Dry Bones

For what it's worth, I love the reading of Ezekiel at the valley of dry bones.  I've loved this reading for a number of reasons, partially because of the existence of a short story I read back when I was a teenager.  It was a story that I think was called 'deathflash,' but I could be wrong.  In the story, a teenage girl, for in these stories it is always a teenage girl, is stalked relentlessly by a dark being who keeps on growing stronger by absorbing the 'deathflash' from things that die.  Starting small with animals, and growing on to humans, the dark presence grows by eating the lifeforce that comes from things as they die.  All fine so far.  But as the story progresses, and the girl has seen more and more, she asks her science professor about what the dark entity was eating.  She does so by saying something like :

'If the class hamster dies, could we bring it back to life again?'
'Well, no, because the cells break down, and the metabolism stops, leading to a lack of life.'
'Okay, but if we could start the metabolism back up and fix the cells?'
'If I could do that, I'd be accepting my Nobel prize right now.  But even if I could put the cells back together, and get the heart pumping again, and get the metabolism running, even if I could do all of that, something would still be gone, some aspect of life that you can't get back.'

That quote has stuck with me for at least two decades, possibly three.  I've been thinking about it through the lens of the story of the valley of dry bones.  For in this story, where the bones are very dry, and they are put back together, bone to bone, and sinew and flesh covers them, all that happens, and they stand there, but without breath in them.  That lack of breath is something extremely important to the Christian worldview, a worldview of life which goes beyond just a body.  Life which has a body, and a rational soul. From the beginning, when God made Adam, he formed him out of the dust, out of the base elements of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.  Something other than skin and bone animates us.  There is something deeper that is more than the sum of our biology.

And the readings from Sunday deal with that.  The readings from Sunday talk about how there is death, and it shows the separation between the body and the soul.  When Ezekiel surveys the valley of dry bones, he remarks that they are very dry. Any semblance of life that was in there is long gone now.  The bones are scattered throughout the valley, and death lives there now.  Anything that was alive is long gone.  This reading comes up in the doldrums of lent.  Lent has always done this - it is always longer than we want it to be.  You can tell this, because as you know, the first week of Lent is the easiest.  We can always handle Wednesday to Saturday, right?  But as time goes on, Lent gets less and less fun.  What started out as a fun little diversion becomes a grind that never seems to let up.  Once again, that's with a normal lent.

This Lent isn't a normal Lent.  This lent is a tiresome grind.  Sure, it seemed fun at first to just stay in, hunker down, and watch Netflix.  But as you've noticed so far, it's not fun anymore.  Being apart from other people is a grind. Being left alone with your thoughts is no fun.  The things that you want to do, you can't do, and you're driven apart from essentially everyone and everything you know.  It's not fun anymore.  And that's why you need to hear this message of hope.  You're doing what I'm doing, right?  Staring out at the valley of dry bones.  You're staring at more and more bad news every day, looking out at the misery and collapse that is growing worldwide.  Those numbers keep on going up, and the human cost keeps on rising.  And you can easily feel as though you're at the valley of dry bones or the tomb of a friend - your hope is cut off, and things seem like they'll stay dead forever.  But as I said, these readings have a message of hope, and it's right when we need it.

If we have ever needed a message of life, of hope, of this not being the end of all things, that time is now.  We need a message where God tells us that he is the Lord of everything, that he is not bound by the events and circumstances that we get trapped in.  When he asks us 'can these bones live?' even though we want to respond by saying 'no' the correct answer is 'Lord, you know.'  Lord, only you know if these dry bones can live.  Only you know if these bones that were alive, are now dead and dry and buried can walk again.  And the reality of death is firm in these passages.  Death is real, grief is real too.  This isn't a matter of stoicism and detachment, even Christ himself weeps at the tomb of Lazarus out of grief on account of his love for Lazarus.  The death is so real that the bones are dried out and the corpses have begun to stink.  This is real, this is death, this is grief. 

