"Can These Bones Live?" - Ezekiel 37: 1-14

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Beneath the streets of Paris, France, are miles and miles of tunnels that date back hundreds of years, used to mine limestone from beneath the city. In the 1700s, as the city expanded, cemetery space became more and more difficult to find. With no new ground available in the city, existing graves were opened and old skeletons were exhumed so that new corpses could be buried.  Wanting a safe and solemn place to store what was exhumed, the remains were taken to the empty, underground tunnels and placed carefully into shelves that were carved into the stone. Now, three hundred years later, these tunnels, colloquially called, “The Catacombs,” or les catacombes de Paris, and these ossuaries hold the bones and skulls of tens of millions of Parisians. In places, the bones are stacked so tightly and so high that it is as if tunnels are themselves nothing but bones.

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I have only seen photos of the catacombs with its ancient tunnels filled with dirty brown bones. Simply looking at these at these pictures, I am filled with mixed emotions. There is a very stark beauty in seeing part of the body that is normally hidden by muscle and sinew and enwrapped in skin. There is also a morbid curiosity: who were these people, what did they do, how old were they when they died, when did they live and what did they see? But there is also a certain, haunting, frightening quality. No matter how I might consider the pictures along philosophical or romantic lines, those bones are there for one reason and one reason only: le mort - death. The catacombs are filled with bones of the dead.

Bones humble us. Whether we are looking at skeletons in a museum, the model on the desk in the doctor’s office or at pictures in a book, the lifeless, breathless bones remind us of our mortality. From dust we are, and to dust we shall return.

Empty bones are a reversal of creation. In the beginning, God took dirt and formed it into Adam – “Adam,” by the way, is Hebrew for “dirt.” God’s sculpture looked like a man, but it wasn’t a man, having neither life nor breath in it. Son of man, can this dirt live? O Lord, you know.

There is a wonderful bit of word-play in Old Testament Hebrew. The same word, ruach, can mean Spirit, or wind, or breath, depending on the context. Most translations read that God breathed into Adam the breath of life. God’s Spirit blew and breathed life into the dirt, enlivening it from adamah, dirt, into Adam, man. Son of man, can this man live? Yes, by the power of God’s spirit who gave life. Later, when God choses to make a spouse for Adam, He does so using a bone – a rib – from Adam’s side. Adam rejoices in the gift: she is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, he cries, and gives thanks to God for Eve. Her name, by the way means “Mother of all living things.”

But Ezekiel isn’t standing next to fresh dirt that is filled with possibilities. He’s not standing in the Garden of Eden watching God take a fresh bone from one to form another. He’s been taken up in the spirit of God – that’s vision talk – and led by the hand of God, and he is standing in a valley filled with dry bones that have been exposed to the elements: bleached white by the sun, washed clean by the rain, dried by the wind. These are very dry bones: hollow, marrowless bones, life-less bones, hope-less bones. Very dry, very dead bones, all left out on the valley’s dead floor. And these aren’t neatly placed skeletons either, organized and carefully preserved. These are scattered, mixed up here and there, as if they had been savaged and ravaged by the wild animals and carrion, unburied and unloved, cursed in death as they were in life. They are cut off from life, cut off from the resting places of their fathers, cut off and abandoned as nothing more than refuse.

Son of man, can these bones live? It doesn’t take an orthopedic specialist to interpret the vision. The greatest doctor in the world couldn’t do anything with these bones. There is no way on earth those bones can live. Or, can they?

In Ezekiel’s vision, the bones represent Israel who had become unfaithful, chasing after the gods – lower case g – of the heathen Gentiles. God punished Israel with the destruction of the nation, her soldiers killed in battle, her leaders and most noble citizens taken into exiled captivity, the cities leveled, and fields destroyed.  This all happened after the presence of God left the Temple and the Temple, once the beautiful, sacred House of God, was stripped of its sacred beauty, desecrated, and then destroyed. Literally, the nation and the people of Israel was nothing but a skeleton of what it used to be under David and Solomon.  The question, “Son of man, can these bones live?” isn’t really about the bones. This is a vision, remember? It’s about Israel. Is there hope for Israel? Is there life for the people? Is restoration possible, or are they cursed to die among the Gentiles, cut off from one another, cut off from the promises of God?

Son of man, can these bones, can Israel live? Yes: by the power of God, through the Spirit, working in the proclaimed Word of God, that which is otherwise dead can be made alive.

