Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

March 9, 2008: Lent 5
Deacon Richard Buhrer

Ezekiel and his brothers and sisters exiled in Babylon had seen the end of their world—the temple had been utterly destroyed, the king and all of the elite had been deported to Babylon. There, the exiles lived separated from the familiar daily rhythms of life and prayer and worship. The exiles had not only witnessed the death of their culture, they had witnessed the death of countless neighbors and friends. In Psalm 137, the psalmist prays “By the rivers of Babylon— there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.[1]” At the end of the psalm, with an intensity of anger than appalls us when we read it, the singer prays: “O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock![2]” This is not lightly said—this is what Ezekiel and his neighbors had suffered.

God’s awful question confronts the priest Ezekiel: Son of Adam, can these dry bones live? In two weeks, huddled together in the dark, in this room, illuminated only by candles, we will read this story again as we wait, as it were, with our breath held for the Resurrection of Jesus. Son of Adam, Daughter of Eve, can these dry bones live?

Can these dry bones live? The only answer this question seems to deserve is  sarcastic laughter. But Ezekiel answers from the land of exile, having lost everything that had been important in his life with a glimmer of faith: “Adonai God, you know.” Then God challenges Ezekiel and challenges us to deeper faith and deeper risk: Son of Adam, Daughter of Eve: “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these 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. So I prophesied as I had been commanded (and in a scene that hints at Hollywood and bad horror movies)... as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them”[3] God, again challenges his priest and prophet: “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, Son of Adam, and say to the breath: Thus say the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”

How many of us have surveyed the debris field that seems to surround us in the dark times of our lives and struggled with this question? Can these dry bones live. We look at the dry bones littering our hearts, remember what was once fresh and free and young but now seems dry and dead, souvenirs of horror and loss, empty, lost, hopeless, dead, only worth forgetting. Can these dry bones live?

Leaving the struggles of our individual lives aside, we only need to look around us: a world torn by war, ruled by fear. Machines belching the foul residue of the last fossil fuels, the world beginning to swelter in the tropical heat of global warning and drowning in the flood from dying glaciers. Loss of livelihood threatening everyone; the nations in paroxysms of terrorism, fear, anger, vengeance. Can these dry bones live.

The deeper, more frightening question is “Do we want to live:?” Wouldn’t it just be easier, less pain, certainly less effort, to lay down and let it be over?

Instead, the rock at the door of the tomb of our apparently blasted, wasted life, is rolled back at the command of the Christ. and the loud, commanding and not entirely welcome voice of the Lord awakens us:

Imagine Lazarus, coming awake in the dank darkness of his tomb—his face covered with the shroud; his wrists and ankles bound. Stumbling forward, hobbled by the linens of his burial clothes, Jesus’ command reverberating in his mind: Lazarus, come out! There he stands before Jesus, grimacing at the brightness of the sunlight after the comfortable darkness of his tomb. Jesus commands the people standing by: Unbind him and let him go free.

Lazarus, come out! To come out—in my ears, at least, means come out of the closet (not all that much different than coming out from the tomb, at least for us who have experienced it). In its original use, the phrase “to come out” was borrowed from the system of cotillion balls where debutantes came out into society, from their more concealed, cloistered, hidden lives as girl children in patriarchal families.

Now this process of emerging from the tomb, leaving concealment, displaying one’s own true self is not something that only gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people experience. It is the common experience of every human being who has turned away from the residue of death and falsehood, to start over, to try again, to embrace the gift of self as it has been given. So coming out means not only leaving the tomb, but also joining the human family and being embraced by them: “Unbind him and let him go free.”

When I was in seminary, I was living in Chicago. It’s hard to exaggerate how tedious we found the depths of winter there. During February and March every year, we would scan the barren, snow blasted urban environment for some little sign of life, of spring, of hope. I wrote a poem about that.

In the midst of brick

that cannot bloom

and dirt that’s dead

from dogs and dearth of seed

 

Under skies that

even blue are

dark and glower

at the edge

 

While snow still

hides in shadows

tarry black

and leaves behind

just dust and grime and garbage

 

There’s the courage of the crocus

and daring daffodils

who frivolous and frilly

still believe the sun

(in spite of so much studied death)

and wake with spring

(though stupor

is the common compromise

with winter-time

that the earth’s turning

never seems to end).

•  Easter impends; God is calling us to lay aside our commitments to death and silence, to leave the comfort of our tombs and to take up the work of living in the freedom of the Spirit. We have to wrestle with God’s challenge to Ezekiel and to us: “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, Son of Adam, [Daughter of Eve,] and say to the breath: Thus say the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”