He's basically a mummified koopa troopa, and since his introduction in Mario 3, he's become a bit of a mainstay. He's been in Mario Party, Mario Kart, and a great number of other Mario sidescroller or 3D games. Now, why oh why are we talking about this mario brothers enemy? Because this last Sunday, Pentecost Sunday, featured the story of Ezekiel at the valley of dry bones.
You'd think this was just an excuse for me to talk about an identically named enemy in Mario, but it's not, not really. It's not because Dry Bones has one other trait that separates him from just being a re-skinned koopa troopa. He doesn't stay dead. Yes, you heard me correctly, that Dry Bones, after you stomp him, will stay down for a while, then will rattle, and come back together. How perfect is that? The story of Ezekiel at the valley of dry bones is very similar to that story, now, isn't it Bones that are very dry, have been stomped flat by Super Mario, and then there is a great rattling, and the bones come together. And they don't stay down, either. Although Mario can stomp them into dust for forever, they will perpetually come back to life.
This is great, because it is exactly what happens in the valley of dry bones with Ezekiel. The people that were thought to be dead are brought back to life. Their bones come together, bone to bone, and then there is flesh, and muscle, and organs, and then they are standing there, a great army. But Dry Bones from Mario tells us something else, which is that Mario can stomp them down all day, and they can come back together all day. In other words, there is no such thing as dead. Dry Bones will perpetually come back to life.
This is what happens in the valley of dry bones. Ezekiel overlooks the valley, and sees that the bones are very dry. So God asks him 'can these bones live?' Ezekiel responds by saying 'Oh Lord, you know.' In other words, no, no they cannot. But Ezekiel is instructed to prophecy to these dry bones, to speak God's word to them. It is his job to preach God's word to the dry bones, to corpses long dead. And you can best believe that Ezekiel probably thinks that he's wasting his time. Why bother preaching to someone who is not only not going to listen, but cannot listen? If you go with what you think, what you feel, then you're going to come to the conclusion that you probably shouldn't waste your time on preaching to bones that are, in Ezekiel's own words, very dry.
But Ezekiel goes, preaches, and the bones come together, bone to bone, with a great rattling sound. Contrast that with the day of Pentecost as shown in the book of Acts. In that story, the disciples were together, and then there was a great rushing wind, and divided tongues of fire became seen over their heads, and they began to speak. And when they spoke, all the people who were assembled, no matter where they were from, were able to hear and understand the preached word, and take it to heart. If the disciples had been looking at things from a limiting view, they would have been unlikely to preach to the people assembled at Pentecost, thinking, as they well might, that it would be a waste of time to do so. Why bother preaching to a group of people who aren't going to listen, and so most of us, looking at it, would just as well not bother. Which is what we do now, right?
These days, though, we're tempted to not bother not because of language barrier necessarily, but usually because we feel as though nobody is going to bother listening. People have already made up their minds, so what's the point of talking to them about it? The bones are very dry.
Right. But what kind of God do you believe in? What kind of God do you believe in, and what does the spirit do? Here. we see the word of God reanimating corpses, we see the Spirit of God making it so the disciples can be heard and understood in all the languages of the world. You believe in a God who spoke the universe into existence, who spoke, and the world was formed, who spoke and the creatures of the world popped into being, who made everything from K2 all the way to the mitochondria in your cells, you believe in all that, but you don't believe that the Spirit of God, the word of God, can change someone's mind?
Really?
We have a way of limiting God's power in our own minds. We have in mind what God can and can't do, we feel as though there are certain things that are impossbile with Him, and those things are usually based on what people are or are not feeling or thinking about their position vis a vis God himself. Once someone has made up their mind to reject God, we tend to view that as dry bones. Unfertile ground. It's something that's not worth preaching to. And if Ezekiel or the disciples had viewed things that way, then they would not have bothered preaching where God had told them to. But they did. And when they did, bone came together with bone, and the people who were there to listen at Pentecost, three thousand of them were baptized that day.
If you just wait to preach to what you think is fertile ground, then you'll never get anywhere. God isn't asking you to do that. He's asking you to go to the valley of dry bones, to go to an unbelieving world, and bring Christ to them.
It's that, and it's more. It's more than that relative to what you think the spirit of God can and can't do. Your life is full of dry bones, isn't it? You may not want to admit that it is, or that you have valleys of dry bones around you, but you do. You have plenty of dry bones occupying your time, your space. You have broken relationships, broken over time with neglect or hurt feelings, and after a while, you look out over them, shrug your shoulders, and say to yourself when God asks you to get back to work with them 'the bones are very dry.' There's no point in working on these relationships, right? Dead is dead, gone is gone, too late is too late.
But it isn't. Back to Mario, you can stomp on Dry Bones all day, but it'll keep on popping back up. reconciled to each other; to go back to the valley of Dry Bones, and preach there, to speak God's forgiveness, to be humbled and to repent, and to not ever think of calling unclean what God has called clean. You've been forgiven by God, so you ought to forgive each other. You were enemies of God, and were reconciled to Him. You were dry bones, dead in your trespasses. That's when Christ died for you.What is God in the business of? He's in the business of forgiveness and renewal, of rebirth and new beginnings. That's what He's all about. That's why he wants us to lay down our weapons, leave our gifts, and go and be
You think it's too late? You think things are too far gone? Ezekiel probably thought the same. And then the dry bones came together.
PJ.
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