But Christ doesn't just share in our grief, he moves us through it.  In this time of sadness and despair, when so much is out of reach and everything is so much harder, you need this message of hope.  You need to hear an account where there is a promise made to you.  You need to hear that God doesn't just shrug when things fall apart and collapse.  He's there to move you through this time.  And every lent that you have lived through has been a preparation for this time.  Every lent you have moved through in your life, every penitent season of fasting, deprivation and withdrawal has prepared you for this.  Because you know what comes next.

Maybe the world is not used to fasting and solemnity at this time of year.  But you are.  Maybe the world hasn't sat down to think about what it would mean to go without something for a month and a half.  But you have.  And think about what it is that gets you through every single Lent:  the joy of assembly at Easter, when everything is back to the way it should be, when the words of the Gospels tell of the empty tomb, and the joy that brings.  Knowing that death is not the end, and that the dry bones and dead bodies can once again live.  Dead cells living again.  Bones coming together, flesh covering them, and breath entering them.

This is what you need to hear.  The fasting isn't over yet, the separation will keep going for a while. But we are a people of hope, and always have been. Lent is a wonderful tool for this, and this message of hope of our readings today is a powerful reminder of that.  Even in Lent, we are Easter people.  Even in lent, our hope endures.

Darkness and light

Folks, you've never had a lent like this.

For a long time in the church's history, Lent was a time of severe deprivation.  No wine, olive oil, meat or sugar.  No eggs, no dairy, everything was pulled back.  In these last days, though, we tend to want to just give up a little bit.  Just a smidge.  Just a touch.  Give up facebook or twitter, give up chocolate or sweets, but apart from that, business as usual. Well not this year.  This year it's all gone, pretty much your entire life.  For the first time, maybe ever for you, you can't just go to the store and get what you want.  either the store is closed, or what you want is out of stock.  You have given up your weekly coffee shop, your trip to the salon, and the nail studio.  You've had to give up contact with family and friends, beer after work and trips to the gym.  It has all gone.

G
O
N
E.

That's tough to hear.  It's tough to hear and to contemplate the idea that you're going to be without things as usual.  And for a lot of us, we may get to thinking that maybe it would be better to have not had these things than to leave them now.  But that's off on the wrong foot.  'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, you know.  But how best do we navigate this long dusk, this twilight?  How do we move through what is seen by most of us as this night that we are in right now?

Well, it's lent.  And if it's lent, you get to think about what it has been like for the church for thousands of years for Lent.  One of the first pieces of evidence for giving something up for Lent goes back to AD 203, where St. Irenaeus wrote to Pope Victor I that there was a dispute between the eastern and western churches as to how long the fast should last, and ended the letter by saying "Such variation in the observance did not originate in our own day, but very much earlier, in the time of our forefathers.

Isn't that a trip, that back in 203 people were talking about Christian practices that were happening in the days of their forefathers?  So the church has been fasting for a long time, and gradually, our fasting has gotten weaker and weaker, until today, when you're giving up everything, and are being defined by what you're not doing, rather than by what you are.  And that's new for us.  We're not used to it.  And this is where the man born blind from our reading comes into it.

This man born blind is identified by the disciples, singled out, pointed to, and they say to Jesus 'who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?'  And for us, this is where we are at right now.  Like that man born blind, we are defined by what we don't have, by what we can't do.  We are defined by what cannot happen, by what cannot be done.  We, in this time of quarantine, see ourselves as limited, and constrained.  And stories of healing are especially important for us to hear now.  They're important for us to hear because of what they represent.

Jesus doesn't just heal people because he's a nice guy, or because he wants to improve the condition of the humans of earth.  Rather, every healing, every miracle is a reversal of the curse that humans were under from the time of Adam and Eve onwards.  When Adam and Eve were justly barred from paradise, the darkness began.  Sin entered the world, through sin, death, and the light that they had seen in the Garden was gone.  There was sin, there was death, there was disease.  Viruses and bacteria began to attack, and decay broke in.  From that point onwards, nothing would work the way it should, and things would fall apart.  You are here.

