Can These Bones Live?: A Sermon for 5 Lent
“Mortal, can these bones live?” This question posed by God to the prophet Ezekiel when he had the vision of the Valley of Dry Bones couldn’t be more timely for us today. Indeed, many of us around the world are feeling more and more dry and lifeless due to the covid19-related social distancing and isolation. Ezekiel’s brief answer gives us a glimpse of his prophetic wisdom – “O Lord God, you know.”
And such is the case now. God only knows when this pandemic will subside. God only knows when breath, sinews, flesh, and skin will be added to our socially distanced, isolated, and even covid19-infected dry bones.
Ezekiel prophesied the Valley of Dry Bones when Israel was in Babylonian exile. They were not free to worship God in the space and in the ways to which they were accustomed. Their rituals, routines, relationships, and religious life had been eradicated during their exile. As such, the people Israel were akin to the prophetic valley of bones that were crying out, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” And they are akin to us as well.
This passage from Ezekiel is assigned to us on the 5th Sunday of Lent for good reason. In a “normal” year, the Valley of Dry Bones prophecy comes to us nearly five weeks into our Lenten fast. By the 5th Sunday in Lent, if we have been holding to the discipline of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, we should be feeling the pangs of a long penitential season. We should be feeling dry… and longing for the new life of Easter.
But this is no “normal” year. As our parishioner and Nursery Director Christina Akers posted on Facebook yesterday, “This Lent will go down as the Lentiest Lent ever Lented!” The ancient cry of “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely” isn’t just symbolic for us. It is profoundly real. On Friday night, I remarked to Emily that at this point, I don’t know anybody who has been diagnosed with covid19, but that I’m sure that I will sooner or later. Well, yesterday, Bishop Russell sent us news that Tim Gaston, a parishioner at St. Paul’s, Mobile, died Friday night from complications associated with covid19. Tim was a faithful and beloved member of his parish as well as the diocese. I didn’t know Tim personally, but I knew his face when I saw the picture. People who were close to Tim throughout the diocese are devastated. They join Martha, Mary, and Jesus, who wept at the death of Lazarus.
In our gospel lesson today, when Jesus learned of Lazarus’ grave illness, he practiced his own form of social distancing. Why did he stay away? Was he tired? Overwhelmed? Did he have compassion fatigue? Was he paralyzed by fear and anticipatory grief? Much has been written about Jesus’ refusal to rush to Lazarus right away. Of course, St. John, who had the benefit of hindsight, quotes Jesus as saying, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” And then St. John goes on to say, “Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”
Today, family members, friends, and clergy are being forced to stay away from their loved ones and parishioners who are sick and dying from covid19. One of my other diocesan clergy colleagues had to administer Last Rites over the phone to her elderly parishioner who died last week in the hospital. Family, friends, and clergy are staying away from hospitals now because we are required to. We are not doing it to glorify God. And I don’t believe that the covid19 virus is something God is using to glorify himself. We all join Mary, Martha, and Jesus, in our sorrow and lament for those who are dying and have died.
The prophecy of the Valley of Dry Bones and the raising of Lazarus from the dead are profoundly powerful texts to have paired together as we draw closer to Easter Sunday. As I mentioned before, on any typical 5th Sunday and Lent, they would both speak to the effects of our own Lenten journeys as we long for the new life that awaits us at Easter.
But this year, these two texts take on an extra layer of profound meaning for us. Even those who don’t engage in the spiritual discipline of a Lenten fast have now been forced to give up many things. Others who gave up things like chocolate, caffeine, and alcohol have said, “Enough of that nonsense. Those are the only things that will get me through being home all day with my spouse and children!” Wherever we found ourselves prior to the covid19 pandemic, we now find ourselves bound together in our fear, anxiety, grief, restlessness, and despair. Protestants and Catholics, megachurches and neighborhood churches, young and elderly, rich and poor, Democrats and Republicans …. We are all being asked or required to stay home from school, church, work, and other public places. We are all capable of being infected by the virus. And we are all capable of carrying and spreading the virus. We are all worried for ourselves, our loved ones, our churches, our communities, our nation, and our world. In many ways, we have an opportunity to be more unified that we have been in a long time – as a community, as a nation and as a global community. I know that Episcopal Church feels more connected and unified to me than it has in a long time. We are rallying around each other to help out, sharing ideas and resources, and connecting in ways that we have never connected before.
In the midst of our coming together for the common good – as a community, as a nation, and as a global community – our psalm this morning gives us the language for our waiting for this pandemic to end: “I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for him; in his word is my hope. My soul waits for the Lord, more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.”
The writers at The Living Church magazine remind us that “Lent tells us about dried bones, hope that is lost, flesh that is going to death. We know all this, and yet do everything to turn away. To be sure, there is also happiness in our lives, joys common and daily and occasionally unspeakably intense and beautiful. Still, a pall is cast over these precisely because they will not last and because they may, at any moment, be taken away.”
It certainly feels like much of the joy and happiness have been taken away this Lenten season due to this covid19 pandemic. But these same writers from The Living Church point out that in our gospel lesson, Jesus Christ has come among us, even though it is not yet Easter. “[Jesus] is the one who pours Spirit into flesh to make a new creation…He makes alive by calling the dead to new life, and this pertains both to the promise of the general resurrection and to the life we are living now. We are living in the Spirit. The body as ‘flesh’ which opposes God is headed toward death (as we heard from Paul’s letter to the Romans this morning), and, preemptively, is already dead in the sacrificial death of Jesus. That ‘mortal body,’ however, is being raised from death and transformed by Christ’s indwelling Spirit. Though dying, yet shall we live; for the life of Christ is our life.”
Taken in light of our current context, this pandemic has served as a potent reminder of our immortality, as well as just how little we are in control. Covid19 just might be the most Lenten pandemic ever! To riff off of Christina’s Lenten observation mentioned earlier, we will soon have the opportunity to have the Easteriest Easter ever Eastered. While we join the psalmist in waiting like watchmen in the morning for this pandemic to end and for our Lord to come, we are being transformed by Christ’s indwelling Spirit.
In terms of prayer triage, my first prayer is for this pandemic to end now and for no more lives to be lost. And my second prayer is that, regardless of how long this pandemic lasts, we Christians will allow God to continue to work on, in, and through us – laying sinews on us, causing flesh to come upon us, covering us with skin, and putting breath in us, so that we shall live and know that he is the Lord who can go into a Valley of Dry Bones, or a four-day-old grave, and make all things new.