Ezekiel 37:1-14 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

37 The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. ² He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. ³ He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” ⁴ Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. ⁵ Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. ⁶ I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.” ⁷ So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. ⁸ I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. ⁹ Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” ¹⁰ I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. ¹¹ Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ ¹² Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. ¹³ And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. ¹⁴ I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.”

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   The Babylonian exile was a tragic, and yet fruitful event in the life of the people of Israel. It was tragic, because the nation was torn apart. Yet, the exile also gave Judah an opportunity to rediscover its identity as a people. Much of what we know as the Old Testament emerged in the context of the exile. While, it was a challenging time for the people of Judah, who found it difficult to live in hope of a new and better day.

Ezekiel was a prophet who arose in the context of the exile, and he spoke words that chided the people when they were unfaithful, but he also shared words that offed hope of a new day, when the people of Israel would experience restoration. One of the most powerful words of hope to be found in Ezekiel, if not all of scripture, is this passage from Ezekiel 37. Can dry bones live? That is the question of the hour. It is the question that YHWH asked of the prophet after delivering him to a plain covered with dry, lifeless bones. Can these bones live? All that Ezekiel can answer is: “you know.” That is, Ezekiel has no idea how dry, lifeless bones could ever be restored to life. Only God knows, and it’s possible that as the conversation started, Ezekiel had his doubts.

If Ezekiel has doubts, God has a plan. There’s a reason why God brought Ezekiel out to this plain covered with dry bones. God wanted Ezekiel to better understand his prophetic calling. God wanted him to preach, to share the word, so that Israel might once again live. This is the word given to Ezekiel: “say to the bones: “hear the word of the Lord.” I think we should let that phrase sink into our hearts and minds. “Hear the Word of the Lord.” Remember the message of John’s prologue, which declared that the Word (Logos) was in the beginning with God and was God, and that all things came into being through him, and “in him was life” (Jn. 1:1-4). The Word of the Lord is life, and if Ezekiel will preach to the bones, then God will breathe life into them, so that the bones will know who the LORD is.

Ezekiel does as God asks, and then witnesses God’s fulfillment of the promise made to Ezekiel. The bones begin to rattle and come together to form skeletons (we could use a bit of Disney animation here). On these skeletons flesh appears. But, the text of Ezekiel says that to this point “there was no breath in them.” It would be fitting to go back to Genesis 2, the second creation story, where God forms the first human from the dust of the earth. The basic building blocks are there, but life isn’t yet present. Life awaits the breath of God. As we read in Genesis, God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7). In Ezekiel, God tells the prophet to “prophesy to the breath, saying: “Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live” (Ez. 37:9). When Ezekiel complied, the winds came forth, and filled the lifeless bodies with breath. Of course, the Hebrew word, like the Greek word, for breath is also the word for Spirit (ruach/pneuma). In the biblical story, life isn’t separate from the presence of God’s spirit.

It is important that we recognize that Ezekiel isn’t speaking about individuals. He has in mind a people, the people of Israel, who have experienced the devastation of conquest and the humiliation of exile. Not everyone in the nation of Judah found themselves in Babylon, but whether in Babylon or in the land of Israel, the people of Judah had lost their sense of identity. It was as if they had died.  The Spirit of God seemed absent from the people. Now, it needs to be said that the Spirit of God wasn’t truly absent, but the people seemed disconnected from the life-giving Spirit of God. The presence of the Spirit can be seen in the work of the prophets, including Ezekiel.

This is a well-known passage of scripture. It’s vivid in its descriptiveness. The valley of dry bones coming back to life; it’s a powerful image. But what does it have to do with us? What word does God have for the church in the 21^st century, a church that is beginning to see itself in terms of exile. We seem to be a collection of dry, lifeless bones scattered across the plain. I hear it all the time. I hear it from colleagues who bemoan what appears to be the prolonged death of the church. I hear it from church members, who remember the glory days, when Sunday was marked by church attendance. Churches were full. The congregation I now serve is relatively small, but once it was a grand and powerful congregation. Its pastor was nationally recognized (he served as President of the Federal Council of Churches). The church sat on Detroit’s “Piety Row.” Times changed, the church began a slow decline, and it eventually moved to the suburbs. For a long time, it clung to its former heritage, but the reality is that the congregation had gone into exile. This congregation isn’t alone in this, even if a congregation hasn’t moved from its original space. The promise here, of course, is that the exiles will return to the Land, to the soil, upon which the people had once been a nation of some importance. It’s not likely that our congregations will return to their original glory, but the spirit of exile can give way to a new spirit of hope and service. We can take root in our new realities, and be witnesses to God’s gracious presence. The dry bones can hear the Word of God and come to life, filled with the Spirit, so as to become signs of God’s presence in the world.

