The Bony Hope

Sermon, August 27, 2000

Text: Ezekiel 37:1-14

I'd like to offer a quick clarification about the sermon title, which might sound like someone with a Swedish accent referring to a popular American dance. With the Scot's Confession being our Affirmation of Faith this morning, perhaps you may have thought the secretary misspelled "Bonnie." No, the title is spelled correctly; this sermon is about our "Bony Hope." It's about biblically-defined hope, the life-giving hope that believes and continues to believe, no matter how bleak, dry, dismal, ... or dead ... the present might seem. We see a vivid illustration of this biblical hope in our reading from Ezekiel.

You may remember from last week that I made passing reference to a cataclysmic event in Jewish history, the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D. Not only was it the destruction of a city, but it was, in many respects, the destruction of an entire social, moral and national order. It was a crisis that had been building for years. The destruction of Jerusalem was so thorough that many at the time thought it to be the "end of the age," the absolute end of the Jewish age and identity. Tragic as it was, that destruction was also a great pivotal event in the growth of the early church. Early Jewish Christians were forced to scatter throughout the Roman empire as a direct result of Jerusalem's destruction ... and the early church began to take root grow throughout the Roman world. Well, one of the great pivotal events in Old Testament history was another destruction of Jerusalem. This was another thorough devastation many of that time thought would end the Jewish age and identity; this destruction took place some six centuries before Jesus was born. As in AD 70, this destruction was also the culmination of crisis which had been building for years; there is much in the way of political, military and spiritual intrigue and upheaval which culminated in the Babylonian empire conquering Jerusalem. The conquering Babylonians carried into captivity most of the citizens of Jerusalem, leaving behind mostly the poor, aged or infirm; those taken into Babylonian captivity joined other Jews (like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, as well as Ezekiel) taken from Jerusalem a decade or so earlier.

It's interesting to note that those exiled to Babylon were not even kept in prisons or concentration camps. The captivity was a type of deportation carried out by conquerors to put a defeated people under their watchful eye. It served to effectively diminish or destroy the power of a conquered enemy without resorting to genocide; it also served to prevent rebellion, as the seeds of rebellion find it hard to take root under the watchful eye of the authorities, "Big Brother." Sometimes exiles were carried out to colonize territories possessed by the conquerors, sometimes (as in the case of the Babylonian exile), it created a sort of cultural fusion between the peoples that would enrich the captors ... for example, as reflected in the book of Daniel, the Babylonians benefited from Jewish wisdom, insights and even their religion. This cultural fusion helped the Babylonians maintain the upper hand, in that it served to weaken Jewish identity as Jews became acclimated to and assimilated into the Babylonian culture. Difficult as it may have been for the captive, this mode of exile was merciful in contrast to the Holocaust of this century, where Jews were led to believe they were being deported, exiled. It was merciful in contrast, too, to the Communist purges of this century, in which the educated, skilled and/or professional among the conquered were largely slaughtered, imprisoned or otherwise done away with, as in Cambodia's killing fields or Stalin's purges. The Jewish exiles in Babylon were not murdered, nor were they kept in prisons or camps. In fact, they enjoyed a considerable degree of freedom in Babylon. They were free to socialize, marry, build homes, plant crops, exchange in commerce. Some enjoyed a degree of worldly success in Babylon, becoming quite wealthy. They enjoyed freedom of assembly, the could elect their own leaders, they were even free to worship.

