Grounded through the Valley

 Sculptor and environmentalist Anthony Goldsworthy said: We often forget that we are nature. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we have lost our connection to ourselves.

 

This is the last Sunday of Lent. We are invited to the valley. Not one of rolling hills, green pastures, and still waters, but rather, a valley filled with dry bones. To be in the state of weathered, sun-bleached, and dry the bones have been forgotten in this valley for a long time. We are invited to the valley of the shadow of death as Jesus faces a rock cut tomb with a stone over the entrance. Lazarus is inside and has been dead 4 days, long enough to have started the process of decay. As a community we are invited to contemplate death – actually, beyond death. With Lazarus we may be tempted to focus on one death, Lazarus’ with Jesus coming to the rescue. We might think of our death, and what happens after – grasping at this idea of resurrection of the dead – for me, for my loved ones. I challenge you this morning to consider the Lazarus story, as a community story about dry bones.

 

Before Ezekiel is a vast valley filled with dry bones.

What comes to my mind is an extremely excited paleontologist surveying a dry riverbed and its banks, discovering fossils, dinosaur bones, and petrified trees. Ancient creatures preserved in the land. Such sites teach and remind us of the circle of life, repeated and continued through the eons.  I wonder at God’s nature – the imagination, the intricacy of details, and the vast web of relationships operating in creation, past and present.

When I consider the valley of dry-bones I also have a heavy heart. These bones remind me of mass graves that came to be because of human nature. In my adult life the valley of bones from the Rwanda genocide, the Srebrenica massacre, the Libyan Civil war, the Islamic State in Mosul, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Gaza War. And how can we forget the hundreds of unmarked graves found at Canadian Residential schools.

 

The valley of dry bones is written in Babylon during a time of Israelite exile. The people have been subjugated. Exiled. Destroyed. Deported. Executed. There is active rebellion. And all of these actions repeat many times, over many decades.

Unlike other prophetic messages like Isaiah or Jeremeiah, directed specifically to people of the time experiencing the tyranny of Babylonian rule, Ezekiel is different. The prophetic is composed in the moment to be preserved for instruction and reflection by the community at a later date. Ezekiels’ visions are captured in writing, not waiting for fruition of prophecies to create a back story to actual events that have occurred. Not written to the contemporary audience means that the text has a timelessness and a veracity of words that speak to people in troubled times across the centuries.

Ezekiel’s purpose is timeless. Ezekiel’s purpose is to talk about hard stuff! The stuff that troubles humankind. Inquiries that dare to consider: God’s abandonment of the people? The purpose of suffering? Making sense of tragic history? Viability of renewed relationship between God and humankind? The capacity of human nature to live commonwealth? Hard stuff!

The prophet’s words address doom and gloom, … and then … through the valley a path of hope materializes. Hope is embodied by dry bones and there is restoration.

In describing the prophet Ezekial, the study notes of my Oxford Annotated Bible, talk about the general vocation of a prophet who uses many means and creative forms to articulate God’s message. For Ezekiel this includes elaborate stories with bizarre and extreme images. The notes read: Ezekiel “has inspired fear, awe, and wonder in readers because he attempts not merely to name but also to embody, God’s sovereignty, holiness, and mystery in words that come close to the limits of expression.” The words embody an expression of the nature of God.

 

When standing before the valley of dry bones my first thoughts and gut reaction, does not turn to God’s sovereignty, holiness, and mystery. My human nature is overwhelmed in doom, gloom, hopelessness, and the largescale suffering humans inflict upon each other.

 

I have been reading Prime Minister Mark Carney’s book, “Value(s)” It is primarily about the importance of moral value within the valuing of an economic system. He commends economic definitions that are more robust than value based solely on utility. In the introduction he writes:

The second set of risks derives from our human nature. We are far from perfectly rational. We tend to support past decisions even when new information suggests they are wrong. We think that examples that come readily to mind are more common than they truly are. And we’re irrationally impatient.

If we value the present more than the future, then we’re less likely to make investments today to reduce risks tomorrow. -pg. x Mark Carney

 

The utility of the valley of dry bones from a human perspective is non-existent. The people, humanity, have been here before, continually one pile of bones heaped upon another. The people have lost patience in waiting for peace, friendship, and kindom. People lament: Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely. God however remains patient; through generations the dry bones continue to hold great value. God asks, Mortal can these bones live?

Human condition in the valley gives a tired, far from perfectly rational confession– Lord only you know.

After generations of human nature beating on each other, story after biblical story of exile and occupation, God’s kindom not coming, can a people trust in the word “that you [that they] will know that I am the Lord.” I will cause breathe to enter you, and you shall live?

Ezekiel stands with a vast valley of bones, a community of bones, before him and dares to put new information, a new approach into action as he prophes[ies], and say[s] to them, Thus says the Lord God” I am going to open your graves, … you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.”

 

At the beginning I challenged you to consider the story of Lazarus to be a community story. The story describes human response to death. Community has gathered around Mary and Martha. A wake of sorts is described, along with burial rituals. There is sadness and grief. But because of the placing of the story in John’s gospel, there is more to the story. In this group of Jesus followers the kindom of God has come near. Bones have been given sight, been given the ability to walk, been freed from demons, been released from cultural boundaries, been challenged to live rather than prescribe to the law, and in experiencing the incarnation, the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us been given hope for today and trust that generations of prophecy and promise are about to be manifest. A people, future generations, are about to be restored -no longer a valley of dry bones. Rather a people placed on their own soil, grounded through the life and death and life of the Word made flesh.

 

In the story only one person sees beyond death, beyond dry bones. It is Martha who proclaims the confession of faith – Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world. Her confession is a continuation of proclamation by those grasping the nature of God. It is a prophetic statement over dry bones. God has not forgotten the people. God has not forgotten us. There is purpose and promise. We are more than dry bones. Dry bones have value. God is patient with humankind. God is and never stops coming into the world. Yes, there can be holy relationship. Yes, human nature can trust, can change, and can embody life. Yes, there is restoration – not in one specific moment, but rather a continued active agency, a continual coming of God’s nature being breathed into and embodied in dry bones.

 

Valley of dry bones – breathe deeply. Embody the coming of God’s nature.

 Go into the world professing to the Breath. Breathe restoration and confess: Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.