Dry Bones Vicar Matthew Lorfeld
Ezekiel 37:1-14 Lent 5
Grace, mercy, and peace are yours from God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
The Word of God which comes to us today is from our Old Testament reading, especially verses 12 through 14:
Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. 14 And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”
Have you ever walked through a cemetery at night? Most of us probably would not do so. It’s just... too… creepy. Cemeteries are not places we normally think of going to in the day. Sure we might visit a loved one’s grave once or twice a year, change the flowers, place a flag if they served in the military, but even then, there is a silence and a reverence. The silence is almost deafening. A few birds might sing their song, the grounds crew might be heard riding their lawnmowers in the distance, but that is it, the rest is just silence. The silence speaks to you, it is a reminder, that you too are dust and to dust you shall return. Each and every one of us will die.
Death is not something we like to think about. So when the Word of God comes to us and gives us a mental picture of death like the one Ezekiel gives of the Valley of Dry Bones, we read a bit faster. Let’s get to the happy stuff: the stuff about God being love. This death stuff is just too depressing and morbid.
But it is precisely in this morbid scene of dry bones, Ezekiel speaks to us the Word of the Lord and gives us a glimpse of the certain hope that we have in Christ, these dry bones will be raised to life.
The year was 586 BC. Ezekiel had been preaching doom and gloom for 7 years to the Israelites who were taken captive and living in Babylon. His message was simple, Jerusalem will fall.
But for Ezekiel, mere words would not do. The Lord directed Ezekiel to act out God’s Judgments on Israel. This wasn’t mere play acting, Ezekiel would lock himself in his house, be tied up and remain silent until God opened His mouth. He would lay on his side for 390 days and turn over and lay on his other side for another 40 days. And while he was laying there he would make barley bread to eat using grain and water and cooking it over cow manure. All of this because the people of Israel had rebelled against God. They had been chosen by the One True God to be His own people, but they turned away from Him and worshiped other false gods.
And now a crazy prophet who seemed to have a strange idea of how to preach a sermon was the least of Israel’s worries. Word had come from their homeland that Jerusalem had fallen. The temple was destroyed. How could God do such a thing? Ezekiel answers:
16 The word of the Lord came to me: 17 “Son of man, when the house of Israel lived in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their deeds. Their ways before me were like the uncleanness of a woman in her menstrual impurity. 18 So I poured out my wrath upon them for the blood that they had shed in the land, for the idols with which they had defiled it. 19 I scattered them among the nations, and they were dispersed through the countries. In accordance with their ways and their deeds I judged them. 20 But when they came to the nations, wherever they came, they profaned my holy name, in that people said of them, ‘These are the people of the Lord, and yet they had to go out of his land.’ 21 But I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations to which they came. (Ezekiel 36:16-12)
Israel had been cut off. Previously there was the hope of return. The Temple had always been something to fall back on “just in case.” But now, the temple was no more. It was a dark day.
Ezekiel was now sent to preach to the people of Israel, words of comfort words of hope. But hope and comfort seemed to be a bit too little and a bit too late. Israel had as much hope of being the nation that it once was, as a skeleton could have in walking again.
And that is precisely what Ezekiel sees. It is a scene of dry bones, as dry and dead as Israel’s faith had become. He is told to speak the Word of God and that Word gives life to those dead bones that covered the valley floor. Foot bones connected to the leg bones all the way up to the head, muscles, tendons, flesh, and skin covering what was once a bunch of dry bones. Again Ezekiel is told to speak the Word of God, this time to the breath, and the breath gave life to lifeless bodies.
The interesting thing here is that in Hebrew, the same word is used for wind, breath, and Spirit. This is for good reason, because when God created Adam from the dust of the Earth, He breathed, into Him life. Throughout the Bible the message is clear, the Word delivers the Holy Spirit and the Spirit gives life.
This was the promise for Israel. God had not abandoned them. In their darkest moment, there was hope. If God could raise a bunch of skeletons to life, he could give this dead nation new life through the Word and through the Spirit.
