Hope on a Breeze

Ezekiel 37:1-14

April 2, 2017

When I was in seminary, about 20 years ago, the school honored its homiletics professor with some faculty award that included delivering a speech. Isn’t that just like the entire educational enterprise? Give someone an award for their work, and then make them work more to claim it!

In any case, the professor gave a talk entitled “Preaching Is a Spiritual Practice.” I’ve tried to hold on to that claim, remember it, and live into it now for two decades. Part of that conviction and practice entails the effort to be open always to the wind of the Holy Spirit blowing where it will.

Like Ezekiel, I have looked out across the valley of dry bones and thought, “there is no life in these bones, and there never will be.” And, like Ezekiel, I’ve heard God say, “I’m not done with those bones yet.”

Like my homiletics professor years ago, I deeply believe that preaching is a spiritual practice. I try to be faithful to approaching it that way – that is to say, I try in wrestling with the text of scripture, in listening to the text of the present time in the news and in the life of this community, in pondering the text of a sermon, and in departing from that text in the context of worship – I try in all of that to be open to the movement of the Spirit of God.

And yet, I still often look at a situation and see dry bones even though I seem to hear God still saying, “I’m not done yet.”

At such moments, however, I am reminded that I do not do this by myself. I trust it’s clear that I deeply believe that God is part of it, but what I really mean is that I remember that your role in preaching is every bit as important as mine. We are in this together.

If you don’t bring your own openness to the wind of the Spirit moving in our midst, well then I really might as well be speaking to a collection of dry bones. Preaching is a spiritual activity; it is not a magic show. It is also never a one-person show.

We’re live-streaming this part of worship these days, and there are usually a few folks who catch us on Facebook. If this were magic, then I could say, “touch your hands to the screen and receive a blessing,” or, better, since we do this via Facebook, just “like this sermon and … blah, blah, blah.”

But this is not about magic; it’s about something a lot deeper than that. It’s about trust.

It’s about trust in the God who looks at death and says “I prefer life.”

Now I know that we are in the middle of Lent, that season that begins with the stark reminder of the truth of our mortal condition: we are dust, and to dust we shall return. But as the lectionary texts of this – and, indeed, of every season – continually remind us, God loves life.

In the beginning of the whole story, God looks at the darkness and says, “let there be light.” You don’t have to read far into the text before we find God looking upon the barren woman – Sarah – and saying “let there be life.” In the texts today, God looks upon death and says, yet again, “let there be life.”

The gospel reading today – which we didn’t read because, frankly, it’s just way too long for reading in worship – is the story of Jesus raising Lazarus, the brother of Martha, from the dead. There’s a whole lot going on in the 40-some verses in which the author of John tells the story, but two verses struck me in particular this week as I read the familiar tale.

First, that verse most famous for being so short: “Jesus wept.” He wept when he saw his dear friend weeping. In other words, Jesus was compassionate – he suffered with his friend such that when she wept he wept. And, second, just a bit further on, this verse: “Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb.”

The Greek word translated there (and also a few verses prior) as “greatly disturbed” is ἐμβριμώμενος (embrimōmenos). ”Greatly disturbed” is not a bad translation, but it misses the sense of anger and indignation in the original. One might say, “Jesus came to the tomb and boy was he ticked off.”

Jesus looks upon death and it makes him angry. On first reading, that might seem like the most human response imaginable. But upon a bit of reflection, I find it more God-like than human. There are times, of course, when we respond to death with anger – violent deaths and careless ones tend to make me mad, and I know many folks who get angry in response to premature deaths from cruel diseases – but more often death leaves us just plain sad.

It leaves us sad because there is nothing we can do about it. Perhaps in his anger Jesus is touching the divine within himself because God clearly loves life and, it seems just as clear, hates death. Moreover, God is everywhere about the divine work of bringing life forth from death. Resurrection is the pattern of God’s creation; a fact that is plain to see this time of year as new life springs forth from cold, and seemingly lifeless dirt.

That pattern is literally life-giving, but it does not deny the reality of death. Again, this is where Christian faith and life differ from magic. If our faith were magic the cross would not be our central symbol.

After all, we worship Christ crucified, and our oldest confession of faith states that we believe in Jesus Christ … who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

That confession goes on to say that we believe in “the resurrection of the body and the life-everlasting,” but it’s pretty light on the details.

I wish it were not so. That is to say, I wish I knew what lies on the other side of death. I wish I could stand up here – especially when “up here” is at a funeral – and declare such knowledge. I wish I could stand up here and say that when I’ve heard God call me to prophesy to the dry bones it was literal truth, and that I could read the Lazarus story as literal truth – as history reported rather than as faith proclaimed.

But if I could do that, then preaching would not be a spiritual practice, for it would not be a practice that invites me and you to trust something beyond what we can know.

Christian spiritual practices invite us to open ourselves to that which is beyond what we can touch and see. Such practices always engage what we can perceive through our senses: we can speak together and hear one another; we can walk the labyrinth and feel the ground beneath our feet; we can draw out prayers and see the colors; we can light a candle and smell the rising smoke; we can come to the table and taste the bread and cup.

But what we see and hear and taste and touch points beyond the sensual to the spirit, to the wind that blows where it will, to the God who loves life and invites us to life it fully and richly accepting that it follows a path from dust to dust, but the path we make as we walk that dust can be even more remarkable than a valley of dancing and singing where once there was but the rattle of dry bones.

The invitation today is the same one God spoke to Ezekiel: preach to the dry bones and call forth life! That is the world of the Lord to the church, and that word invites us to think deeply about life and about death.

The first step on a resurrection journey is often one that requires us to let go of that which needs to die and name that which needs to be born anew. You may have noticed that the space is full of crosses this morning, and in a time of quiet over the next few minutes I invite you to think about that which needs to die in order for something new to be born in your own life. What do you need to let go of or set aside or put down? As you think of these, I invite you to write them on one of the small crosses spread around the room.

What do you want to take up or take on? Perhaps that question might also be “who” – whose concerns do you wish to take up or take on? Put more simply, who or what are your praying for? What are you praying to become? As you ponder those questions, I invite you to take one of the brightly colored markers and color in a space on the big cross that is lying on the floor in the center of our gathering this morning.

Let us prayerfully enter a time of quiet.