope of
a just world, the kingdom of God, to those who are suffering under the
pressures of this present one. We can be agents of hope by offering encouraging
words and through our work to help bear the burdens that others are suffering
under.
The Season of Lent is not just about introspection. It is
also about looking forward to the kingdom of heaven fully realized and acting
today to do what we can to bring pieces of it to be tasted by the communities
in which we live and serve. Each of us are called, as Ezekiel was, to prophesy hope
and life to the world around us.
In closing I read from Romans 8:6-11.
6 To set the mind on the
flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7
For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does
not submit to God’s law—indeed, it cannot, 8 and those who are in
the flesh cannot please God.
9 But you are not in the
flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who
does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if
Christ is in you, then the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life
because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus
from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give
life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. (NRSVue)
Let us live as resurrected people, alive with the Spirit of
Christ.
References
ABC News. (2014, December 28). Alaska Man
Survives Three Days Lost in Sub-Zero Temps, Fights Off Wolverine.
Retrieved from ABC News:
https://abcnews.com/US/alaska-man-survives-days-lost-temps-fights-off/story?id=27860053
Alter, R. (2019). The Hebrew Bible: A Translation
with Commentary. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
Bartlett, D. L., & Brown Taylor, B. (2010). Feasting
on the Word: Year A, Volume 2. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox
Press.
Burns, J. F. (1992, June 8). The Death of a City:
Elegy for Sarajevo -- A special report.; A People Under Artillery Fire Manage
to Retain Humanity. Retrieved from The New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/08/world/death-city-elegy-for-sarajevo-special-report-people-under-artillery-fire-manage.html
Tolkien, J. R. (n.d.). The Lord of the Rings
(Trilogy).
Van De Laar, J. (2026, March 12). The Other Side
of Suffering: Evolving Consciously in Lent (Part 5): A Reflection on Ezekiel
37:1-14. Retrieved from Sacredise Your Life!:
https://sacredise.substack.com/p/the-other-side-of-suffering
Wikipedia. (2026, March 21). Viktor Frankl.
Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl
William B. Eerdmans. (2003). Eerdman's Commentary
on the Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans.
[1]
One of the hymns was Dry Bones.
[2]
[3]
Ezekiel 37:11-14, NRSVue.
[4]
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