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.