March 9, 2008

Denise Kelsall

Lent 5     Ezekiel 37:1-14     John 11:1-45

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,

dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,

dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,

now hear the word of the Lord….

I hope you remember that familiar and powerful old Negro spiritual – it’s a great testament to the power of scripture and to the spirit of God that continues to overcome hopelessness and to inspire fresh visions of liberation – of how things could be and should be.

“Dem bones, dem dry bones” – this refrain echoes the words in our reading today from the prophet Ezekiel – this is a cry to God from people who have been laid waste, who have lost everything and have been utterly dispossessed and destroyed. They are dried up, hollow inside, withered – no hope – no future – nothing left but the dry bones of death.

The story of the Babylonian exile frames this reading. Around 587BCE the Babylonians burned Jerusalem, razed the temple, captured and took most of the people back to Babylon. This same fate had befallen the people of the northern kingdom of Israel about 150 years previously, and those people became scattered and lost their identity, they faded into the mists of time and became what are called ‘the lost tribes of Israel.’

The unspoken background to this wild and vivid text from Ezekiel is the desperate fear that they too have fallen into the same black hole of loss and annihilation.

The valley of dry bones is a metaphor for the exiles in Babylon who are lost and bereft of hope. The key symbols of their faith and their very identity: Jerusalem, the house of Israel – the people, the temple, the Davidic monarchy have been decimated and destroyed. They do not exist anymore.

Here, in Ezekiel’s vision, God calls them from their graves of despair and hopelessness to rescue and inspire them with visions and promises of the breath of new life, the breath – God’s spirit that comes from the four winds, and restoration to their home, Israel. It is a powerful vision of hope.

John’s gospel is often seen as the gospel full of ‘signs and wonders’ pointing to the divinity of Jesus. The raising of Lazarus is the culmination of these signs or miracles. Read literally, Jesus hears that Lazarus is very sick but tarries or lingers too long in coming to his friend’s aid. Deliberately the text tells us. He arrives four days after the death of Lazarus and is told twice, by Mary and her sister Martha that Lazarus would not have died had he come sooner. They all weep, including Jesus. He gets them to roll away the entrance stone to the tomb, in spite of their protest that Lazarus’ body smells bad after four days. Jesus calls Lazarus from his grave, and out he comes, alive, still covered with cloth and Jesus tells them to unbind him, to let him go.

A common thread running through these stories is that of resurrection. In Ezekiel it is the resurrection of the people Israel from their graves of exile and despair to new life through God’s breath, God’s spirit. In John’s gospel it is the resurrection of Lazarus from the tomb of death, and it is Jesus who calls him out and is the ‘giver of life.

The resurrection of Jesus is a central doctrine of Christianity. It is also something we affirm every time we say the Apostles or the Nicene Creeds where we claim that we will be bodily resurrected at the end of time. While I know many people adhere to this faith claim more literally, many also find it difficult and I admit that I am one of them. For a long time I was never able to reconcile the idea of resurrection and heaven – I still can’t.

The word resurrection does mean the dead coming back to life – literally. But I believe that like the word salvation, resurrection holds many more understandings than what officially is taken from literal readings of the bible and creedal faith statements. On a personal level people resurrect relationships, ideas and long forgotten dreams are given new life and resurrected when hope appears on the horizon – all manner of things are given new life and this is what I think both of these bible passages are talking about and also what is offered to us on a daily basis.

When I sing ‘dem bones,’ I think of the lifegiving nature of hope that we read of in Ezekiel. And when I think about Lazarus I think about unbinding – the unbinding that is such powerful metaphor to unbind us and liberate us from what is deathly or life-denying in our lives. Those prejudices we inherit, those stereotypical images we carry, those silly modes of behaviour that we repeat and repeat and regret again and again – it is about how life should consciously and intentionally be an unbinding of that which imprisons us in our daily worries, fears and small visions. This takes courage and faith as we are asked to step outside what is comfortable and challenge what we perceive to be unjust, cruel, deathly and just plain wrong. Of course this is always subjective but that is why we look to the words and the life of Jesus.

On a wider canvas ‘dem bones’ was written by African slaves in America who, like the people in Ezekiel, had lost everything. I shudder when I think of how these people were captured, shipped across vast oceans in horrific conditions, who were treated like animals, like commodities for sale, abuse and death. Out of that horror and loss rose this great music based on the biblical hope offered in Ezekiel – that one day, once again, ‘dem bones’ will truly live, and be unbound and unfettered in freedom and a common humanity. This is still happening the world over – they still cry out in places like Palestine, Darfur and Iraq – so it is our job, however small and mean our attempts may be, to proclaim the unbinding that Jesus brings to the ‘new life’ that all of ‘dem bones’ are crying for.