I've observed over the years that when some people's lives have been interrupted by some great tragedy or difficulty, they seem to lose their desire to worship. They just stop coming to church. This doesn't always happen, in fact, there have been and continue to be notable exceptions. For those who stop coming, though, there may be various reasons. Sometimes it may just be out of embarrassment or awkwardness; they are embarrassed by the loss of a job, the loss of health, the loss of appearance. Or perhaps they just don't like being without their loved one, going places where they used to go together, and now must go alone due to death or divorce. But sometimes the reason people stop worshiping is that they feel they have lost their vision of God. Perhaps they've grown cynical about the promises of God. To be in worship and hear those divine promises, and to stand beside so many who are happily singing praises to God, can at times be too much. This is one of the tragic ironies of loss for some -- the times that we most need to worship, when we have the greatest need to be reminded of the eternal things of God, we can find it most difficult to do so. Like the Jewish exiles in Babylon, we may try to numb the spiritual pain and sadness in our lives by making life more comfortable in exile. We work harder. We go shopping. We buy homes, plant our roots, bury ourselves in family or community life, argue politics, try new hobbies, and generally do all we can to make Babylon more bearable. However, the grim reality remains: It doesn't matter how nicely you decorate it, this place where tragedy or heartache or cynicism may have brought you, this Babylon, is still not your home. You may have to live with disappointment, with grief, with sickness, with loss, with a broken heart for a long time ... and when you are in this situation, it's hard to hear about the great promises of God, you can't stand the apparent contradictions between God's promises and the harsh realities in your life, and as a result you are tempted to turn away from worship. But the day you deaden your desire for God, is the day you spiritually die .... and the rest of you begins to slowly die from the inside out.

In fact, things eventually got so "cozy" for the exiles in Babylon that even after they were permitted and encouraged to go back to Jerusalem, a good many of them no longer wanted to go back. The old desire for the holy city had died, their old desire to be in God's presence was deadened, perhaps buried under piles and piles of coping devices, perhaps starved by years of neglect, perhaps numbed by capitulation after capitulation to the culture around them.

Which brings us to today's reading from Ezekiel 37. At this point, Ezekiel had been in Babylon as long as Daniel. The Spirit of the Lord took him to a valley that was filled with dry bones. The Lord asked Ezekiel, "Son of man, can these bones live?" Looking around at all those shattered, dry, hopeless skeletons, Ezekiel responded, "Oh, sovereign Lord, you alone know." Then the Lord told him to prophesy to the bones, to start preaching the word of God to the bones. God even gave Ezekiel the message: "Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you and you will come to life! Then you will know that I am the Lord." (Just as a little aside: one of the speakers at the conference I attended last June mentioned he was contemplating writing an article about Ezekiel. In his article, Ezekiel would be having a consulting visit with a church growth expert. They are standing there together, confronting the valley of dried bones, the "congregation" of "Valley Presbyterian," and the church growth consultant says, "You know, what this service needs is some drums. We need a thumpin' worship band. A shorter sermon. And boy, this valley is hot, Zeke! Get air conditioning. That'll bring these bones to life." The speaker's obvious point was that these are bones, they are dead. There's nothing we can do, humanly, to get those bones to come together, to raise a bony hand, to sign a pledge card. Only the Spirit gives life, and He does that with the faithful proclamation of the Word of God, and more importantly than anything else, this is what the church must be faithful in doing...proclaiming the word of God. But that's another sermon.)

So here is the Lord's prophet, standing in the middle of a pile of dead, dry, scattered bones, preaching. And he's telling the dead, dry, scattered bones, in so many words, "Don't give up hope, dry bones!" Can you imagine how silly this must have looked? The prophet preaches, "God is going to cause you to LIVE again. You will ENJOY LIFE again. You will HOPE again. And you will know again that God is God, and you will never again settle simply for mere comfort, or power, or position in Babylon because you will desire and know the divine comfort, power, and work of God Almighty."

So let's take our stand right beside Ezekiel, proclaiming our hope to the great valley of dry bones. "You who may have given up hope, you who have suffered crises that ended life as you knew it, you who may have given up dreaming, you who have settled for nothing more in life but a comfortable routine life of work, bills, and dirty laundry and the occasional vacation. You who think your best years are behind you. Thus, says the Lord, I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live!" Hope in the Lord. Then you will know Him, then you shall come to life, then you shall enjoy life ... full and abundant life ... again.