You may not believe this, but when I was
in grade school, I wanted to dig up old bones when I grew up. I was obsessed
with dinosaurs. Most of my friends wanted to be cowboys or doctors or police officers
when they grew up; but not me. No, I wanted to be a paleontologist! So I
learned everything that I could learn about dinosaurs. I learned about Stegosaurus who had big plates on his
back. I learned about Triceratops who
had three long horns on his head and a big bony frill across his neck. And I
certainly learned about Tyrannosaurus rex,
the king of the dinosaurs who tore other dinosaurs apart with his razor-sharp
teeth. I was a really nerdy kid. My dream was to discover a brand-new dinosaur
that no one had ever seen before. What a thrill it would be to dig up a
creature that had been hidden in the earth for millions of years! After digging
it up, of course, I would have to put it back together; and that always worried
me just a little bit. Suppose I didn’t put it together correctly? That could
lead to all kinds of problems! That actually happened at least once in the
search for ancient creatures. Did any of you learn about Brontosaurus, the thunder lizard? He was a big, bulky guy with a
long, thin neck and a tiny head perched way out on the end of it. It turns out
that the skull that scientists put on the very first Brontosaurus skeleton came from another dinosaur altogether! They
put it together wrong! We still aren’t sure what the head of Brontosaurus looked like, because, to my
knowledge, nobody has found one yet. Digging up bones and putting them together
is like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. It’s not always clear how they
should go together.
Fortunately, that wasn’t a problem for
God in the vision that Ezekiel tells us about. That vision is one of the most
famous scenes in the whole Bible! Even if you aren’t familiar with the original
story, I’ll bet that you know the song that comes from it: “Dem bones, dem
bones, dem dry bones; now hear the word of the Lord! The foot bone’s connected
to the… ankle bone; and the ankle bone’s connected to the… leg bone; and the
leg bone’s connected to the… hip bone; now hear the word of the Lord!” It’s a
cute little ditty. But Ezekiel’s vision was anything but cute! God set him in
the middle of a valley that was littered with bones. There weren’t just a few
bones here and there. There were so many bones that it looked like a container
of giant toothpicks had been spilled all over the ground. And those bones were
dry, as dry as the sand of the Sahara Desert. Ezekiel could almost smell the
dust that coated those bones. Maybe he even saw a rat crawling out of the eye
socket of one of the skulls. It was a horrifying scene.
And then, God asked Ezekiel a question: “Son of man, can these bones live?” Now, Ezekiel answered very politely, “O sovereign Lord, you alone know,” but I imagine that he was really thinking, “Can these bones live? No! What kind of stupid question is that?” He must have been surprised when God ordered him to speak to those bones and say, “Hey, bones, listen up: leg bones and ribs and kneecaps and toes! God is going to put his Spirit back into you; and you’re going to get together again and be covered in flesh; and you’re going to get up and live!” And he was astonished when those bones actually did what God said that they’d do! Can’t you just imagine the noise it made when all those bones found one another joined together: foot bone to ankle bone, and ankle bone to leg bone, and leg bone to hip bone, and… well, you know the rest. It must have sounded like a million trillion baby rattles all shaking at once! And then those bones stood up, as alive as you and me. Of course, God had to interpret all this for Ezekiel, who was, by that time, probably not only astonished but terrified, as well! “This is Israel,” God told him. “These bones are my people. And they think that they’re dead and gone forever. But they aren’t. I’m going to revive them and give them new life! Remember, I can do things like that. So don’t ever give up hope! I am God, and I always do what I promise to do.” That vision must have overwhelmed Ezekiel. It’s almost overwhelming to us, too. After all, we aren’t used to seeing dry bones stand up and walk! Oh, we might see something like it on Halloween – but on Halloween, we know that it’s not real. But this – this is real. And the message is as clear as can be: even when God’s people think that there is no hope, God stands ready to breathe life back into their community of faith.
I recently read a brief meditation by author
and UCC pastor Quinn Caldwell on this very text. He suggested something that I
had never considered before. What if God didn’t put those bones together
exactly the way they had been before? What if the new Israel was different –
and better – than the old one had been? After all, when doctors do surgery, the
point is to improve their patient’s bodies. Doctors insert pins in broken bones
all the time so that those bones are stronger after they heal. Why can’t God do
something like that with the community of faith? The amazing reality is that
God does exactly that! When we need to be revived, God uses the divine
creativity that called the universe into being not only to restore us, but also
to improve us. After all, God is good at that. God can give us new hearts with
more compassion for those around us who are suffering. God can improve our
minds so that we have more wisdom when we interpret what’s going on around us. God
can give us courage so that we take risks on behalf of that Kingdom. And we
don’t even have to travel to the Emerald City to get those things like Dorothy and
her friends did in The Wizard of Oz.
God will improve us right here when he breathes his Spirit of renewal into our
tired, dry bones! If we trust God’s promises; if we trust God’s power; if we
trust God’s guidance… we will find that the impossible just might happen, and
that people who have lost hope will live again as loving, vibrant communities of
faith! Oh, they might not look exactly like they did before. In fact, they’ll
be new and improved! But isn’t that how our amazing God does things? Dreams
that we once believed were dead spring up alive and well, ready to be a part of
God’s kingdom!
You might be interested in hearing what
happened to my childhood dream of digging up dinosaur bones. I didn’t end up
following that career path in my life. I did go into science, but I became a
biologist. I worked in a lab with swirling liquids and bacteria in petri dishes
instead of in the dirt with trowels and brushes. When my family came along, I
exchanged my lab coat for a Girl Scout leader’s uniform and a school Room
Mother’s badge. And then, God called me to seminary; and while I was a student,
the most amazing thing happened! One day, one of my professors sat down next to
me and asked me if I would be interested in volunteering on an archaeological
dig in Israel. I would live in a hostel on an Israeli kibbutz with 20 people I had never met, get up at 4:00 in the
morning to work while it was cool, and end up every day covered with dirt and
sweat. But I would get to dig things up! Of course, I jumped at the chance. And
do you know what happened? I found something! Oh, it wasn’t a dinosaur bone. It
was even more exciting than that. I uncovered a white glass bowl that had been
buried in the Israeli dirt for almost 2,500 years! The last person to set eyes
on that bowl lived before Jesus lived, before King David lived, maybe even
before Abraham lived! When I was in grade school, I never imagined that my
dream of digging things up would come to life in such an amazing way.
God, in love, power, and creativity
can restore us – and our dreams – in ways that we never envisioned! And what is
our part in this miracle? Only that we trust God’s promises, we try our best to
discern what God is doing around us, and then we step out in faith! May God
give us the courage to be those people: restored, renewed, and alive!
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