Perhaps the key to restoration is attending to the Word of God. I speak here to my more “progressive/liberal” colleagues, who often struggle with Scripture. Yes, Scripture can be difficult to navigate. It says things that we may find problematic. After all, it emerged in a very different world, and yet it does have something powerful to say, if we’re willing to listen. While critical scholarship is essential to getting the context straight, if we begin and end there, we may end up missing a Word from God. Walter Brueggemann suggests that we would be better of moving on from focusing our attention on questions of historicity, and focus more on the overarching narrative that is Scripture. He speaks of the Exodus story here, but I think it holds for other conversations. Of the biblical narrative, he writes that we might see it as “a script that is waiting to be performed; it is always being given new performance, even in our own time . . .” [Rebuilding the Foundations, p. 193]. With that in mind we can get a sense of the overarching message of this narrative. Kelton Cobb writes that “at the core of the biblical narrative is the story of displacement—of having wandered a long way from home, and longing to return. This is the underlying plot of being cast out of Eden, of being foreigners in Egypt, of the journey to the promised land, of the long of exiles in Babylon to return to the land of their fathers” [Feasting on the Word, 126].

It is this narrative of exile and return that defines our own realities, including as churches. When we feel as if we’re in exile, we long to return home. That might be why there is such interest in genealogies. We want to know where we belong, so we can return to our homeland. When I went to England, during my sabbatical, I had this feeling of connecting to my roots.  This was my homeland. When I went to Christ Church Cathedral and experienced Evensong, it was as if I had come home. So, I understand this longing for home. It is a longing that defines salvation. As Augustine wrote in The Confessions, the restless heart will not find rest until it rests in God. Is this not our own desire? Do we not want to find our homeland? For Judah, it was the Land, for us, it is the realm of God.

So, what do we make of this powerful story? What word does it have for us? At one level this might be a good word about the power of preaching, even if our culture doesn’t seem to value preaching in the same way it once did, there is her a call to bring the Word so that the Spirit might move. When we hear the word “prophesy,” a number images might come to mind, most of which don’t seem to apply to those of us who enter pulpits to preach. But, in many ways that is what we’re called to do. We’re asked to bring a Word from God to a community. Ron Allen and Clark Williamson write that “preaching her is the means of restoration. Through preaching the breath of God enters the bones. An implication is that pastorally sensitive prophetic preaching can play a key role in revitalizing community” [Preaching the Old Testament, p. 37].

This is the word given to Israel, and by extension to the Church: “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act, says the LORD.” The church in the West is experiencing a reality that it hasn’t faced in centuries. No longer supported by government or even cultural establishment, it must fend for itself, or depend on the Spirit of God. Many congregations feel as if their bones are “very dry.” They feel as life has been drained from them, but here is a word of hope. Say to the bones – Live. Call for the wind of the Spirit to breathe life into the bones of our congregations. We may be in exile, but the realm of God is there in front of us.
Picture attribution: Elkan, Benno, 1877-1960. 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=55841 [retrieved March 27, 2017]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Collantes,_Francisco_-_The_Vision_of_Ezekiel_-_1630.jpg.

Robert Cornwall is the Pastor of Central Woodward Christian Church in Troy, Michigan and is the author of a number of books including Marriage in Interesting Times (Energion, 2016) and Freedom in Covenant (Wipf and Stock, 2015).

Exodus 17:1-7 Common English Bible (CEB)

17 The whole Israelite community broke camp and set out from the Sin desert to continue their journey, as the Lord commanded. They set up their camp at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.² The people argued with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why are you arguing with me? Why are you testing the Lord?” ³ But the people were very thirsty for water there, and they complained to Moses, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us, our children, and our livestock with thirst?” ⁴ So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What should I do with this people? They are getting ready to stone me.” ⁵ The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of Israel’s elders with you. Take in your hand the shepherd’s rod that you used to strike the Nile River, and go. ⁶ I’ll be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Hit the rock. Water will come out of it, and the people will be able to drink.” Moses did so while Israel’s elders watched.⁷ He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites argued with and tested the Lord, asking, “Is the Lord really with us or not?”

