Ezekiel 37:1-14 "Joyful Pentecost" Scott Hoezee

It is a sad statement on the times in which we live that you young people probably do not have too much trouble imagining the kind of scene described in Ezekiel 37. Whether or not the people in Ezekiel's original audience had ever seen such a valley full of bones, we now have. We've seen the mass graves of Auschwitz and Kosovo. You young people have never even seen a history textbook that didn't contain some sickening pictures from World War II and the Nazi concentration camps. We've seen, too, seen the killing fields of Cambodia with bones and skulls stretching to the horizon. We've seen more recently the wreckage of the twin towers in New York and the nearly 3,000 remains of people scattered throughout that grim site known as Ground Zero.

We know what Ezekiel saw and we know that such a scene represents death in all its finality, intensity, and horror. And so we also know what we would say if someone asked us, "Do you see any life in all that carnage? Can those emaciated victims of Hitler's Final Solution live? Can the pieces of people buried at Ground Zero re-assemble and stand back up?" From the human side of things, our answer would be a resounding, "No!"

"Son of man, can these dry bones live?" No, they cannot. From our human side of things the bones cannot live. From our human side of things death is the end. We cannot bring anyone back. Even with the wonders of today's medical technology there is nothing that can be done for a body that has been dead for more than five or so minutes, much less for a body as far gone as to be a skeleton.

Ezekiel saw skeletons--lots and lots of them. These were people who did not receive burial for some reason. The sheer number of bones seemed to indicate some kind of mass carnage or catastrophe. The dry condition of the bones lets Ezekiel know that these people have been dead a long time. Can these bones live--these long-dead, desiccated, jumbled-together remnants of people long gone from this earth? No, they cannot.

Can these bones live? The question was ridiculous. So much so that Ezekiel was savvy enough to realize that it is more of a rhetorical question. Perhaps that is why Ezekiel is bold enough to swat the ball back into Yahweh's court. "Son of man, can these bones live?" "You tell me, O Sovereign Yahweh. You tell me."

In the face of such a scene of death's finality, people of faith have no choice but to throw it back into God's hands. We know the answer to the question as far as our human perspective is concerned. If there is more that can be said in this situation, God will have to be the one to say it. If there is anything to be done to or for these bones, God will have to be the one to do it. "Can these bones live?" The suspense of faith is holding our collective breath to see what God says in answer to his own question.

Speaking of breath, the Hebrew word for "breath" is ruach, and it pops up ten times in just these fourteen verses. Clearly it is the key word for this context. It starts in 5 when Yahweh tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones that God would indeed restore the breath of life to them. Ezekiel needs to stand up, clear his throat, and preach a sermon to the skeletons! Imagine my going to Woodlawn Cemetery tomorrow, standing on a bench, and then saying to all the headstones stretched out before me, "Good afternoon. You're probably wondering why I called all of you here today . . . well, that is, what I have to say is . . . ." Nobody is listening! There is no one to hear! Yet this spectacle is less ridiculous than we might at first think. Preaching to the dead is actually not so rare after all.

In verse 11 of this passage we hear Yahweh quote a saying that had been circulating among the exiles in Babylon. With Jerusalem destroyed, the Temple in ruins, many of their children and loved ones dead, it seemed to most Israelites like the end of the world. So they'd gather together in little clusters of lament and say to one another, "Our bones are dried up! Our hope is gone! We are cut off from all joy!" The Israelites had become the living dead. Their spirits were shriveled up within them. They had no hope at all.

This entire book was written in the shadow of what Walter Brueggemann calls the Nullpunkt, which is a German word for "zero point" or "ground zero," if you will. Ground Zero for faith is that moment of crisis when all seems lost and when, humanly speaking at least, all really is lost. For Israel, all of her earlier hopes had been shattered.

What was next for Israel? Was there a "next" to anticipate? Out of this time of profound spiritual crisis emerged the distinctive voice of the prophets. The job of Ezekiel, and for that matter of Isaiah and Jeremiah and the others, was to declare that God was not undone by the catastrophe of recent days. God was still God even after people had been through Ground Zero. What's more, God was determined that he would never be "Israel-less" in the world. Yahweh would always have his Israel! But from the crises of history and from the ways by which the bleakness of our human situation can so easily make us spiritually dead on the inside, this hope is something that utterly depends on the gift of God.

Everything depends on whether or not Yahweh will return to us the very breath of life. We are powerless to summon this breath, much less to grant it to ourselves or anyone else. In other words, from the human side of things there is the undeniable reality of death, and there is not a thing we can do about it. We are finite. There are limits. The universe itself cannot continue forever.

That's what I meant a few minutes ago when I said that the laughable spectacle of Ezekiel standing up to deliver a sermon to a bone-yard is maybe not as odd as we might at first think. There's a sense in which I am doing the same thing right now and every time I preach: I stand up before creatures who must die. And unlike my dog, we know we will die.

