Can these bones live?

Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones*

   Well, we're back in  The Story this week, and the news does not look good for Israel.  In chapter 17 we find out that even though the southern kingdom of Judah was spared from the Assyrians, there was another nation even more powerful and brutal than Assyria: Babylon.  The southern kingdom is destroyed and the Israelites carried off into exile, while their temple, their Promised Land, their culture, and their religion is utterly destroyed by the Babylonians who occupy and rebuild the land as their own.
     It seems that God' hopes and dreams for this nation, these chosen people who for generations have been saved time and time again, are over.  Israel is no more.  The people are scattered.  God's house is destroyed. 
     Yet even in the destruction of the nation, God is not standing idly by.  God is at work in the people, continuing to speak through prophets, continuing to teach and stand with this people who have come to live with the consequences of their actions.  In our reading for Sunday, God is talking with a prophet named Ezekiel.  It is one of my favorite stories in all of scripture, from Ezekiel 37. 
     We find as the story begins that God has brought Ezekiel to a valley that is full of old, dead, dry bones.  These are the bones of Israel, a physical sign of the hope the people have lost, the destruction they have experienced, the feeling of being abandoned by the God who promised to always be with them.  As I think about this scene, it evokes an eery sense of desolation and loneliness.  Yet in this valley one of God's greatest miracles well occur.

     God asks Ezekiel, "Mortal, can these bones live?"

And the astonishing thing is that Ezekiel does not immediately say 'No!' Rather, Ezekiel responds with a statement of such great faith I can only begin to wish  could see God's power the way he did. 

Ezekiel answered, "O Lord, God, you know."

Ezekiel sees the potential of life in dead bones, of hope in hopelessness, of power in destruction.  And so, God instructs Ezekiel to prophesy.  As he does, the bones begin to come together, (we all know the song), they form sinews and tendons, muscle, and flesh.  Yet even with all the necessary physical parts put together, they are not living.  God has one more piece of creation - the breath.  As a hearken back to Genesis, where we find that humans are the only created being that have in them God's breath, once again God breathes into these bodies and they live again. Just as the dead bones were a sign of the death and destruction felt by Israel, so now these live bodies were a sign of the life that was to come. 
     When I read this story I love the myriad ways in which our lives today reflect the lives of those bones.  If you experience something in life that leaves you utterly drained and hopeless, God is ready to raise you up.  If you feel like God has abandoned you and left you to the fates of the world, God is standing by ready to make something new happen.  If you feel like a body just going through the motions of life, God is there with the breath that makes life worth living.
     What this story reveals to us about God is that God is always standing by, always there, ready to make the miraculous happen.  Now - the bones were dead and dry.  They had been there for quite some time.  God' works don't always happen on our schedules, but even then we have the hope that God is simply waiting - for the right circumstances, for the right time, for the right day.  As we have said so often about scripture this year, "This is your story.  This is my story.  This is the greatest story ever told.". These bones are us - and the story of life out of death, resurrection and new life - is our story.  So the next time you are feeling abandoned, hopeless, or like giving up, just ponder the mystery Ezekiel did.  Can these bones live?

*Ezekiel in the Valley of the Dry Bones, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55163 [retrieved February 4, 2014]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St._Nicholas%27_Church,_Deptford_Green,_SE8_-_carved_panel_representing_Ezekiel_in_the_Valley_of_the_Dry_Bones_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1501992.jpg.