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In Advent we heard the message of Emmanuel—God is with Us—in Lent we hear the question—“Is the Lord really with us or not?” The Advent declaration appears in the revelation to Joseph that the child of his betrothed was conceived of the Holy Spirit and that God would save the people from their sins through him (Matt. 1:18-25). The Lenten question is raised during a rather tense encounter between Moses and the people of Israel as they wandered across the desert. The murmuring or complaining of the people of Israel is a constant theme in Exodus. The people cried out to God, seeking deliverance from slavery. Now that they are free, they have other complaints, and the person who bears the brunt of these complaints is Moses. A chapter earlier, the complaint had to do with food. Now it’s a lack of water that concerns the people. You have to feel for Moses, because he has been put in an untenable position. He had claimed that he was acting on behalf of God, after demonstrating God’s power, the people agreed to follow him. Whether they understood the full ramifications of this decision is unknown. Of course, had we been among the people affected, we probably would be complaining as well. After all, water is essential to life, so why would you camp in place where water was absent?

Here is Moses. He’s being forced to explain the lack of water. Moses responds, strangely enough, with a question for the people: “why are you testing God?” What does Moses mean by that statement?  As for the people, they are putting the onus on Moses. Why did he bring them to this place? Why did he rescue them only to lead them to certain death from thirst?   In other words, slavery was bad. Dying of thirst was worse!

Even if we’ve not experienced such thirst, most of us have been exposed to the issue. I like watching nature programs like Planet Earth and Planet Earth II. When the programs focus on deserts, you will be exposed to animals searching for water. Perhaps you will watch as a troop of elephants cross foreboding desert sands in search of an elusive watering hole. A wide shot from the air reveals nothing but sand in all directions, but the troop marches on. Most likely this troop will include at one least one calf struggling to keep up, its only hope of survival being the discovery of that water hole. You want to root for that calf to make it, but that’s not always the way things end. In a recent show, the calf fell and couldn’t get up. The mother stayed behind, watching over her calf, even though she too was now at risk because she was separated from the rest of the troop. You grieve for that mother.

If you grieve for the elephants, then surely you must grieve for the people of Israel who face a similar fate. There are children in this caravan. They would be most vulnerable. Think of the recent stories of refugees fleeing the violence in Syria and Iraq. Remember the faces of children who face hunger and thirst. Do we hear their murmurings? Do we empathize with them, and thus with the people of Israel camped in the desert with no water in sight?

The people are understandably upset, and Moses seems to be caught in the middle. He is the one God charged with leading them out of Egypt, but did he lead them out of Egypt to a place where death was certain? For his part, Moses is wondering what he had gotten himself into when he answered the call of the burning bush. Yes, he had been able to do miracle upon miracle, including parting the sea. But, none of that mattered now, as a thirsty people demanded water. I can hear Moses say to God: “What I do to deserve this?” “What am I supposed to do with this people?” I can hear him say to God, “I didn’t learn how to deal with this kind of a problem in seminary. So, what am I supposed to do? They’re about to stone me.”  In other words, Moses was about to resign his leadership position! This is a sentiment that often marks clergy as they try to lead congregations that won’t go easily into the night. In this case, the people seem to have a point. They didn’t sign on to a trip that would to their death in a land without water.

Of course, it wasn’t Moses who delivered the people from Pharaoh. It wasn’t Moses who opened the sea or provided manna. It was YHWH. Fortunately, God had a solution. God told Moses to take the elders with him, along with the staff he used to strike the Nile, and go to the rock at Horeb, which is where God will be found standing on the rock. God instructed Moses to strike the rock with his staff, and when he did this, water would flow from that rock. If only drought-stricken lands had a staff like that. When Moses followed this command, he struck the rock in the sight of the Elders, and water began to flow so that the people could drink.

As is often the case in Exodus, this place takes on a new name. It is called Massah (Test) and Meribah (Quarrel). That is because the people tested God and quarreled. As they quarreled and tested God, they asked “Is the LORD among us or not?” They had seen God at work, but they still weren’t sure that God was with them. This episode might be remembered as one of those times when Israel tested God. That is, they showed a lack of faith. Consider the word of the Psalmist: “They tested God again and again, and provoked the Holy One of Israel” (Ps. 78:41).