Any hope that we have cannot be based on any trends or possibilities that we see within this physical sphere of life as we know it. We cannot expect that science or medicine will break through with the news that we've found a loophole, a way to escape death. No, if we are to have hope at all, it will have to be a hope that can still face death honestly.

If it were not for the grace of God, death would be the end of us forever. It is the ultimate Nullpunkt, the final Ground Zero for each one of us. But Yahweh is the God of resurrection! Can these bones live? No. Even if somehow sinew and tendon and flesh could be put back onto them, as happens in verses 7-8, can they breathe and be whole and complete living souls again? No--not unless Yahweh himself picks up these dead folks and personally blows the breath of life back into their nostrils! It is all of God.

Today is Pentecost Sunday, a very special and holy day but probably not one that registers very high in the minds of most of you young people who have been leading us in worship so wonderfully this morning. I'd guess that most of you have some pretty special memories of certain Christmas celebrations you had growing up and probably some good memories of wonderful Easter dinners you've experienced. But I'd be surprised (though pleased!) if any of you could go back in your minds over the last 15-17 years to pick out a really great Pentecost that you can remember. Truth is, we don't celebrate this day very well. We have no tradition of family dinners like on Easter Sunday, no special treats like Christmas presents. In fact, I'll bet that we made a much bigger fuss over Mother's Day one week ago than any of us will do today for Pentecost.

That's too bad. Because listen: Pentecost signals our most holy hope just as surely as does Easter. Pentecost caps off what was started 50 days ago this morning when we celebrated again the resurrection of Jesus because Pentecost puts the breath of the resurrected Jesus into us! We're all dying people. On our own, we don't have a future. Pentecost assures us that we do have a future after all because God is gracious and the Holy Spirit, the active breath of God, is blowing into us the oxygen of new life!

It has been said that teenagers often think they are invincible. That's why they drive fast, do drugs, engage in binge-drinking and other high-risk behaviors all because they seem to think that they won't die. And maybe there's something to that, but I also have the feeling that a sense of death hangs heavy over many young people today. There are too many teenage suicides, too many teenaged mass murderers who take guns to classmates and themselves, too many dark and nihilistic lyrics in rock music songs for me to believe that teens today think that they don't need to fret death.

That's why I can say with confidence to you young people and to everyone this morning that Pentecost is your day! Christmas is fun, Easter is great, and both are freighted with a lot of theological meaning and truth. But Pentecost isn't just about what happened to Jesus long ago and far away but about what can happen right now, right here, to you once the breath of God's Spirit blows right into your heart.

Can these bones live? Can this body and this person who I am as well as all that makes each one of you who you are live? Those are the burning questions of human life. In Ezekiel 37 it is God, however, who asks the question, and so Ezekiel turns the question back on God. "You tell me, O Sovereign Yahweh. Can these bones live?" God's answer is "Yes, they can!" And so Ezekiel preaches this message to the dead people around him--to the bones bleaching in the sun of that scorching valley as well as to the dead spirits of the exiles in Babylon who felt hopeless and cut off from God.

God will not be without a people. In fact, before this vision is finished it becomes clear to Ezekiel that the many bones he sees in that valley are not the slain of some single battle in Israel's history. What Ezekiel sees is all of Israel: every man, woman, and child of God's people who has ever died. And God promises to bring them all back.

As Paul would write centuries after Ezekiel's time, for now we see through a glass darkly--our eyes cannot fully penetrate what is yet to come in God's far country. But the message of the prophets gives us just enough glimpses to let us know that what is to come is glorious. There is a home for God's people. There is new life for body and soul.

The very last verse of Ezekiel comes in Ezekiel 48:35. There Ezekiel has finished describing God's ultimate home for his people. The last touch on that description comes in that final verse when Ezekiel reads the name engraved on the entrance to the holy city. In Hebrew the name is Yahweh Shammah, which means "Yahweh Is Here." Or maybe an equivalent translation could be Immanuel, "God with us."

As a prophet, it was Ezekiel's task to pluck the strings of the people's imagination with lyrical descriptions of things and possibilities beyond what we can attain on our own, and in this way to bring back hope. He succeeded. In this universe of death and decay, Yahweh's question still rings across the broken landscape of our history: Can these bones live? The answer is Immanuel, the resurrection and the life.

As I think I have mentioned before, with other Christian holy days, we have little slogans that help us to mark the occasion. "Merry Christmas" we say each December 25. "Happy Easter" we say each spring. We don't have such a greeting for today, but perhaps we should. "Joyful Pentecost" would not be a half-bad way for us to greet each other on this holy day. Considering all the life and liveliness and hope this day brings, we have reason for joy and for wishing that joy upon one another. We live in a world full of Ground Zeroes, full of death and despair. Pentecost declares that none of that has the last word. Can these bones live? Yes. The Sovereign God in Jesus Christ our Lord has spoken it. Joyful Pentecost, everyone! The Lord God omnipotent lives and reigns and also breathes. He breathes new life by the Holy Spirit right into us. Joyful Pentecost, indeed! Amen.