Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 13, 2005

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Ezekiel’s story of the valley of the dry bones is one of those Bible stories that I can’t hear without wanting to sing.

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,
Oh hear the word of the Lord!

There are a couple of clues in the story that tell us of Ezekiel’s metaphorical intent. The first comes right at the very beginning of the story. Ezekiel says: "The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord...." This is a story set in the spirit. It is a vision Ezekiel had in the spirit. It happens through the Spirit of God, and we’re safe, I think, in concluding that we are to take a spiritual meaning from it.

Another clue comes later in the story. Yahweh (that’s the Hebrew word translated here as Lord) himself gives a metaphorical meaning to the story. Yahweh says: "Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel." Well, obviously they aren’t literally the whole house of Israel. Not all the Israelites were lying dead in that valley. God means here: These bones in your vision, Ezekiel, represent the whole house of Israel. They stand for it. They are a metaphor for it.

In Ezekiel’s story Yahweh then interprets the metaphorical meaning of the dry bones come to life. He makes it a metaphor for the promised restoration of Israel after the coming exile. He says: "I will bring you back to the land of Israel." And: "I will put my spirit within you and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil...." In this reading the story clearly is a metaphorical promise that Israel, which is or will be dead, torn from its land and living in exile, will be revived and restored. This is certainly the meaning that Ezekiel meant his story to have.

And you may well be saying: "Well isn’t that nice. But what in heaven’s name does that have to do with us?" And if you said that you’d be right. You’d be right, at least, if that’s all the metaphorical meaning there was in the story. The wonderful thing about the great Bible stories, however, is that they have what the theologians call "a surplus of meaning." They can, and do, have more meaning than their authors intended. They have more meaning than that as people in different times and different cultures encounter them anew and find meanings in them for their lives in their time and their culture. Ezekiel’s story of the valley of the dry bones is a good example of how this works. That story can be a metaphor for more than God’s promised restoration of Israel after the exile. It can be a metaphor for what God can do for us too.

The dry bones in the valley of Ezekiel’s vision were dead-literally dead. They had no life in them. No one in this room is literally dead. We all will be one day, but we aren’t yet. Yet while we may not be literally dead, we all have dead places in our lives. We all have places in us that need new life. To use Ezekiel’s metaphor, we all have some dry bones. I can’t tell you what your dry bones are, and I’m not going to tell you what all of mine are; but let me suggest what some of them might be.

A dead place is first of all any way in which we are unloving, where we do not live the Christian ethic of love. When we harbor a prejudice of any kind, that’s a dead place. Racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and every attitude that diminishes the humanity of another human being is a dry bone. Hatred destroys life, it does not give life. Diminishing the humanity of others in fact diminishes not their humanity but ours. On a more immediate level, personal relationships that are not grounded in and that do not express love are dry bones. Any relationship that includes any element of exploitation or domination is a dry bone.

Places in our lives where we are stuck are dead places. Maybe we’re stuck in an unhealthy relationship. That’s a dry bone. Maybe we’re stuck in an unsatisfying and unfulfilling career, or maybe we’re stuck not following a dream, a vision, a calling of who we really are and who we could be. Those are dry bones too, bones that need the breath of the spirit to give them life.

Addictions, and even just unhealthy habits, are dry bones. If an addiction or an unhealthy habit that we can’t seem to break is running our lives we’re in a valley of dry bones. If addiction is making our decisions for us, decisions we would rather not make and that we know are not healthy, that’s a dead place, a place of dry bones where life does not flourish, a place that we must leave if we are to find the wholeness of life that God wants for each one of us.

Maybe there are places, parts of our lives, where we are dishonest with other people. Dishonesty is a great big dry bone. Maybe we’re dishonest with people with whom we have business transactions. Maybe we cheat on our taxes. Maybe we are dishonest with the people we love. These are all dead places. There’s a scene in the recent movie Shall We Dance where the character played by Richard Gere tells his wife, played by Susan Sarandon, that he had not been honest in failing to tell her of his unhappiness in his life. His dishonesty nearly destroyed their marriage even though they really loved each other. He was living in the valley of dry bones.

Even worse, there may be places where we are dishonest with ourselves. Maybe we are denying our natural sexuality. Maybe we are denying our own gifts and talents because we are afraid of people’s reaction or because a bad third grade teacher told us we don’t have any; and we believed her. Maybe we are denying our faults and weaknesses, pretending to be smarter, stronger, kinder, or more capable than we really are-although it is my experience that people are generally more likely to deny their own gifts than to exaggerate them, unless perhaps they have become politicians, or worse, lawyers. Either way, those places of denial are dead places.

Maybe our dead place isn’t so much something we do as individuals as it is something we fail to do as a society. Every place where we tolerate and accept the benefits of violence and injustice is a dead place. As Americans we live in that particular valley of dry bones every day. We aren’t the only ones who do, of course, but we are preeminent among those who do. Our complacency in the face of violence and oppression is a big dry bone.

In Ezekiel’s story the breath of God brings life to the dry bones in the valley. That story says that the Lord told Ezekiel to prophesy to "the breath," calling on it to breath on the slain people "that they may live." Our translation uses the word breath; but the Hebrew word here-ruach-can also mean spirit. Breath coming into the restored bodies of the people slain in the valley of Ezekiel’s vision is an image of the Spirit of God bringing life to the dead. The Spirit of God brought life to the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision, and the spirit of God can bring life to all of our dry bones, our dead places too. Let me tell you a story about a life in which precisely that happened. This story is inspired by the story of a friend of mine who has been much on my mind this past week because I learned that she has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. My story was suggested to me by what I know of her story, but it is not actually her story, nor anyone else’s. Still, I hope that like Ezekiel’s story, this one makes a point, because the woman who inspired the story is an alcoholic like the woman in the story, and she really did find new life in the Spirit of God, just like the woman in the story.

As I said, the woman of my story is an alcoholic. She is only in her 50s, but she has been an alcoholic for many years. She was a really bad alcoholic in her youth. She drank all the time. Her drinking damaged her health and cost her her most meaningful personal relationships. When she was drunk, no one wanted to be around her, and she was drunk all the time. Her drinking interfered with her work and threatened to cost her her career. Her life was a valley of dry bones.

Then she started attending AA meetings. As I’m sure many of you know, part of the AA program is turning your life over to a higher power. AA doesn’t tell people who or what that higher power should or must be. It can be anything, but this woman made her higher power the God of love and grace that she came to know through Jesus Christ. She opened her heart and let the breath, the Spirit, the ruach of the Lord blow on her dry bones, the dead places of her alcoholism. When she did, those places came to life. She stopped drinking. She prospered in her professional life. She healed her broken relationships. She led many other alcoholics to AA and walked with them on their road to recovery.

Then the Spirit of the Lord called her to ministry in the church, where she has inspired me and a great many others with her courage, her wisdom, and above all her faith. The Spirit of the Lord breathed new life into her, and through her it has breathed new life into many, many others. Now, as she approaches the end of her life on earth, God’s Spirit will hold her in the arms of grace and welcome her home with love and gratitude for a life well lived.

That’s what the breath of the Lord can do for all our dry bones, our dead places. God can do it, there is no doubt about that. But here’s the thing: God can only do it if we will open ourselves to the breath of the Spirit and let God in. God can only do it if we will carry all our dry bones to the foot of the cross and turn them over to Jesus, turn them over to God. Then, just as in Ezekiel’s story, the breath of God’s Spirit can blow in our lives, blow on all of our dry bones, and give us newness, fullness, and abundance of life. Let it be, Lord. Amen.