And when the disciples ask who sinned, Jesus responds 'Neither this man no his parents sinned, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.  We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day.  Night is coming when no one can work.'  This is a chance for the work of God to be evident.  When Jesus heals the man born blind, there is unbelievable gratitude, given that this man returns to a normal that he didn't know existed.  He didn't know what sight was, not really, and got to see for the first time thanks to the grace of God.  In Lent right now, you know what you want to get back to, more than ever.  But what you may have forgotten is the bigger picture of Lent and Easter altogether.  You likely have forgotten about the great Lent that we are in right now, and the great Easter that awaits.

This time is a time of fasting and deprivation, more than you'd expected I'm sure.  But it will end.  Every Lent ends, and I want you to think very hard about what all the Easters have been like for you . You know that feeling when you walk back into church after Good Friday, once the church is bedecked in white and the hymns of praise ring out?  You know that feeling where the joy is palpable, where it's all you can do to keep from embracing those around you?  You know that feeling that comes from singing "I know that my Redeemer lives" loud and excitedly, knowing what this season means?

Now imagine what it will be like to be back in worship with the full family of God, standing shoulder to shoulder with those whom you love? That's the day you want to wake up to.  Will it happen here? I'm not sure. I hope so, but it's in God's hands.  But you're not worshiping a God who exists and works only in this world.  You're worshiping a God who is active in eternity.  You're worshiping a God who is in control of the entirety of heaven and earth, who stands outside the turmoil that breaks us and the tumults that trouble us.  And if you read through the scriptures beginning to end, you will find that they end the same way they begin.  They end with human beings getting back to normal, living in the day of God, standing shoulder to shoulder in praise and thanksgiving again, following the resurrection.  In the true and everlasting Easter.  They get back to the state that humans were in from the beginning.

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared.  And the sea was also gone.  And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.  I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying 'God's home is now among his people!  He will live with them, and they will be his people, God himself will be their God.  He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain.  All these things are gone forever."

That's not anything new, novel or different.  That's back to the way things should have been from the beginning.  When Lent ends and Easter begins, it's a foretaste of how things should be forever, and always should have been.  Think closely on this during this time of fasting and deprivation.  And when Easter hits, whether here or in the Easter to come, rejoice over what Christ has done, not just beating blindness in one man, but beating death for us all.

three sixteen

The Gospel reading that we had from Sunday had essentially the most well-known Bible passage of them all in it: John 3:16.  People have called it 'The Bible summed up in a verse,' and you know, it does do the job okay, doesn't it?  For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. It's a great verse, and has been effectively marked through and through, to the point that just saying 3:16 will conjure the verse up in most people's minds.  Only a few things can do that.  "The machine" used to refer to a specific machine, "the pill" to a specific pill, "the bomb" to a specific bomb.  And 3:16, even though there are a lot of books from the Bible that have that chapter and verse in them, people aren't going to assume you're talking about James 3:16.

Now, I want you to think about that conciseness through another lens.  You probably didn't need me to tell you what John 3:16 was, you know it so well.  I want you to think about another shorthand for an entire class of things, and that is instead of "the pill" or "the bomb," I want you to think about "the Book".  Because that's what the word "Bible" literally means.  When we say 'the Bible,' we are saying that this is THE BOOK.  There are a lot of books out there, but this one is the book.  And for the people of Israel, especially the Pharisees, this was the book that you had to know, learn, and be aware of.  You had to be knowledgeable about the ins and outs of this book, it would be read to you all the time, it moulded the seasons of the year as well as the seasons of your life. That is, it was the book for you, and the Pharisees behaved accordingly.

