Anything is possible but…

stjohnstmarkchurchburySunday, May 20, 2018

Bible Text: Ezekiel 37:1-14 | Preacher: Ian Banks | Series: Pentecost | Our Older Testament reading today plunges us straight into chapter 37 of Ezekiel. It’s like starting to watch a TV series when it’s already two thirds of the way through. It kind of makes sense on its own but you really need to flick through the previous episodes to understand all the references being made. And we need some background to our text to fully appreciate why anything is possible – but that it may need someone to take a risk to make that possibility happen. So, let’s go through the equivalent of iplayer and get some back-story.

Most of the Jewish nation wasn’t in Israel. It was in exile 900 miles away in Babylon, southwest of modern day Baghdad. Distance wise it would be like sending you all from here in Lancashire, UK to Madrid, Spain – on foot.

They were far from home and after a 2 year siege Jerusalem was completely destroyed. The temple (their beloved, longstanding place of worship, where they felt most intensely in contact with God) was burnt to the ground. Imagine that happening to your homes & this chapel? It couldn’t be more grim.

Ezekiel is our hero. Our Daniel Craig or Scarlett Johansson. He’d been raised in Jerusalem and could remember what it used to be like, the glory days. But he was in exile with the rest of them. There was a certain freedom of worship in Babylon but it wasn’t the same as being where you grew up, in the temple, in the church of your youth.

Ezekiel was both a priest and a prophet. A vicar and a visionary. And he had weird, creative, ecstatic visions like this one. So strange that only Jewish Rabbi’s acknowledged by everyone to be especially wise were allowed to preach or teach on chapter 1 of Ezekiel. Read it when you get home. I don’t know what he was on but you would probably be arrested for selling it these days.
We all have dry bones times
Fast forward through the adverts to today’s familiar passage about skeletons, which I’m sure you’ve all heard many times before. And it almost certainly applies to each one of us at some time or another.

Because we each have our own dry bones experiences: the teacher without the energy to teach anymore, the worker trapped in a boring job, 2 friends who don’t enjoy being with each other anymore, the Christian leader having a crisis of faith, the grandparent taken for granted and worn down caring for the grandchildren.

But our text shows us that it’s never hopeless. If dry bones can come back to life then so can we.
It needs just one person
I suspect most times when we’ve thought about this passage we stop at that point and rightly take comfort.

However, for this to work it needs something else. It needs just one person to act – to do something courageous for others who are having a dry bones experience. Here it needed Ezekiel to preach in what seems like utterly preposterous, impossible circumstances. He took a risk, he had to trust.

Perhaps that person today is you? Maybe you’re being asked to be an Ezekiel, to take a risk, to help someone else in an impossibly dark situation. And it might be a tough, challenging thing to do because they may not like what you have to say.

So in this story we might well be the dry bones or we might be Ezekiel – or indeed we might be both.
Can these bones live?
God asked Ezekiel what was obviously a trick question: “Can these bones live?” You can hear the cogs turning can’t you? “Now I know the only sensible answer is no, but it’s God asking me and I don’t want to get in trouble for saying the wrong thing and show lack of faith but I don’t want to look stupid either, so I’ll push it back on God”… Ezekiel takes a deep breath and replies: “Sovereign Lord, you alone know”.

God was wise to that one though and there are 2 stages to what happens next. Firstly, he bats it back to Ezekiel who was told to preach to the bones. Ezekiel takes another deep breath and preaches. The bones knitted together and stood upright like our skeleton earlier…but there was no life there.

And we may appear to have it together, to look solid and upright – but if we’re having a dry bones time then there’s no life, no breath in us.

Albert Schweitzer said “The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he still lives”.
Coming alive
So as stage 2, Ezekiel was told to preach to the wind. In Hebrew the word is Ruach, the breath of God. The same as the spirit hovering over the water in Genesis. The same as the spirit at creation and the same as the breath breathed into Adam.

Another deep breath, Ezekiel preached to the wind. And the bones came alive.

What brings dry bones in your life? Is it money worries, poor health, family demands, over demands of church?
What are our tell-tale signs that those around us pick-up on? Irritability, over-indulging, ‘doing’ too much…
And what knits us back together and brings us to life? Church, prayer, our family, having fun, keeping fit, going on holiday… are we doing enough of those things?

Like Elijah being restored in the desert, we need to care for both body and soul.
Anything is possible
The passage shows us that anything is possible. If Israel, represented by the bones, can be restored then so can we. But we may need someone to tell us, someone to be our Ezekiel to point out that we’re drying up – or we may need to be an Ezekiel for someone else, to spot the signs, perhaps before they do.

We could take this prophecy and apply it to our individual lives. If we’re having a time of dry bones it shows there is hope, that anything is possible. Or we could apply it to this building – who knows what the future holds for it? Anything is possible, there’s always hope.
We are church
But our chapter in Ezekiel goes on to say: “I will put my sanctuary among them forever. My dwelling place will be with them…”

That sanctuary wasn’t a building. It was inside them.

As lovely as this place this, Church isn’t a building, no matter how much we’re attached to it. We’re not in church. We are church. We are the body of Christ. His arms, his hands, his body, his feet, the love that he shows to others. His dwelling place is in us – just as our dwelling is in Him.

But the Ezekiel prophecy to the bones was not for an individual or even a church in a particular location – it was meant for a nation of people. What we’ve looked at this afternoon could and should be bigger than the people here in this room today.

However, it will only be so if we all act like church, like the body of Christ, all the other days of the year that this building is not open. And it may take one person, perhaps you, to be an Ezekiel, to be the catalyst, to make the first move, to take a risk.
Pentecost – the Ruach of God
There’s a contemporary Christian song, the chorus of which is:

But if we are the body, Why aren’t His arms reaching?
Why aren’t His hands healing? Why aren’t His words teaching?
And if we are the body, Why aren’t His feet going?
Why is His love not showing them there is a way? There is a way

That song is about us. We are the body.

And today is Pentecost. Just as the Ruach of God brought life to the bones, so Jesus breathed on the disciples and told them to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

We too, as disciples, have that gift of the Holy Spirit. We’re meant to pass it on! If we don’t then Jesus is dry bones to those that we meet. I’ll say that again: if we don’t pass on the Holy Spirit then Jesus is dry bones to those we meet.

But if we do pass the Holy Spirit on then Jesus becomes real and alive, flesh and blood, in the world around us.

The choice is ours. Amen

[Four Lanes End Congregational opens just 4 times a year but they’re hoping to make it once a month in the future.]