I have never seen the parting of the sea, bread fall from heaven, or see someone strike a rock to get water to flow from it. Now, I know that there will be those who want to explain how all of this could happen. We moderns love natural explanations of biblical miracles. Regardless of the explanations, I’ve not seen anything close to what is described here with my own eyes. So how might I as a human being know if God is with me? Should I take my ability to find a rare parking spot as being a sign of divine presence? I would love to have the power to pray for one of my parishioners who is experiencing health problems, and watch those problems immediately disappear, but I’ve not seen that happen, though I do believe in healing and I do pray for people. I trust that God hears my prayers. But, how do I know that God is with me?

In this story, God provided the people with water to sustain them. God provides us with water as well that will sustain us—spiritually. Remember the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman. He offers her living water. He tells her that everyone who drinks the water of Jacob’s well would again thirst, but “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman told Jesus, “I want some of that water” (Jn. 4:13-15).  So do I!

So, the answer is—yes, God is with us!
Picture Attribution: Chagall, Marc, 1887-1985. Moses Striking the Rock and Bringing Forth the Water, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54659 [retrieved March 13, 2017]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/abeppu/3815912913/.

Robert Cornwall is the Pastor of Central Woodward Christian Church in Troy, Michigan and is the author of a number of books including Marriage in Interesting Times (Energion, 2016) and Freedom in Covenant (Wipf and Stock, 2015).

Genesis 12:1-4 Common English Bible (CEB)

Abram’s family moves to Canaan
12 The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your land, your family, and your father’s household for the land that I will show you.² I will make of you a great nation and will bless you. I will make your name respected, and you will be a blessing.
³ I will bless those who bless you,
those who curse you I will curse;
all the families of the earth
will be blessed because of you.”
⁴ Abram left just as the Lord told him, and Lot went with him. Now Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran.

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This short passage is one of the most foundational texts in scripture (at least that’s my view). God calls Abram (name not yet changed to Abraham) to leave his home and extended family, and travel to a foreign land. If he does this then God promises that he will become a “a great nation” blessed by God. Not only will Abram be blessed, but in addition “all the families of the earth will be blessed because of you.” The lectionary selection is brief and yet powerful. God asks a lot of Abram, telling him to leave behind everything he has known. In a world in which tribe was central, it was risky to go to go to a land in which one was a stranger. While the promise itself was wonderful, the question was how would it work out?

The outworking of this call would have many twists and turns, and as the writer of Hebrews notes, Abraham set out “not knowing where he was going.” Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all lived in tents and Sarah was barren, but the promise revealed itself over time, but “all of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them” (Hebrews 11:8-13). There would be times when Abraham took matters into his hands, such as when in pursuit of an heir he took Sarah’s slave, Hagar, and had child with her. Despite the twists and turns, the journey to blessing starts here, and continuing through the Covenant of Sinai to that of Calvary and the embrace of the Gentiles into God’s realm.

As a Christian, I interpret the call of Abraham through the lens of Jesus. He is, as Paul suggests, the seed of Abraham, through whom the blessings of God would be revealed to the nations (Gal.3:15-18). With this in mind, it’s appropriate to remember that Matthew’s genealogy traces Jesus’ lineage back to Abraham (Matthew 1:1-17). For Matthew Jesus, the Messiah, is the son of David and the son of Abraham. But connecting Jesus’ mission to Abraham, he envisions Jesus as the one through whom all the nations will be blessed. That is, he will save the people from their sins (Mt.1:21). From this perspective, the coming of Jesus is not a course correction on the part of God, but a natural extension of the call of Abram. That means the church doesn’t replace Israel, but as Paul notes, the Gentiles are grafted into the olive tree that is Israel, so that the nations might share in the blessing that God first promised to Abraham and to Israel (Rom. 11). As we ponder the call and the end result, it is wise to remember the promise of Second Isaiah, that Israel would be a light to the nations so that God’s salvation would reach the ends of the earth (Is. 49:6).

Theologian Clark Williamson has devoted much attention to the question of the church’s relationship to Israel, especially in a post-Shoah world. He writes:

Israel was to be a priestly people, serving others, not itself. God’s covenant was not merely for Israel’s good but for the good of all human beings, Gentiles and Jews. God chose Israel as an instrument so that all peoples may come to know God and God’s purposes for them. [A Guest in the House of Israel, p. 125].