Literary critic Northrop Frye called it 'the great code,' and insisted that the impact the Holy Scriptures have had on our culture are so great that you can't really understand anything else unless you understand them.  If you have no knowledge of the Bible, you won't really understand anything else that we have as a culture, because the Bible will function as a rosetta stone for understanding everything else as well.  It's not just a book alongside many others, it is the book through which the rest of the book are understood.  Believe Northrop or not, his ideas are at least worth considering, the idea that there exists a massively important, influential document that underpins all of the rest of the literature and culture that we are immersed in.  And you can see in the Gospel reading how powerfully it works because when Jesus brings up a reading from the Old Testament, Nicodemus knows exactly what he's talking about.  Jesus doesn't have to bring up chapter and verse, he can reference the source material, and Nicodemus is right on board.

 

What is Jesus referencing?  Only the boringest book of the Bible, that of the book of Numbers.  And you probably don't much care for the book of Numbers, do you? The reason you don't much care for the book of Numbers is because it has in it not one, but two censuses.  That is, there is a census at the beginning, and one at the end.  And nobody wants to read it, because it's chock full of people's names and numbers and lists and all that stuff.  And none of us are all that into it.  But if you stop reading Numbers there, then you'll miss out on the reference that Jesus of Nazareth makes about the bronze serpent on the pole.  That's found in Numbers 21, see what you miss if you don't stay alert?  And when Jesus makes this allusion to something that happened a long time ago, he is telling Nicodemus, who had heard these stories his whole life, something important.  That the scripture has been fulfilled in Nicodemus' hearing. The story of the serpent lifted up in the wilderness is the story of Christ. Sure, the initial hearers of these words, those who lived through it, would have understood that the Israelites in the wilderness would have grumbled against God, and God would have punished them.  That all makes sense.  Nicodemus would have heard this story for his whole life, growing up this would have been a Torah portion year in and year out.  But did Nicodemus know where it was pointing?  That it was pointing towards Christ?  Possibly not.

But Nicodemus was at least part of a people who would have been set apart for this reason.  He was one of the people who were called from the point of Abraham onwards to be set apart from all the nations, all the gentiles around them . The people of Israel were to be set apart in food and clothing, in custom and in communication . Abram was called to journey to a promised land not because God just likes giving land to people arbitrarily, but rather because God wanted Abram and his family, and his descendants to be a blessing to the whole world.  But to do so, they  were going to have to be set apart.

They were going to be set apart in order that they knew and had drilled into them for thousands of years that there was only one God.  This was done so that when Jesus finally appeared on earth, he would be recognized as God in the flesh.  Had Jesus appeared in any other part of the world, North America or Egypt, Brazil or Japan, Jesus would have been identified as a God, not The God.  If Jesus is in Israel, and he commands the sick to be well, the dead to be raised or the seas to be stilled, he is showing his authority and power over all the things of creation.  He is showing and exhibiting lordship over the world, over the things that only God has control and authority over.  And when he does this, the people of Israel notice.

It is for this reason that Jesus came to Israel and not anywhere else.  It is for this reason that the Lord arrived in Israel, and came to teach those people, because he was able to point an entire nation to the stories that they'd known their whole lives, and to teach them that those stories were about him, and him fulfilling them.  Anywhere else, and that doesn't work.

So the story of Abraham isn't the story of God being in the real estate business, nor is it a story of God choosing one family, or one people, and blessing them over and above all the other nations of the world.  Rather, it's a story of God working out a way to bless all the nations of the world through a group of people set aside to listen to God's word, to hear it over the course of their lives, and to take it to heart, that they might believe that these words applied to the one and only God that there could possibly be.  And if there was a people somewhere who weren't polytheists, who believed in only one God, and who had heard stories about him for centuries, then you would also have a people who would know about the suffering servant from Isaiah, the psalms of forgiveness, the need for sacrifice and yet knowledge that those sacrifices would ultimately be insufficient.  And they would know that in the story of Abraham, when Isaac asks Abraham where the sacrifice is, Abraham replies by saying that God himself would provide the sacrifice.

The better you know these stories, the better you can understand the point that Jesus was trying to make to Nicodemus.  That God's plan for salvation was in the works from the beginning, that the stories that had been told for thousands of years were told for a reason - so that when Jesus, the Word made flesh came into the world, they might know him and have faith in him, not as a god, or a demigod, but as GOD.