Ezekiel prophecies, as ordered by God, calling the bones into order and into structure. Then bones, them bones, them dry bones – bones that are dried up, with hope lost, and cut off from the living – them bones hear the Word of God and they respond. Foot bones connect to ankle bones that connect to leg bones that connects to thigh bones. Hip bones and back bones and ribs and tibias and fibias join in, and a skull rests at the top. The bones, the dry bones are connected, but can they live?

Ezekiel speaks again, as commanded by God. Ezekiel speaks, prophesying to the winds, to the very breath of God, and the spirit responds to the Word. God’s spirit gives life. A true breath of life rushes into those bones that are dead, that are without life. It is a re-creation that takes place, as the four winds – symbolizing the fullness of God’s Spirit – the four winds rush in. And in that moment the dead gives way to the living, and that which is empty of breath is filled God’s Spirit that rushes in like the wind blowing across fields and valleys.  The vision is a promise of what is to come for Israel, that they are still God’s beloved, and they will be restored and enlivened once again to be His army sent into the world. “I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel. I will put my spirit within you and you shall live.” (v.12).

Remember: this is a vision, a symbol of God’s people of God whose faith has died. The prophetic Word of God spoken by Ezekeil will call Israel to repentance and the Spirit, working through that Word, will both create and strengthen faith in that very same Word. Israel will be restored – not to a great political nation as it was under David and Solomon, but as the house of God. And through Israel, the Messiah will come and a New Israel will be established. The New Israel is called, simply, the Church.

On Pentecost Sunday, the apostles stand on the shoulders of Ezekiel and they speak prophetically and powerfully to the Jerusalem crowd. Themselves empowered by the Spirit of God, the Word they proclaim is carried by the Holy Spirit into the ears, hearts, and minds of the people. Peter preaches, telling the crowd – possibly even some of the same people who fifty days earlier shouted for Jesus’ crucifixion – that Jesus is the Messiah for whom Israel had long waited and He is the One whom the Church proclaims into the world. The Spirit’s mighty work on Pentecost - tongues of flame, the sound of the rushing wind, the hearing of the Good News in their own languages – it’s so that people can hear of Jesus. Peter preaches to the dead bones of the people in Jerusalem, telling them that Jesus is the one who is cast out into the valley of death. He dies out near the city dump where the bodies were tossed like detritus, nothing more than flotsam and jetsam of human remains. He was cast out from His own people and died a common criminal and was buried in a grave, just like His father, David. But, sons of Israel, these bones of Jesus will live. On the third day, He rose from the grave, alive and victorious over sin, and death, and the devil, and the grave.

And, through that prophetic Word, “thus says the Lord,” the Spirit of God worked mightily and powerfully, creating faith in the hearts of thousands who, then, carried that same Spirit-empowered Good News to their homes and communities. The Spirit, working through the Word they shared continued His work of leading people to Jesus.

Son of man, can these bones live? It is tempting for us, I think, to sit here on this Pentecost morning and lament that we have not experienced such a Pentecost moment, either as part of the spiritually dead-to-life crowd, or as the proclaimer of the Word that enlivens. If we equate the work of the Holy Spirit only with the dramatic, extra-ordinary events such as what happened in the valley of bones, or in the streets of Jerusalem, we will be disappointed. We make jokes about being Lutherans and Germans and not being the excitable sort. We don’t talk a lot about spiritual gifts or about how the Spirit moved powerfully in that sermon or worship service. But, make no mistake: the Spirit is very much at work here, today, among us. He is constantly at work in our lives, making our bones – our faith in Christ – alive and strong. For most of us, before we could even speak or understand what was happening, through water and Word, He created faith in us, faith in Christ, through our Baptism. For others, He began working in us through the Word that was spoken to us by friends, family, and pastors who faithfully spoke of Jesus as Savior. In those words, by means of the Word, the Spirit worked powerfully to create faith. For all of us, He continues to work through that same Word of God that was given to the prophets and the apostles, faithfully proclaimed to you, faithfully read and studied by you, faithfully shared by you to your children and grandchildren.

He works to point you to Jesus, the Savior of the World, and day in and day out, through that same Word of God, He holds you close to Jesus so that on the day of resurrection, the say of Jesus’ return, you too will be raised and say, “Yes, these bones do live.”