So, for Christians reading this call, which will be formalized more fully in Genesis 15 when the promise a child and heir is given (and sealed through sacrifice), and then again in Genesis 17, when God explicitly makes a covenant with Abram and in the process changes his name to Abraham (and that of Sarai to Sarah).

According to the reading from Genesis 12, Abram accepted the call and headed out from Haran to Canaan. He did so, accompanied by Lot and those closest to him, with only the promise of a blessing.  The promise is this—the families of the earth will be blessed through him. As we contemplate this call it’s good to note that while God seems narrow the focus to one family, the earliest readers of this promise, as descendants of Abraham and Sarah, would have understood themselves to be that nation through which God would bless the families of the earth. They had a special calling from God. They had a message to share with the nations. While it would be easy to forget this calling, and focus inward rather than outward, time and again messengers would remind the people of their calling. It wasn’t just Israel that was to be blessed, it was the entire creation. Having attended a stewardship workshop recently, I’m reminded that this is a stewardship issue. That would mean that the promise ultimately is rooted in the creation of humanity, who are blessed by God and charged with having dominion (management) of God’s creation (Gen.1:26-31).

The call on Abram and his descendants was to be a blessing to the nations. It would be through this people that God would bless creation. For Christians, this means recognizing that we have been, as noted earlier, grafted into the olive tree that is Israel. We have been adopted into the family through the one who is the seed of Abraham. But as the Gentiles are drawn into the family, and blessed by God, that doesn’t nullify the previous covenant (Gal. 3:15-18). There is a tendency for Christians to read Paul in a supersessionist manner, so that Jesus replaces Israel. That would be inappropriate. For our purposes, let us simply understand Paul’s reference to seed to be a sign that God always intended to bring all of creation into the fold, and that Israel plays an important role in this, as does Jesus.

While there will always be interpretive questions to wrestle with, since three religious traditions claim descent from Abraham, and that these three traditions have often been at odds with each other, it would be wise to affirm the common ancestry, and move to the question of the nature of this blessing. After all, the words bless and blessing figure prominently in this passage and in Genesis. Lest anyone think too highly of one’s self, it is also good to remember that the blessing spoken of here is a gift of God, though it is a gift that must be received. Remember that Abram is told that those who bless him will be blessed and that those who curse him will be cursed. As James McTyre notes, “Abram is called by God to serve as a mirror. Instead of images, Abram will reflect blessings and curses on the land where he will sojourn” [Feasting on the Word, Year A, 2:51].

From a Christian point of view, the church, as the body of Christ, reflects God’s blessings to the world. But what does this mean? What is a blessing? It’s a good question since the words bless or blessing figure prominently in this passage and in the rest of the story. For modern readers the word blessing may seem quaint but not all that meaningful. However, in Hebrew the word connotes a sense of well-being or flourishing. That is what God wants to see happen for creation. He wants it to once again flourish. As to what this means, Miroslav Volf suggests that flourishing means that one does not live by bread alone. The material world is important, for we are material beings, but in his argument as to why a globalized world needs religion, Volf notes that “when we live by bread alone, there is enough bread, not enough even when we make so much of it that some of it rots away; when we live by bread alone, someone always goes hungry; when we live by bread alone, every bite we take leaves a bitter aftertaste; . . . living by ‘mundane realities’ and for them alone, we remain restless and that restlessness in turn contributes to competitiveness, social injustice, and the destruction of the environment as well as constitutes a major obstacle to more just, generous, and caring personal practices and social relationships.” We need bread, but we need more than bread. We need the bread of life.   [Volf, Flourishing, p. 22].

There is a thread that runs from creation (Genesis 1) to new creation (Revelation 22). It runs through Abram and on to Jesus, through whom we are grafted into the tree, so that we might be reconciled and share in the blessings of God as was promised to Abram as he left Haran for a new land.

Picture attribution: St. Savin – Calling of Abraham, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=33460 [retrieved March 7, 2017]. Original source: Images donated by Anne Richardson Womack, Vanderbilt University, and James T. Womack, Montgomery Bell Academy, Nashville, TN.

Robert Cornwall is the Pastor of Central Woodward Christian Church in Troy, Michigan and is the author of a number of books including Marriage in Interesting Times (Energion, 2016) and Freedom in Covenant (Wipf and Stock, 2015).