Nancy E. Petty
Pullen Memorial Baptist Church
March 9, 2008 – Fifth Sunday in Lent
Texts: Ezekiel 37:1-14; John 11:1-45
Restoring Life
Peter Gomes in his new book, the Scandalous gospel of Jesus, recalls an encounter with her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. Gomes had been invited to worship in the parish church in Windsor Great Park, where the royal family attends Sunday worship when in Windsor. It so happened that on the day of his visit, both Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mother were in attendance. Gomes writes of that day:
To my great delight, immediately following the service I was invited to join mother and daughter for drinks at Royal Lodge, the Windsor residence of the Queen Mother. Then in her one hundred and second year, she was holding court in the form of a splendid pre-luncheon party in a setting worthy of a Merchant and Ivory film, and eventually I was summoned into the royal presence, where Her Majesty maintained a lively conversation. Among other observations, the Queen Mother remarked on how excellent the sermon had been. “Don’t you agree?” she asked me, which is a difficult question for an honest clergyman to answer, so I did what anyone would do under the circumstances: I agreed. Then, with that world-class twinkle in her eye, the Queen Mother remarked, “I do like a bit of good news on Sunday, don’t you?”
I thought of the Queen Mother’s words when I read the stories of Ezekiel’s vision in the valley of dry bones and the raising of Lazarus. In grand fashion, both of these stories offer a bit of “good news,” for they are all about restoring hope and life in the midst of a world where hopelessness and death seem pervasive.
I’m struck by just how relevant the story in Ezekiel is for us modern-day hearers and just how much a word of “good news” it is for us. Ezekiel was prophesying at a time in history not unlike our current world reality. War was everywhere. Political exiles longed for the fighting to stop so they could return to their homeland. People everywhere perished for a word of hope and an act of mercy from those in leadership and power. For Ezekiel and his people times were desperate, and it was in the midst of such chaos and instability that the word of God came to Ezekiel in a vision. In this vision, Ezekiel found himself standing in a valley full of dry bones. The image is of a battlefield whose slain never received proper burial, but were left to decay where they fell. Having led Ezekiel around these piles of bones, God asks him a question: “Mortal, can these bones live?” His response was at best noncommittal: “O Lord God, you know.” God then orders Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones (as if they had ears to hear!). In response to the prophet’s words, the bones are re-membered, bound by sinews, refleshed, covered with skin, and animated by the spirit.
Now, if you have any lasting doubt about whether the Bible was meant for literal interpretation, doubt no more. For Ezekiel and his fellow exiles the notion of bodily resurrection would have been regarded as utterly absurd. This story was not ever intended for literal interpretation—not by Ezekiel’s hearers nor any other generation of listeners. However, it was and is intended as a story of hope and restoring life for any people who feel dead and dried up, whose hope is lost, and who feel utterly cut off from life and living.
God’s vision to Ezekiel was, more than anything, a challenge: a challenge to view the world and one’s circumstances not through one’s own limited vision, but through God’s vision. Can these bones live? Of course not. But look at them through God’s ways and God’s acts, and watch the bones rush to their appropriate partners. Watch as ligaments bind them together, as flesh blankets them, and as skin seals them tightly. Watch as God’s spirit, which heals hopelessness, infuses them, so that they rise up. At the heart of Ezekiel’s vision is the simple yet profound question: What does it mean to look at our world, and at ourselves, through God’s eyes?
Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has observed that Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dried bones bears no date because every generation needs to hear in its own time that these bones can live again. Like the exiles of old, we too can at times feel as good as dead. We are null and void inside. But if we look through God’s eyes, we can see broader realities and bases for hope.
“Mortals, can these bones live?” Of course they can. But first, people like us sitting right here in this room this morning must be willing to see as God sees and be willing to breathe life back into the bones. Even as the bones became bodies, Ezekiel observed, the bodies were lifeless, for there was no breath (ruah) or spirit within them. Once more Ezekiel was commanded to prophesy, summoning “the breath” or “the spirit.” It is interesting to note that the verb “to breathe” in v. 9 is the same verb that appears in Gen. 2:7 to describe how God, having formed a human body from the soil, breathed into its nostrils the breath of life. Not unlike Ezekiel, God is summoning us, to breathe life back into the dried-up bones that are lying all around us. How? By having the courage to see our world, our neighbors both far and near, and ourselves as God envisions us.
As I have listened over these past weeks to the political debates going on in our country I have felt a shift in this direction. Not representing a particular religious point of view, I have sensed that some political candidates are breathing life back into our dried-up bones. They are giving us the courage and hope to see our world, our global neighbors, and ourselves as one universal benevolent God might envision us—as a more compassionate, giving, forgiving, loving, and just people. Like the Queen Mother, it seems that people in this country are longing for a bit of “good news.”
Much like the story of Ezekiel and the valley of dry bones, the story of Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the dead challenges us theologically and spiritually. While it is clear that Ezekiel’s vision in the valley of dry bones was purely metaphorical, when we come to Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead the question lingers, “Can we really believe that something like this happened?” I imagined taking a poll at this point in the sermon to see how many of us would say “yes,” how many would say “no,” and how many would, in true Pullen fashion, argue the validity of the question. Not seeing a good outcome to the polling process, I want to suggest that the only answer to the question of whether this miracle could have occurred is another question. It is this: Can we believe that God’s ways of ordering the world transcend the ways in which we understand and see our world ordered?
Spiritually, this may be the hardest question we face. And how we answer it will speak volumes about how we live in this world as a people of faith. As I ponder my own response to this question, this I do believe: if we limit the possibilities of how God might work in this world and in our lives to our ways of understanding, then we reduce God to our way of being and acting. The good news that was at the core of all Jesus’ preaching and teaching was of a God more gracious, more generous, more hospitable, more loving, more forgiving and more just than those who worship God. In the story of Jesus raising Lazarus, once again, we encounter and wrestle with the question: Can we believe that God’s ways transcend our ways of understanding and seeing the world?
I am aware that good news to some will almost inevitably be bad news to others. The vision of Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones and the story of Jesus restoring life to Lazarus is all about good news if we are willing to try and see the world through God’s eyes and if we risk believing that God’s ways of ordering the world transcend our ways. It is my hope that on this Sunday you find this to be a bit of good news!