God then promised how this would happen:
And I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. And one king shall be king over them all, and they shall be no longer two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms. They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. But I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. "My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes. They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children's children shall dwell there forever, and David my servant shall be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Ezekiel 37:22-27
Ezekiel is talking about Jesus Christ here. He would be the one to rule over God’s people, He would be the one to give them life and make them holy.
Life and holiness is exactly what each and every one of us needs. After God breathed life into Adam, he and his wife had all that they needed. They were able to eat from the life-giving trees of the Garden of Eden. They walked with God, and so they were Holy. Despite God’s command to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve ate. That day they died. As sinners they were cut off from God, they were spiritually dead, dry bones. And this sickness, this addiction to sin has been passed down from our first parents to ourselves.
When a child is born, there is much rejoicing. Parents, family, and friends alike celebrate this new life. However, we are told that even from birth this child is an enemy of God. David writes in Psalm 51, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” The fruit of this sin is seen quickly. That newborn child has absolutely no regard for his or her parent’s sleeping schedule. When he wants food, he wants it now, and he will let you know until you feed him. This self centeredness continues on, how many of you parents have had to act as the grand peacemaker between your children. It shouldn’t surprise us that one of the most difficult things to do is to share, after all, we are by nature selfish, sinful, and unclean. We are a bunch of dead, dry bones.
Just like Israel had turned their backs on God and rebelled against Him, we all like a bunch of dumb sheep have gone astray, wandering off to our own death.
Sheep need a shepherd, and so God became man. He came and lived with us, a bunch of people who have been cut off from God. He experienced the joys and the pains and sorrows of life in a broken and fallen world. When his good friend Lazarus died, he wept. Not just because he missed his friend, but because this death, just like every other death is the result of sin. As Paul writes, “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
But this gift did not come without a cost. Jesus was the only one who lived who could ever claim to be without sin. And yet He took all our sin upon himself. The price of our freedom, was blood… blood spilt as he was whipped, beaten, and nailed to the cross. And though He himself was God, he took the greatest punishment of all upon himself, he was forsaken by God. Forsaken… that means to be cut off, ignored and despised, that should be how God deals with us, but God chose that punishment for Himself at the cross. The price that God was willing to pay for each and every one of you was to die to save you. Trying to wrap your mind around that can cause your head to spin, the Immortal, Almighty God dies on the cross at the hands of a bunch of men.
This is why in less than two weeks we will celebrate Good Friday. It is a day of sorrow, because it is a day where we are keenly aware of our sin. Yet, as Christians, we are bold to call this day Good. It is good because there on the cross, we see our salvation.
Our salvation is more than the forgiveness of sins, it is also the victory over death. Jesus demonstrated time and time again his power over death. He brought his friend Lazarus back to life. He brought the son of the widow of Nain back to life. And when Jesus breathed his last, the graves of the house of Israel were opened. Dry bones now raised to life.
The greatest miracle of all was that on the third day Christ rose from the dead, victorious over death. This is why Easter marks the completion of Good Friday. You see, Easter is nothing without the cross, the darkness of Good Friday, the two are inseparable.
It is because of Easter that we do not fear death or the grave. Through the Word of God, in Baptism, in Absolution, in the Lord’s Supper, you have been given new life united with Christ… and yet all too often we act as if this is just a nice idea and nothing more. We receive this wonderful gift and turn around and act as if we are a bunch of dry bones. People loved by God, Repent! Turn from your sin, and return to that which gives you life. Repent and return to the promise that was made to you in your Baptism, that you have been crucified with Christ and raised to new life. If you haven’t begun to make regular reading of Scripture and devotions with your family a part of your daily life, it’s not too late. You have such a treasure, a treasure which some have actually died for, and this treasure sits all right there on your bookshelf. It is the Word of God, and it gives eternal life, it shows us Jesus Christ, who has sealed the promise for you and for me, that these dead dry bones, will be raised to life on the last day.
So next time you walk through that cemetery, look to those crosses on the tombstones. The silence will cry out, but so will the cross. It will say: these are the faithful men and women who have gone through the great tribulation. Their robes have been washed white in the blood of the Lamb. They neither hunger nor thirst any longer, for they are with Christ and they wait for that day when their dry bones will be raised to glorious life.